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Richard Feldman wants opinions, and on Thursday he won $55,000 in funding to help collect them.

Feldman, who is pursuing a computer science undergraduate degree and a master’s degree in business administration at Washington University, earned the top spot in the annual Olin Cup competition. He won for his company IsThatOneGood LLC and www.itog.com, a website that lets users rate movies, books, restaurants and other products and also gives those users recommendations.

The recognition comes with $50,000 in seed-stage funding, which must be repaid as stock in the firm or as debt. Feldman, 22, also received a $5,000 grant for being a student entrepreneur.

Organized by Washington University’s Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, the Olin Cup competition honors startup companies. It’s open to the public, but at least one member of a company’s team must be a Washington University student, faculty member or alumnus. Winners were announced during a ceremony Thursday.

Raising money is a priority for startups and their owners. But Fred Flegel, who has judged the Olin Cup for about 10 years, said the competition is about more than the money. The companies get exposure and credibility that could lead to more funding from local venture capital funds and other investment groups.

He said Feldman’s team won because it showed dedication and had a solid business plan.

"They actually have this in operation," said Flegel, managing partner of accounting firm Lopata, Flegel & Co get a free credit report. LLP in Town and Country. "They’ve continued updating their business model."

The website is free for users, and revenue comes from advertisers. Feldman, who plans to work on the venture full time after graduation in May, said his parents have invested $70,000 in the company. He is looking for another $400,000 for salaries, servers and promotional marketing, and said the award money will be used for some of those expenses.

"It’s a real load off to know we’ve got money in the bank," said Feldman, who added that the company’s funding — until Thursday — was set to run out in May.

Washington University MBA student Arash Sabet and friend Keith Cronin, a doctoral student in Nashville, Tenn., were Olin Cup runners-up. They collected $20,000 in seed-stage funding for their Medi-bite product, a medical device that helps rehabilitate patients with jaw joint problems like TMJ disorder.

Sabet, 26, said he and Cronin need $400,000 to finalize the design and patent the technology. He added that they haven’t decided on a product price or how they’ll use the $20,000.

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Bloomberg News is reporting that billionaire investor Carl Icahn has proposed that Greenbrier Cos., the biggest U.S. railroad-flatcar maker, hold talks on a possible tie-up with his American Railcar Industries Inc., which is based in St. Charles.

Icahn, American Railcar’s majority holder, didn’t make an offer or suggest the structure of any combination, according to a U.S. regulatory filing today. He bought a 9.5 percent stake in Lake Oswego, Oregon-based Greenbrier, the filing showed.

Greenbrier jumped $4.19, or 20 percent, to $24.95 at 12:20 p.m payday loans. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Earlier, the shares touched $25.73 for the biggest intraday gain since the shares began trading in July 1994. American Railcar jumped $3, or 17 percent, to $20.68 in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading. It went public in 2006.

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Amazon.com Inc. said its fourth-quarter profit more than doubled, helped by fast-growing international sales.

The Web retailer also issued better-than-expected guidance and appeared unconcerned about a possible recession.

Amazon’s earnings in the crucial holiday quarter climbed to $207 million, or 48 cents per share, from $98 million, or 23 cents per share, in the same period last year payday advance low fees.

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Manufacturing provides many Canadians with good jobs and the opportunity to develop high skills. Yet today, manufacturing is at risk. Several hundred thousand jobs have disappeared in recent years and things could get much worse. There are two reasons for this.

One is the increasing possibility of a difficult U.S. recession combined with a high dollar, which poses a serious threat to many small and mid-size manufacturers dependent on the U.S. market.

So here the question is what can federal and provincial governments do to help sustain manufacturing companies during what could be a long and deep U.S. slowdown?

The second challenge, which is more troubling, is the urgent need to adjust to deep structural changes in the world economy. Advances in technology and an intensifying race to bring new technologies to market is one dimension. Another is the entry of new competitors with abundant low-cost yet skilled workers, such as China and India, into the global economy.

New business models are emerging, based on global supply chains in which multinational corporations organize production by sourcing parts and components from companies around the world, based either on high-quality leading-edge technology or low costs. Canadian manufacturers can only compete with high-quality, leading-edge technologies.

While responding to the first challenge of surviving a recession is the current headline issue, the more troubling and pervasive challenge of structural change in response to new forms of competition is the more fundamental.

There is a temptation to write manufacturing off on the grounds that our natural resources and services industries can assure a healthy economy for all. But this would be a huge mistake.

Manufacturing does matter. It is easy to forget how pervasive manufactured products are in our lives. From food, clothing, shoes, furniture and building materials to pharmaceuticals, automobiles, aircraft, computers, TV sets, BlackBerries, chemicals, plastics and, for that matter, newspapers.

Today, many manufactured products have a high content of what we call intangibles – design, software, engineering, patents, marketing expertise, research and development bad credit payday loan. It is these activities that generate many of the good jobs in manufacturing. But for intangibles to have value, there ultimately has to be a manufactured product.

There’s also a tendency to see manufacturing as increasingly a developing world activity. While it is true that many products can be made more cheaply in the developing world, about 75 per cent of global manufacturing still takes place in the advanced economies, compared to about 10 per cent in China. And much of what China exports consists of high-value parts and components made in more advanced economies but assembled in China into a final product.

So it’s possible to have a healthy manufacturing industry in a high-cost country like Canada if it produces high-quality products.

Finally, there’s a tendency to overlook the reality that manufacturing affects all provinces. While Ontario is the centre of Canadian manufacturing, all provinces have manufacturing industries.

But a strategy to ensure a healthy manufacturing industry in Canada depends on close co-operation between governments at all levels.

For example, provinces want to help their smaller manufacturers participate in global supply chains. Federal foreign trade offices and the Export Development Corp. have roles to play. Provinces want to free up cash flow in businesses by allowing companies with unused investment tax credits to turn them into cash. Ottawa has to change its tax rules to do this.

Provinces want to see strategic investments to develop industry clusters and target promising technologies, as was possible under the old Technology Partnerships program. Ottawa has to overcome its resistance to direct support programs.

Unless we can get the federal and provincial governments aligned in support of an innovative manufacturing industry with good jobs, Canada will become a country with diminished prospects. Manufacturing matters.

David Crane’s column on Global Issues appears Sundays. He can be reached at crane@interlog.com.

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