Miami Herald Business Plan Challenge opens for entries

Entrepreneurs, please don’t let the name of our contest scare you.

As we launch our 15th annual Miami Herald Business Plan Challenge today, we are putting out our annual call for entries. But we aren’t looking for long, laboriously detailed business plans. Quite the contrary.

More and more, today’s investors in very early stage companies want to see a succinct presentation of your concept and how you plan to turn it into a success. We do, too.

If you have a business idea or an operating startup that is less than two years old, you can enter the Challenge, our annual celebration of South Florida entrepreneurship. Sponsored by the Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center at Florida International University, our contest has three tracks — a Community Track, open to all South Floridians; an FIU Track, open to students and alumni of that university; and a High School Track, co-sponsored by the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship.

Your entry may be up to three pages and you may attach one additional page for a photo, rendering, diagram or spreadsheet if you wish. Think of it as a meaty executive summary. Experts in all aspects of entrepreneurship — serial entrepreneurs, executives, investors, advisors and finance specialists (see judge bios on MiamiHerald.com/challenge) — will judge your short plan. In doing so, they will be looking at your product or service’s value to the customer, market opportunity, business model, management team and your marketing and financial strategies. See the rules on page 22, which also include tips on preparing your entry.

Your entry is due by 11:59 p.m. March 11. Entries should be sent to challenge@miamiherald.com, fiuchallenge@miamiherald.com or highschoolchallenge@miamiherald.com.

Don’t worry, we’re here to help!

“Frame your business from your customer’s perspective and not yours. Rather than diving into a detailed explanation of your product or service, a more compelling way to tell your business story is to clearly share the problem that you are solving for your customers and how your business is different, better, faster, cooler, cheaper, smarter,” says Melissa Krinzman, managing director of Venture Architects and a veteran Challenge judge.

On Feb 26 at 6:30 p.m. at Miami Dade College, we’ll host a free Business Plan Bootcamp, where you can bring your working plan with you for advice from experts, including Krinzman. Find the sign-up link on MiamiHerald.com/challenge.

And each week in Business Monday and on MiamiHerald.com/challenge, we’ll be bringing you advice and answering your questions. You can post your questions on the Q&A on MiamiHerald.com/challenge or email your questions to me at ndahlberg@miamiherald.com. Follow @ndahlberg on Twitter.

The top six finalists in the Community and FIU Tracks will present their 90-second elevator pitches for our popular video contest. Last year our People’s Pick contest drew more than 18,000 votes.

On May 6, in a special section of Business Monday, we will profile the winners — the judges’ top three selections in each track plus the People’s Pick winners. Along the way, we will unveil semifinalists and finalists to keep the suspense building.

Today, though, we are looking back on the entrepreneurial journeys of our 2012 winners. Funding was a nearly universal challenge, and many faced setbacks in developing their platforms. Throughout the entry period, we’ll also look back on other winners from the past 14 years.

Show us what you’ve got. Let’s make this the best Challenge yet.

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What the ‘Bqhatevwr’ Did Scott Brown Tweet?

What do politicians do after losing their re-election bids? Take to Twitter, of course. Former Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts has been doing just that.

Brown has been tweeting about his everyday life post-politics, posting blurbs about house chores, football, and his family, but Brown’s tweets are somewhat less refined than those tweeted by his skilled staffers when he was serving in Congress.

On his verified Twitter account on Friday morning, the former senator tweeted about seeing his daughter, Ayla perform at Pejamajo Café in Holliston.

“Yes. Get ready.” The tweet read, but without the finesse of Brown’s tweeting staff, one of his followers misunderstood the message.

“Oh we are. You have no idea how ready #MaPoli is to vote to keep you in the private sector & out of #MASen” @MattinSomerville tweeted back.

Brown responded with a series of three tweets delivered after midnight.

“Your brilliant Matt,” he first tweeted.

“Whatever,” followed.

And finally Brown tweeted, “Bqhatevwr.”

Though he deleted his tweets, “Bqhatevwr” trended on Twitter nearly as quickly as #eastwooding.

The trending typo drew both bipartisan support and mockery. Some taunted the former senator for his late night slip-up, creating Internet memes and “Bqhatevwr” quips, while others defended Brown, saying that he is just an average Joe who committed a typical Twitter faux pas.

But what most Twitter enthusiast failed to recognize what that Brown’s first “Your brilliant” tweet was grammatically incorrect, too.

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Father 'proud' of son who stood up to alleged molester

I'm proud of him, the dad testified today of a brave nine-year-old boy who stood up to an alleged sex-molesting school aide at the Upper West Side's PS 87 last year.

The boy had taken the stand Friday to describe the alleged abuse at the hands of aide Gregory Atkins, 56, angrily confronting the defense attorney during cross examination by shouting, "Stop being a bully!"

In his own turn on the stand today, the kid's father, an educator, described to jurors how his son complained to him of Atkins on the night of the alleged abuse in a manner largely consistent with the kid's witness stand account a year later.

The troubled child had needed counseling three times a week after the incident, but now, "He is doing better than he's ever done before," the dad told a Manhattan Supreme Court jury, where Atkins is fighting first degree sex abuse and felony child porn possession charges.

"He's very extroverted, very curious," the dad told jurors of his son. "I'm very proud of him," testified the dad, whose name is being withheld to protect the identity of the child.

Of the family's $3 million claim against the Board of Education, the dad said that should a lawsuit be pursued, any money damages would be the child's. But another motivation of filing suit would be to prompt the BoE to improve background checks on staff, he said.

Atkins was hired at the high performing school despite a history of being reprimanded verbally for inappropriate sexual behavior toward another boy student at his prior school -- including giving that child inappropriate gifts including a jock strap.

"I've always said he's a significant improvement on the prior generation," the dad beamed to reporters, speaking of his son after court. "He's a great guy."

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Brush fire breaks out in Southwest Miami-Dade

Firefighters were battling Sunday a brush fire in Southwest Miami-Dade, with crews working to keep the flames from spreading to nearby homes.

The fire broke out at 1:07 p.m. in the area of 112th Avenue and 224th Street. As of late Sunday, no homes were being threatened, fire department officials said.

Streets in the area were blocked off while firefighters worked to contain the blaze, according to CBS4.

While the fire department did not called for mandatory evacuations of nearby homes, the Florida Department of Forestry said several homeowners were voluntarily leaving the area.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief Phil Osava said around 21 fire units were on the scene to monitor the flames as they wind down.

The fire might have been caused by dry conditions, Osava said.

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Miami Lakes company growing its brand of skin care products

For decades, Vivant Skin Care has formulated creams, serums, cleansers and tonics to treat such dermatological conditions as acne, aging and hyperpigmentation.

Family owned and linked to Dr. James E. Fulton, who co-developed the anti-aging formula Retin-A, the company built its reputation with medically tested therapies aimed at improving skin.

Now, like a complexion that has undergone the metamorphosis of time, Vivant is altering its manufacturing and sales structure and adding products, emerging from the economic downturn with a new plan for the future.

“Now we’re stabilized and looking forward to growth,” said Fulton’s daughter, Chief Executive, Kelly Fulton-Kendrick.

Founded in 1990, Vivant produces a line of 30 skin care products, all formulated in-house, and priced from $15 to $100. The products target both females and males, ages 13 and up.

“Our target market is people who have serious skin care problems and need solutions,” Fulton-Kendrick said. “Vitamin A is the best for affecting change in the skin.”

The clinical skin care products, packaged simply in white bottles and amber glass containers, have remained the company’s mainstay, as the business has transformed.

In mid-2011, Vivant decided to adjust its sales structure, to sell, for the first time, to online retailers like DermStore.com, SkinCareRX.com and amazon.com, as well as to make its products available on its own website, vivantskincare.com. It was a major change in course after more than 20 years of having its products sold only at spas and doctors’ offices.

“So now, we’re a mix of wholesale to skin care professionals and Internet retailers, and we’re selling directly to consumers through our own website,” Fulton-Kendrick said.

Mike Nelson, marketing manager at SkinCareRx.com, said Vivant, which it has sold since November, has “done very well for a new brand to our site,” surpassing some brands that have been on its site for over a year. He declined to provide figures.

SkinCareRX took on only 5 percent of the brands that approached it last year, he said, and had undertaken a rigorous review of Vivant.

“They have a good loyalty base and get great reviews,” Nelson said.

Along with changes in its sales system, in January 2012, Vivant moved from Medley to Miami Lakes, doubling its space to 11,000 square feet to accommodate manufacturing, which it brought in house to reduce costs. It had outsourced manufacturing to a lab in Costa Mesa, Calif., that it had previously owned and later sold.

Inside its warehouse space in a commercial business complex, a small staff handles manufacturing, shipping and packaging. All orders are taken by customer service and fulfilled onsite. A room used as an educational center allows vendors and aestheticians to learn about the products.

Martina Echeveria, international trade specialist at the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Miami U.S. Export Assistance Center, who is helping Vivant get a distributor in the Dominican Republic, said she recently nominated the company for a South Florida Manufacturer of the Year award. The awards are given by the South Florida Manufacturers Association.

“Their products are good and 100 percent U.S. made,” she said.

At Vivant’s offices, a lab area is used by Dr. Fulton for research and development. He also maintains a practice at Flores Dermatology in South Miami.

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As world of gadgets grows, online industry tunes in to video ads

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Internet video ads, long a sideshow in the online advertising market, are gaining in importance to marketers and Web publishers as they look to capitalize on consumers’ changing viewing habits and tap a $ 70 billion television market.

The ever-expanding array of gadgets that display online video, from tablets to Internet-connected TVs and DVD players, along with technology such as social media that facilitates distribution, has spurred new interest.

The growing trend means websites like Google Inc’s YouTube, Yahoo , AOL and Hulu have a better shot at tapping the mother lode of television advertising budgets, though video ads have a long way to go before they become as dominant a part of the marketing landscape as TV ads.

Research firm eMarketer says video is the fastest growing form of online advertising, with spending increasing 46 percent last year, and outpacing popular formats such as search ads and display ads.

Google does not break out financial results for its YouTube business, but CEO Larry Page said on Tuesday that spending among YouTube’s top 100 advertisers increased by more than 50 percent in 2012 compared with the year before.

There have been media reports that Facebook is developing a video ad service, and analysts will likely be looking for answers on that avenue when the social networking giant delivers its quarterly results on Wednesday.

At Yahoo, “one of our highest priorities was to create more online video experiences, because that’s where the demand is for advertising,” said Tim Morse, the former Yahoo finance chief who became CFO of video advertising technology company Adap.TV this month.

Advertisers are increasingly fond of video ads, Morse said, because of the similarities to TV.

“It’s the closest to what they’ve had offline. They’re looking for the same kind of medium where they can connect with consumers,” he told Reuters.

TURNING POINT

Chevrolet has been running online video ads for several years, but significantly ramped up its activities and investment in 2012, said Carolin Probst-Iyer, the manager of digital consumer engagement for the General Motors division.

“Last year was a bit of a turning point,” she said, as Chevrolet put greater emphasis on creating original video ads and looking for new ways to distribute spots, rather than simply running existing TV ads on YouTube and TV network websites.

One recent ad for the buzz-worthy new Corvette Stingray was viewed more times on mobile devices than it was on PCs, she said.

For Web publishers, video ads are good business. While typical banner ad rates can generate a few dollars per thousand views, video ad rates can reach $ 20 per thousand views, said eMarketer’s David Hallerman.

“All of the Internet advertising to date has come from print sources,” such as newspapers, magazines and yellow pages, said RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney.

“We’re are at a point where television ad budgets are likely to come online.”

The explosion of new screens such as smartphones and tablets greatly increases the venues where consumers can watch video, whether they’re at their desks or on a bus. And social networking, which makes it easy for users to share favorite videos, has given marketers added incentive to produce video ads that can gain additional exposure by tapping into the social slipstream.

YouTube’s head of industry development, Suzie Reider, said marketers are increasingly developing ads that are tailored for specific audiences, making it more likely that Web surfers will actually watch them.

“We’re living in a day and age where nobody has to watch an ad that they don’t want to watch,” said Reider. “You can skip them on the Web, you can skip them on TV.”

To make its website more appealing to advertisers, YouTube has helped create hundreds of “premium channels” featuring professionally produced video as opposed to the amateur clips YouTube is famous for. And it’s developed a type of video ad that users can skip after five seconds – advertisers only pay if the ad is watched all the way through.

PRICE DEFLATION?

Despite the growth in Web video ad spending, which eMarketer estimates reached $ 2.93 billion in the United States last year, the firm said the spending still represents only about 10 percent of the broader online advertising market.

And that is a mere drop in the bucket compared with the $ 68 billion that Kantar Media estimates was spent on television advertising in 2011.

One potential constraint is the way big brands and agencies organize their marketing budgets, says Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser. Online video ads are typically funded from Web ad budgets rather than a much larger pool set aside for TV.

Analysts also note that the rich rates websites collect for video ads will decrease as more Internet sites open to ads – something that’s already happening thanks to technology that automatically pairs ads with videos on websites.

Still, many analysts and industry executives are optimistic about what they see as the bigger picture.

“The number of people watching TV seems to be stagnating or declining, and the number of people turning to the Internet for entertainment is surging,” said RBC’s Mahaney. “It almost inevitably drives these TV budgets online”

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; additional reporting by Gerry Shih; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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Silver Linings Playbook's Road to the Oscars

ET takes an inside look at critical darling, Silver Linings Playbook, which is up for a whopping eight Oscars, and is the first film in 31 years to receive Oscar nominees in all four acting categories.

Directed by David O. Russell (The Fighter, Flirting with Disaster), Silver Linings Playbook casts Bradley as Pat Solitano, a grown man living with his mother (Jacki Weaver) and father (Robert De Niro) after losing his house, job and wife -- and spending eight months in a state mental institution on a plea bargain.

Determined to rebuild his life and reunite with his wife, Pat meets a mysterious girl named Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) who has her own set of issues. She offers to help him reconnect with his wife if he'll do something very important for her in return, and as their deal plays out, silver linings begin to appear in their lives.

Watch the video to hear Bradley Cooper, who also executive produced the film, discuss his character, and to find out the unusual way that Jennifer Lawrence auditioned for her role. Silver Linings Playbook is in theaters now.

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Schools safety agent shot in Brooklyn; he's expected to survive

An off-duty school-safety agent was shot in the chest in Brooklyn tonight, sources said.

A masked man walked up to the city worker around 5:46 p.m. as the victim sat alone in his black Infiniti at 256 East 51st St. near Clarkson Avenue in East Flatbush and blasted him once, sources said.

The wounded man was rushed to Kings County Hospital. His condition was not immediately available, but first responders said they expect him to survive.

Although school-safety agents wear uniforms similar to NYPD cops and are Police Department employees, they do not carry weapons.

kconley@nypost.com

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Fed aims for a 6.5% jobless rate

Six and a half percent unemployment in America would mean almost 2.1 million more people working than today. At the rate the country has been creating new jobs each month, it would take more than a year to find work for that many people.

Keep 6.5 percent in mind this week when the Federal Reserve meets Tuesday and Wednesday to talk about its efforts to push interest rates down. The hope is that the cheap cash will spur on investment leading to job creation. After all, the central bank has promised to keep its target interest rate near zero as long as more than 6.5 percent of Americans in the workforce are without work. The Fed has put other conditions on maintaining its historically low interest rate such as low inflation, but official measures remain tame. So its job growth the Fed is looking for.

It won’t have to wait long for the latest update. On Friday the first jobs report of 2013 will be released. Hiring has been a slow grind but it has been positive.

Finding work in January, though, can be tricky. Winter weather, a hangover from the holidays and seasonal work ending can slow down hiring.

It will be months, maybe even a couple of years before the U.S. unemployment rate hits 6.5 percent. There is nothing magical about that number, but as long as the Federal Reserve has it in its sights, so should we.

Tom Hudson is anchor and managing editor of Nightly Business Report, produced by NBR Worldwide and distributed nationally by American Public Television. In South Florida, the show is broadcast at 7 p.m. weekdays on Channel 2. Follow him on Twitter, @HudsonNBR.

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The missing Miramar mom: a tale of love, jealousy, mystery

It was Feb. 24, girls’ night out. Best friends Vilet Torrez and Clarissa Garcia went out to the Cheesecake Factory, where they ordered drinks and split a slice of cheesecake.

They laughed and chatted and caught up on the things best friends talk about over drinks and desserts: their families, their children, their marriages.

And, yet again, Garcia advised her friend she had to leave her husband.

She was tired of hearing the stories of how Cid Torrez beat her and then swore every time afterward he would never do it again. She was sick of seeing Vilet with bruises.

“What’s it gonna take? Your death? A casket?” Garcia asked.

“Oh, my good friend, he wouldn’t do that,” Torrez said.

Torrez went missing five weeks later.

Friends, family and former co-workers of Torrez all believe her husband, Cid, is behind her disappearance. Miramar police and prosecutors agreed and — despite the lack of a body, or an eyewitness, or a weapon — charged the 39-year-old with murder. Such murder charges don’t always stick, as evidenced by the just-completed murder trial of Geralyn Wilson, foster mother of Rilya Wilson. It was another case of no body, no witnesses, no murder weapon. Geralyn Wilson was convicted of lesser charges.

Cid’s family expressed disbelief that he would harm, much less kill and dispose of, the mother of his three children, although they acknowledged the marriage had turned toxic.

Cid Torrez has pleaded not guilty and awaits trial in a Broward jail.

A NEW COUNTRY

Vilet’s disappearance — and presumed death — brought a sudden and nightmarish end to a life that, from the outside, looked like a South Florida variation of the American dream, the kind of success story that reaffirms the belief that anybody with enough determination can flourish in the United States.

Born Vilet Blanco, she came with her family from Nicaragua to Hialeah when she was 15. None of them spoke English. Vilet learned the language at warp speed and excelled enough at Miami Springs Senior High School to get several college scholarships.

Vilet and Cid, also from Nicaragua, started going out during her junior year of high school and never stopped, except for a brief college breakup.

From that point on, Vilet’s world was Cid.

THE MOTHER

Vilet Torrez graduated from the University of Miami in 1997, with a major in advertising, got a job and, a year later, married Cid — on Aug. 8, 1998. It was a small ceremony in Hialeah. The honeymoon was quick, since Cid was being deployed in a matter of days for a tour that would take him to Japan, Guam, Indonesia and Australia.

Weeks later, Vilet learned she was pregnant.

When Cid came back to the United States, he was sent to North Carolina, joined by his wife and their first-born, a daughter also named Vilet.

In about a year, Cid had left the Marines and they were back in South Florida, living in the Blanco family home in Hialeah.

They fought frequently, Vilet’s family recalled, and Cid sometimes ended up sleeping in the car. But Vilet had seen her parents separation when she was a child and was determined not to do the same.

“I am not going to let him go like you did with my dad,” Vilet told her mother, Gladys Blanco.

THE COWORKER

Upon the family’s return, the boyfriend of Vilet’s sister Nayiva helped Vilet get a job where he had worked. Soon he started telling Nayiva stories he was hearing from former coworkers about how Cid would show up at work, unannounced, just checking in on his wife.

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