The Rise of Microlution
By Dean Hopkins

In March 2005, Andrew Honegger and Andy Phillip won the Technology Entrepreneur Center’s annual V. Dale Cozad Business Plan Competition (CBPC). The CBPC is designed to encourage students, researchers, and community members to create new sustainable businesses in the Champaign-Urbana area. In order to compete, entrepreneurial teams must create a business plan on a topic of their choice. This idea must be centered on one of three divisions: commercial venture division, social venture division, or green venture division.

Honegger and Phillip entered their Microlution Inc. business plan in the commercial venture division. According to Honegger, this idea was sparked while he and Phillip completed their graduate research at Illinois. They wanted to develop small, high precision machine tools that can be used for making very small parts.
Honegger and Phillip also found numerous benefits by entering the competition. The experience they gained helped the team prepare to pitch the business plan to future investors. “Putting together a business plan is a process that requires a team to answer many of the important unknowns about a new business venture,” Honegger said. “The Cozad Competition not only forced us to generate answers to these questions, but also defend our answers and assumptions to judges and ultimately potential investors.”

After winning the competition, Honegger and Phillip took several steps to jumpstart their business, Microlution. They used the $20,000 that they won to purchase several expensive pieces of equipment needed for their company. In addition to the monetary prize, legal services were also donated to the team in an effort to aid in the formation of their company. These services proved to be valuable as they allowed Honegger and Phillip to file a patent application and perform other legal reviews for Microlution.

Following the CBPC, the team refined its business plan and pitch, as well as their marketable product. They also entered a number of other business competitions on both the regional and national level. These competitions include the Rice University Business Plan Competition and the Southern Angels Business Plan Contest at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC). The Microlution team placed tenth at Rice University and third at SIUC.
Honegger and Phillip also worked with several advisors at Illinois including College of Engineering professors, Brian Lilly, Richard Devor and Shiv Kapoor. These experts provided real world expertise about the business world.

When asked how this mentoring helped, Honegger stated, “They all helped us out in different ways, from preparing the actual business plan to evaluating the technical feasibility of the idea. New entrepreneurs typically lack experience in nearly every aspect of starting a business, so it is important to build a strong network of advisors.”

Almost three years later, Honegger and Phillip are still working together and continuing to expand Microlution. Phillip is the president of Microlution and Honegger serves as the vice president.

Microlution is a “cutting edge company committed toward delivering an improved micro-machining solution across a wide array of industries.” The company’s most recent development includes the Microlution 310-S. This product features high-precision components used to produce prototypes and low volume machine parts. Honegger and Phillip continue to work hard, implementing the business plan that made Microlution the winner of the 2005 V. Dale Cozad Business Plan Competition.