Trisha Kennealy presents her idea of a web startup to help families prepare wholesome meals at the kickoff of the HBS alumni Venture Contest.

Last night marked the start of Harvard Business School’s first Alumni New Ventures Contest, which will award $25,000 cash to one team of entrepreneurs in April.

Over sixty participants packed Hawes Lecture Hall for the initial meeting, where they learned that the contest requires teams to propose novel start-up companies and compete to prove their idea is the best. Teams must include at least one Harvard Business School alum.

The three-hour event began with a brief period of networking time, followed by a panel discussion on the trials of starting new ventures. Panelists included Keith W. Cooper ’83, President and Chief Operating Officer of Carbonite, an online file protection service; Graham Lubie, co-founder of Celarix, an early leader in internet software; and Furqan Nazeeri, founder of several ventures including Pivot, Inc., an instant messaging platform for Wall Street traders.

Panelists expressed optimism in the face of the business challenges posed by the economic crisis.

Nazeeri said it was a “great time for recruiting talent, and vendor pricing will be as low as it will ever be.”

He added that it would be hard to raise capital. Cooper, while not discouraging new business efforts, said that now was “not a good time for new ideas.”

“You should make something that has already been done easier, or cheaper, or faster,” he said.

Dubie downplayed the influence of financial climates in general.

“There’s never a good time or a bad time,” he said. “It’s not so much a matter of the climate as it is of the need.”

Further panel discussion ran the gamut from start-up advice and prospects to hiring practices to business regulation legislation to past business successes and failures.

Following the panel, contest organizers outlined the competition and invited competitors to start pitching.

Each start-up pitch was limited to one minute, in which time presenters had to state their business vision and what sort of investment and management they would require. The pitches catered to a variety of needs. Suggestions ranged from a Web site offering virtual career experiences, to a device that would automatically alert a call center when the elderly wearer falls, to online video cooking technique demonstrations.