On January 13, 2009, Carol Bartz became CEO of Yahoo! One of her first acts was to inform her staff that she would “drop-kick to fucking Mars” anyone who leaked company secrets. Since then she’s been trying to return Yahoo! to dominance, deliberately destroying everyone’s impression of what it actually does. After a deal with Microsoft, Yahoo! is transforming from a search engine to a Web portal — one that, if Bartz is right, will attract new users (and new revenue) by trimming unwieldy Web searches down to personalized streams of information. She has her skeptics. But Bartz is right a lot, and most CEOs of her caliber don’t earn their pay by luck. Neither do cocktail waitresses, and Bartz was once one of those, too. She knows when to give someone a “bunny dip.” And she knows when someone needs a good drop-kicking.

The Esquire piece is a great insight into one of the most impressive UW grads out there in the business world right now.  If you haven’t heard about her story, check it out.

One of the coolest entrepreneur resources in Madison is the Burrill Business Plan Competition, a competition put on by the Wisconsin School of Business. The Burrill invites teams from all across the UW campus to write a business plan and make a presentation to a top notch judges panel. Its a great experience for entrepreneurs who are just getting their start.

This year’s competition was one of the best and two of our own took home top prizes. Thomas Carmona of CityDictionary.com took the $10,000 first prize, while Corey Capasso of Add The Flavor took the $7,000 second prize.  Congrats to both Thomas and Corey!