Three Babson Finalists In BusinessWeek Young Entrepreneur Competition

Three Babson businesses — Emergent Energy Group, IdeaPaint, and VIVO Natural Products — have been named finalists in BusinessWeek’s America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs Competition.

Emergent Energy Group, cofounded by Chris Jacobs while an undergraduate student, plans, designs, and facilitates the advancement of community-based alternative energy projects and sustainable ventures. To learn more, read the BusinessWeek profile or visit Emergent’s Web site at http://emergentgroup.com.

IdeaPaint, established by John Goscha, Jeff Avallon, and Morgen Newman while they were undergraduate students living in Babson’s E-Tower, turns virtually anything you can paint into a dry-erase surface. For more information, read the BusinessWeek profile or visit IdeaPaint’s Web site at www.ideapaint.com.

VIVO Natural Products, established by Michael Talve ’07, has the mission of creating fine bar soaps from high quality, natural ingredients, which in turn produce wonderful showering experiences. For more, read the BusinessWeek profile or visit VIVO’s Web site at www.vivonaturalproducts.com.

Please vote for your favorite Babson business at http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/10/1009_entrepreneurs_25_and_under/27.htm. Voting ends on November 2. BusinessWeek will announce the top vote-getters on the Small Business channel on November 9.

This is BusinessWeek’s fifth annual search to find the country's most promising young entrepreneurs. To be considered, founders had to be 25 or under when the nomination form was posted in late June.