Carsala owes much of its progress to the Haas MBA program. The business school helped the founders find internships before they began their own venture, and the classes taught them how to turn an idea into a business. In particular they noted a course on Entrepreneurship, and another on Venture Capital and Equity.

Haas also introduced them to the UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition, where they ended as a finalist. As they advanced through rounds of the competition, their business plan became more structured and polished, and they got more and more attention. The people they met along the way were also very valuable – OATV and Labrador Ventures, and a Cal alum who was their lead investor.

Carsala was started in the summer of 2008, and closed their first round of funding that August. They have moved out of the Incubator and now have their own office in Berkeley.

Based on current and past public market valuations and impact on the current technology landscape, the top 3 most successful startups by Berkeley students and faculty are Apple Computer, Sun Microsystems (Yes, Berkeley can also take credit), and Inktomi.

Apple Computer

While pursuing his B.S. in Computer Science Steve Wozniak was working with Steve Jobs to fill orders for low cost personal computers. In 1967, in his third year at Berkeley, Wozniak decided to leave to found Apple Computer with Steve Jobs. The company IPO’d in December 1980, generating more money than any company since Ford in 1956. Although Wozniak left the company in 1987 he remains on the payroll and continues to be a motivation to thousands of Apple engineers. Under the leadership of Steve Jobs, Apple has grown to revenues of $32.5 billion and a market cap of $88 billion.

Sun Microsystems

Although Stanford gets most of the credit for Stanford University Network (Sun), one of the critical founders was Berkeley Masters student Bill Joy. After graduating in 1982 with a masters degree in computer science, Joy joined Sun as a founder. Joy made significant contributions to the Berkeley UNIX OS, the Java programming language, and JXTA. Sun has reached $13 billion in revenues and a $3.83 billion market cap.

Inktomi Corporation

Berkeley CS professor Eric Brewer and grad student Paul Gauthier started Inktomi in 1996 based on the success of the Berkeley search engine. They achieved great success as the engine behind search for portals like Yahoo. They reached a market cap of over $30 billion in 2000 until Yahoo dropped them for Google as the search provider. Inktomi was behind a series of high profile acquisitions including that of fellow Berkeley startup Fast Forward Networks (2000, $1.3bn). Some have even guessed that Microsoft’s $45 billion offer to acquire Yahoo in 2008 was motivated to acquire Inktomi assets integrated with Yahoo search. In 2003, after the dot-com crash, Inktomi sold to Yahoo for $235 million.

Some other companies we may cover another time:

Fast Forward Networks- Acquired by Inktomi in 2000 for $1.3bn
Cadence Design Systems- Public company; market cap- $1bn
Illustra- Acquired by Informix in 1996 for $400m
Matrix Semiconductors- Acquired by SanDisk in 2005 for $250m
LGC Wireless- Acquired by ADC in 2007 for $169m
Relational Technology Incorporated (RTI)- Aquired by ASK Corp. in 2000 for $110m
Keyhole- Acquired by Google in 2004 for an undisclosed price
Accept.com- Acquired by Amazon for an undisclosed price

If there is a company missing from this list, please feel free to send me a note.

InternshipIN tackles (obviously) the internship market. No other company is directly targeting this area, which is surprising given that so many college students are constantly on the hunt for an internship. They aim to focus on smaller companies, beginning with startups and eventually spreading to the non-profit sector – basically any company without the resources to recruit interns like the bigger players do.

InternshipIN was bootstrapped with only $500 and will soon be making money. They plan on charging a monthly fee to companies and allowing them to contact a certain number of students. The service will be free for students.

This is a great tool for startups as well as students. It’s difficult for a small company with little money to spend the time and manpower to recruit interns the traditional way, via expensive career fairs or recruitment dinners. Using a site like InternshipIN saves time, money, and allows startups to escape competition with big companies and their perks.

If you have or work for a startup around Berkeley and would like us to profile you, let us know!

I spoke with Chris and Jake of Life360 (winner of the Android Developer Challenge), both Berkeley alumni. They are part of the Lester Center Incubator. The team is comprised of 8 full-time and 5 part-time employees, mostly Cal alums. They have half a million dollars in angel funding and are on track to officially launch in March 2009.

The company is founded on the idea that in an emergency, you want to know where your family is. Their solution is all-encompassing: voice, text, and web channels; a hardware device, and an identification card or wristband for kids or the elderly (non-cell phone generations).

Current features include: GPS tracker and curfew timer (for teenagers), emergency messaging, and a ‘panic button’ that alerts family members with one click if you’re in trouble. They have a mobile application, but their software is designed to work from any phone with SMS, regardless of data capability. There is also a hotline, which of course can be dialed from any phone.

They plan on expanding with an API for third-party developers, a medical record repository, and an emergency planner (with more features coming soon!).

Revenue is based on a subscription model. Families can sign up for monthly subscriptions and enable the features they want, suiting the specific needs of every family.

Life360 is looking for engineering interns, particularly if you’re familiar with PHP, Java, Objective-C, the standard LAMP stack, or the cakePHP framework. If you’re interested, contact Chris.