While Southern Californians watched helplessly as forest fires consumed 3,640 homes in October 2003, Irene Rhodes grew fiercely determined to develop a product she had been thinking about for 20 years. This year, Ms.Rhodes won the First Annual USC University-wide Business Plan Competition. Her winning entry is FOAMSAFE system, a patent-pending exterior fire protection system that automatically dispenses environmentally safe foam when a property is threatened by fire. Consumer Fire Products, the company that she and her husband, Ralph, founded, received a $25,000 cash prize and six months of free rent in the Business Technology Center in Altadena, a Los Angeles County-sponsored high-tech incubation center located north of Pasadena.

Ms. Rhodes was fighting fires in rural Oregon in the 1980’s when she became intrigued by the business possibilities of the fire-retarding foam that she sprayed from her firetruck. The years passed. She married, had two daughters, founded a successful commercial landscaping and irrigation company and graduated with highest honors from a community college in Eugene. She and her husband, Ralph, also a firefighter, continued to debate the idea of business tied to fire-retardant foam.

“Finally, I said if we were serious, I needed some book smarts. I already had streets smarts,” comments Ms.Rhodes. Leaving her husband in charge of their landscaping company, she and her two young daughters moved to Los Angeles,where she enrolled as a junior in USC Marshall School of Business in the fall of 2004.

Ms. Rhodes says her company’s product is a realistic solution to a shortage of trained firefighters. “The problem is that people are moving to rural areas and businesses have followed. But putting out fires in homes and commercial buildings is much more complex than fighting a wildfire, and the reality is, firefighters won’t
be there,”Ms.Rhodes comments. Some 39 teams submitted plans to preliminary reviewers including Bill Zimmerman, Andy Thornburg and Steve Reich, members of the Pasadena Angels, a group of more than 80 entrepreneurial investors., Richard Koffler, president of Los Angeles Venture Associates (LAVA) and a member of Tech Coast Angels, the largest angel investors network in the U.S., and Jim Sowers, an entrepreneur and a member of the Greif Center Advisory Council.

The runner-up was a team of four USC Marshall graduate students including, Ryan Armstrong, James Frinier,
Fernando Rivas and Along Schwartz. They joined with USC Marshall alumnus Tim Mournian, whose company, EnviroMill, uses a patented extrusion technology to reduce tires to a valuable product, called ultra-fine crumb, at a third of the cost of virgin rubber.

The Greif Center has sponsored business plan competitions for years, but this was the first contest with a large cash prize. “We decided to put our money where our mouth was,” said Kathleen Allen, a professor at the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and director of the Center for Technology Commercialization, both of which sponsored the competition. Additional funds were contributed by six graduates of the entrepreneurship program: Torin Pavia, Joe Kaplan, Steve Robbins, Scott Adelson, Marshall Lerner and Blair Salisbury.

Judges eliminated teams over the next four months until only five remained. These finalists were judged by
Lloyd Greif, a boutique investment banker, John Dilts, president of Kieretsu Forum, Richard Morganstern, a member of Tech Coast Angels, Jonathan Goody of Bay Equity Real Estate Acquisitions and Andrea Belz, Dr. Kevin Scanlon and Davis Thompson, three members of the Pasadena Angels. ]

Other business schools sponsor competitions, but USC Marshall’s is the only one that requires the winner to
begin operations within six months of winning, which is why Ms. Rhodes has already started marketing FOAMSAFE. She’s talking to fire prevention officials from the Los Padres National Forest who have expressed interest and a fire safety organization may highlight news of FOAMSAFE in its 55,000-circulation newsletter. Ms. Rhodes had planned to meet with a Forest Service in chief of the Trinity National Forest.

“She wants one of our units for her new log home. “It might be my first sale,” says Ms.Rhodes.