how to judge a business plan competition

New Business Concepts Pitch Guidelines | Social Ventures Pitch Guidelines | Ten Questions That You Should Try To Answer  

New Business Concepts Pitch Guidelines

New Business Concepts will be evaluated on the following judging criteria.  

• How well was the concept explained?
• How reasonable, sustainable, and scalable is the new concept?
• Is there a genuine need for the product or service?
• How well was the target market defined?
• What is the size and growth of the market?
• What is the consumers' willingness to pay for the product/service?
• Is the description clear?
• Is the product feasible?
• How easily it can be duplicated?
• Is there a presence of potential substitutes for the product?
• Have the current and potential competitors, competitive response, and analysis of strengths and weaknesses been adequately defined?
• How realistically defined is the marketing plan?
• Does the plan adequately address price, product, place, and promotion?
• Are resources sufficiently allocated for marketing?
• What is the likelihood of securing resources required for production?
• Is there an ability to operate competitively and grow?
• Does the team exhibit the experience and skills required for operation?
• What is the depth and breadth of the team's capabilities?
• Does the team demonstrate the ability to grow with the organization and attract new talent?
• How compelling is the business model?
• Have the resources required for the venture been addressed?
• Has the team clearly and adequately presented a breakeven analysis?
• How reasonable are the financial projections?
• Are there prospects for long-term profitability?
• Did the entrepreneurial team explain funding?
• Were offerings to investors and anticipated returns clearly explained?
• Did the team calculate a realistic valuation?
• How feasible is the exit strategy?
• Did the presenter(s) engage the audience and hold their attention?
• Did the presenter(s) appear to speak with confidence authority?
• Were visual aids (i.e. PowerPoint® slides) clear and valuable?
• Was the pitch exciting and compelling?
• How efficiently did the team allot their time?

Social Venture Pitch Guidelines

Social Ventures will be evaluated on the following judging criteria.  

• Does the proposed venture address a significant and critical social problem?
• Does the proposed venture adequately describe the problem it hopes to address and have defined parameters within which it plans to operate?
• Does the entrepreneurial team possess the skills and experience required to translate the plan into action?
• Can they demonstrated the passion, commitment, and perseverance required to overcome inevitable obstacles?
• Is the team comprised of individuals committed to ethical standards?
• Does the proposal approach the social problem in an innovative, exciting, and dynamic way?
• Does the initiative aspire towards clear, realistic and achievable goals, while thinking big?
• Can it be implemented effectively?
• Are there clear and coherent schedules, milestones, objectives, and financial plans?
• Has adequate attention been given to the way in which the product or service is to be produced and/or delivered?
• Do they have, or can likely secure, the resources required for production?
• Will they be able to operate competitively and grow?
• Does the proposed venture include adequate strategies for fundraising and income generation?
• Does it consider the different dimensions of financial and social sustainability in a conscientious manner?
• How will the implementation of this social venture benefit the community and the multiple stakeholders involved?
• Is there the potential for significant social impact and engagement of the broader community?

* While there is some debate regarding the precise definition of a social venture, and what exactly differentiates it from a traditional for profit business, the Selection Committee and Judging Panel will use the following criteria:

• PRIMARY MISSION - is the organization's primary purpose to serve its owners (New Business Concept) or society (Social Venture)
• PRIMARY MEASURE OF SUCCESS - does the organization measure its success primarily by profitability (New Business Concept) or positive social change (Social Venture)

Ten Questions That You Should Try To Answer

Whether pitching a New Business Concept or a Social Venture, try to address the following ten big questions as completely as possible. Remember, you should not simply talk about a general idea (those are "a dime a dozen"), rather, try to present a concise concept with a clear economic model, convincing everyone that you can actually make it happen.

• 1. What's the PROBLEM?
• 2. What's your SOLUTION?
• 3. How large is the MARKET?
• 4. Who is the COMPETITION?
• 5. What makes you so SPECIAL?
• 6. What's your ECONOMIC MODEL?
• 7. How exactly will you achieve SALES?
• 8. Have you assembled a qualified TEAM?
• 9. How will you secure required RESOURCES?
• 10. What are you proposing for an INVESTMENT?

Suggested reading: The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki (Penguin 2004), especially Chapter 3, "The Art of Pitching"

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How To Win A Business Plan Contest

A well-developed business plan creates the foundation on which a successful startup will be able to establish itself, and is especially necessary when considering participation in a business plan contest or pitch event. When every factor is considered – market and industry, finance, marketing, operations, and etc. – success becomes a long-term plan as opposed to a hope for a stroke of startup luck. Along with a solid pitch and pitch deck, a business plan is a critical element in your journey to landing a successful seed funding round. Writing an  investor-ready business plan  can be difficult, but securing funding without a solid plan in place is pretty much impossible.

Once you finally get the perfect business plan written, what’s next? For those who are far enough along in their business, submitting the plan directly to investors might be a wise step. For those who aren’t quite ready to approach VCs yet, but could use a financial boost to get things going, participating in business plan contests can be a tremendous help. Not only do these competitions often provide significant rewards for the winners, but they also often draw the attention of angels, VCs, and even corporations looking to invest in or partner with the next billion-dollar startup.

Unfortunately, where there is honey there are bees – business plan contests often attract some of the brightest minds, and the higher the reward, the more competition you can expect. In this post, we’ll explore everything you need to know to find a great business plan contest, enter it with confidence, and win against other participating startups!

The Benefits of Winning A Business Plan Contest

Business plan competitions are beneficial platforms that allow entrepreneurs to showcase their idea, product, or startup to a group of judges. Often, these competitions involve pitching the idea or startup to judges over one or more rounds. Once each competing startup has presented, judges vote on which business (or businesses) will receive the offered reward.

While business plan competitions highly benefit winning startups, they offer immense benefits to investors who attend them also – access to early-stage businesses that they can invest in before others have the opportunity. Furthermore, these competitions work to even out the playing field for entrepreneurs who otherwise may not have access to investors – winning a business plan contest could be the difference between funding your business’ launch or failing before you even get the chance to begin.

The most obvious benefit of winning a business plan contest is winning the offered reward. The reward value of these contests can vary from small amounts to extremely large amounts.  For example, the Panasci Business Plan Competition by Syracuse University offers around $35,000 in total rewards, while the Rice Business Plan Competition offers over $1.2 million in seed funding to its winners and runner-ups. Winning the right competition can impact your business greatly; providing you with the  app funding  required to progress your business from the app idea phase to launch and beyond. There is something that should be considered though – some business plan competitions may come with specific conditions that must be met to receive the funding; such as headquartering the business in a certain location, offering up an equity percentage, or being involved in a startup incubator for some length of time.

High-profile angels and VCs often attend larger business plan competitions, and even participants that don’t win the contest may attract the attention of an investor. In some cases, teams that don’t win may end up with larger investments than those that the judges selected for first place. Investors aren’t always looking for the same things in a startup; your idea might not be of much interest to the judges, but may be exactly what an attending investor was looking for! These investors aren’t only good for the funds they bring – some of them may provide a critical mentorship component to your startup; helping to advise your team for greater success down the line.

Lastly, one of the least recognized but most effective benefits of participating in a business plan competition is having your business plan and startup critically reviewed by experienced judges, entrepreneurs, and investors. Even if you don’t win, the insight provided by the panel of judges will offer different perspectives regarding your startup. Ultimately, by applying this insight, you can further position your startup for success when participating in future events.

Finding The Right Business Plan Contest

The unique beauty of business plan contests is that they are relatively ubiquitous – and today, more competitions are popping up than ever before. A variety of organizations, educational institutions, and even individuals organize business plan competitions to seek out investable and fundable business ideas. In general, most business plan contests can be grouped into two categories:

• University Competitions: Many major universities organize some type of business plan contest through their business school. Eligibility may vary from contest to contest, but these contests are typically only available to those connected to the business program – students, alumni, and in some cases, even on-staff professionals. Due to these eligibility requirements, competition is generally limited – which means that participants have a much larger chance of winning when compared to contests with less regulation. Furthermore, universities know that any successful startups launched through these contests will give their business program a major boost in visibility and credibility. As a result, universities often go a step above to support winners of these programs – providing additional on-campus resources or even access to alumni professionals that can help them advance their businesses.
• Sponsored Contests: Sponsored business plans are those that are planned and hosted by an organization, corporation, individual or other entity. Specifically, these organizers ‘sponsor’ the competition – organizing the event, involving investors and judges, and securing rewards to incentivize winners and participants. Sometimes, these competitions may be sponsored by companies within a specific sector such as biotech, healthcare, urban transit, architecture, and etc.; while other times they may be part of a larger  startup incubator  or accelerator program.  

Business plan and  pitch deck  competitions take place several times each year in most major cities – and even in many less popular upcoming startup regions. If you are a student or alumni, check with your university to see if they have a business plan competition in place – if not, maybe you can help them organize one! For those who are not eligible to join a university-sponsored competition, a simple Google search will provide you with several options. Search for “industry name + business plan contest” or “city + business plan contest” to see what upcoming business plan contest events you may be eligible to participate in.

Winning Big At Your First Business Plan Contest

Participating in a business plan contest can be extremely valuable, but the real goal is to win – and to win big! The key to winning a business plan competition of any type is to know what the judges are looking for and to position your startup, business plan, and pitch to exceed their expectations.

Judging The Judges

In general, whether you win a business plan contest or not will hinge upon how your business idea is perceived by the panel of judges, and how they perceive you as an entrepreneur and presenter. It is worth noting that judges often come from various backgrounds with varied experiences; what may be a top consideration for one judge may make little difference to another. However, most judges compare businesses on at least the following three factors:

• Originality: Successful business ideas need to be original in nature and able to improve upon an existing solution, solve a wide-scale problem, or effectively meet the current market demand. Businesses that simply spin-off from other successful ideas are not looked upon favorably by judges or investors – since they usually have little advantage to compete against already established players. To win a business plan contest, it is essential that your idea is fresh, scalable, sustainable and eventually, profitable.
• Ability To Generate Profit: Even the most creative ideas need to be able to turn a profit at some point. Understandably, most investors aren’t interested in funding businesses that won’t provide them with a return in the long-run. In order to gain interest in your business during a contest, your business plan should show exactly how your business will provide a return for investors in the long-term. While some investors may be interested in other aspects of a business, such as their social consciousness or involvement, the majority of investors are looking for opportunities to grow their portfolio by investing in businesses that are capable of generating strong profits.
• Effective Presentation : It’s not always the best idea that wins a business plan competition. A perfect business plan and an exciting idea means very little if an entrepreneur can not properly convey their message during their presentation. In most contests, participants are given a set time limit (such as 10 minutes) to present – and expressing all the necessary information within this time period can be rather difficult. Judges look for confident entrepreneurs who can articulate their business enough to convey the efficacy and scalability of their idea properly. The knowledge an entrepreneur needs to possess doesn’t end with just the text presented in their business plan or  pitch deck . Most often, there is a Q&A portion during these events in which the entrepreneur will be required to answer specific questions by judges and investors. The inability to answer these questions properly and confidently can quickly dissuade an investor from investing, or can cause a judge to give a lower score than they would have otherwise.

Preparing For Business Plan Contest Success

Success at these events is often linked to how well an entrepreneur has prepared themselves beforehand. One thing is certain – your competitors will be prepared; and if you aren’t, it will be embarrassingly noticeable. Unfortunately, in a business plan contest, there is no way to mask unpreparedness, especially among an audience of experienced entrepreneurs and investors. To best prepare for an upcoming business plan competition, consider the following tips:

• Sell A Strong Team:  There is one thing that’s more important than having a great business plan – having a strong and experienced team that can actually execute it. Management teams are what bind all the elements of a business plan together; combining the skills necessary to put the plan into action successfully. It is vital that your team encompasses a broad range of skills and that each team member has a specific job that will lead to the startup’s success.
• Present The Problem First : Startups that win (in contests and in general) are those that truly solve an existing problem – whether the problem is shared by a mass group of people, or by a niche audience. There’s a lot of “cool tech” out there, but even simple ideas can solve major problems. Taxis have existed for decades, but a simple idea like ride-sharing changed the way the world views personal transportation. Prepare a pitch that is challenge/solution heavy by focusing on what the problem is, why individuals experience the issue, why current solutions don’t solve the challenges effectively, and why your product/service is the right solution for the problem.
• Know Your Funding Requirements : Investors don’t want their funds to just sit in an account; they want to know that there is a plan in place to use these funds and effectively scale a startup from its current position. Have a funding plan in place – know how much funding is required, what actions need to be completed to successfully progress the business, and how each dollar will be spent to meet your launch or growth objectives.
• Be The Expert : If there is any gap in your business plan, it will be uncovered during the Q&A stage. Investors and judges are highly experienced in asking the right questions to get a full picture of your startup and to gauge whether you are well-informed about your business, market and the issue that you are attempting to solve. It’s not a good sign when an investor or judge knows more about your business than you do. Ensure that your business plan is all-encompassing with vital information, and that you can answer any necessary questions without needing to reference your business plan. During the Q&A session, you should be able to answer questions proficiently, confidently, and with enough expertise to prove that you know exactly what you are talking about.
• Listen, Learn and Apply : You can’t win every business plan or pitch contest, but you can definitely take the insights given during one competition and use it to propel your potential for success in future contests. It’s not everyday that you’re able to receive critical feedback from a group of investors, and when you can, you should take advantage of it as much as possible. Even if you don’t win anything in a business plan competition, the insights gained can be used to catapult your business to the next level.

Writing A Business Plan That Wins

Even if everything else is perfect – if you want to win, you must begin with a well-thought-out, perfectly articulated, and investor-ready business plan that tells your startup’s story in an effective manner. There are many factors to consider when writing a business plan from proper market analysis to financial projections – and any weak point in your plan will decrease your chances of winning. If you need more advice on writing a business plan, contact one of our experts today for a free business plan consultation!

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The 20 Best Business Plan Competitions to Get Funding

Business plan competitions can provide valuable feedback on your business idea or startup business plan template , in addition to providing an opportunity for funding for your business. This article will discuss what business planning competitions are, how to find them, and list the 20 most important business planning competitions.

On This Page:

What is a Business Plan Competition?

How do i find business plan competitions, 20 popular business plan competitions, tips for winning business plan competitions, other helpful business plan articles & templates.

A business plan competition is a contest between startup, early-stage, and/or growing businesses. The goal of the business plan competition is for participants to develop and submit an original idea or complete their existing business plan based on specific guidelines provided by the organization running the contest.

Companies are judged according to set criteria including creativity, feasibility, execution, and the quality of your business plan.

A quick Google search will lead you to several websites that list business planning competitions. 

Each site has a different way of organizing the business planning competitions it lists, so you’ll need to spend some time looking through each website to find opportunities that are relevant for your type of business or industry.

Finish Your Business Plan Today!

Below we’ve highlighted 20 of these popular competitions, the requirements and how to find additional information. The following list is not exhaustive; however, these popular competitions are great places to start if you’re looking for a business competition.

Rice Business Plan Competition

The Rice University Business Plan Competition is designed to help collegiate entrepreneurs by offering a real-world platform on which to present their businesses to investors, receive coaching, network with the entrepreneurial ecosystem, fine-tune their entrepreneurship plan, and learn what it takes to launch a successful business.

Who is Eligible?

Initial eligibility requirements include teams and/or entrepreneurs that:

• are student-driven, student-created and/or student-managed
• include at least two current student founders or management team members, and at least one is a current graduate degree-seeking student
• are from a college or university anywhere in the world
• have not raised more than $250,000 in equity capital
• have not generated revenue of more than $100,000 in any 12-month period
• are seeking funding or capital
• have a potentially viable investment opportunity

You can find additional  eligibility information on their website.

Where is the Competition Held?

The Rice Business Plan Competition is hosted in Houston, TX at Rice University, the Jones Graduate School of Business.

What Can You Win?

In 2021, $1.6 Million in investment, cash prizes, and in-kind prizes was awarded to the teams competing.

This two-part milestone grant funding program and pitch competition is designed to assist students with measurable goals in launching their enterprises.

Teams must be made up of at least one student from an institution of higher education in Utah and fulfill all of the following requirements:

• The founding student must be registered for a minimum of nine (9) credit hours during the semester they are participating. The credit hours must be taken as a matriculated, admitted, and degree-seeking student.
• A representative from your team must engage in each stage of Get Seeded (application process, pre-pitch, and final pitch)
• There are no restrictions regarding other team members; however, we suggest building a balanced team with a strong combination of finance, marketing, engineering, and technology skills.
• The funds awarded must be used to advance the idea.

The business plan competition will be hosted in Salt Lake City, UT at the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute at the University of Utah.

There are two grants opportunities:

• Microgrant up to $500
• Seed Grant for $501 – $1,500

Global Student Entrepreneur Awards

The Global Student Entrepreneur Awards is a worldwide business plan competition for students from all majors. The GSEA aims to empower talented young people from around the world, inspire them to create and shape business ventures, encourage entrepreneurship in higher education, and support the next generation of global leaders.

• You must be enrolled for the current academic year in a university/college as an undergraduate or graduate student at the time of application. Full-time enrollment is not required; part-time enrollment is acceptable.
• You must be the owner, founder, or controlling shareholder of your student business. Each company can be represented by only one owner/co-founder – studentpreneur.
• Your student business must have been in operation for at least six consecutive months prior to the application.
• Your business must have generated US $500 or received US $1000 in investments at the time of application.
• You should not have been one of the final round competitors from any previous year’s competition.
• The age cap for participation is 30 years of age.

You can find additional   eligibility information on their website.

Regional competitions are held in various locations worldwide over several months throughout the school year. The top four teams then compete for cash prizes during finals week at the Goldman Sachs headquarters in New York City.

At the Global Finals, students compete for a total prize package of $50,000 in cash and first place receives $25,000. All travel and lodging expenses are also covered. Second place gets US $10,000, while third place earns US $5,000. Additional prizes are handed out at the Global Finals for Social Impact, Innovation, and Lessons from the Edge.

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The collegiate entrepreneurs organization business plan competition.

The Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization Business Plan Competition (COEBPC) exists to help early-stage entrepreneurs develop their business skills, build entrepreneurial networks, and learn more about how they can transform ideas into reality. It also offers cash prizes to reward entrepreneurship, provide an opportunity for recognition of top student entrepreneurs around the world, and provide unique opportunities for networking.

To compete, you must:

• Be a currently enrolled student at an accredited institution
• Have a viable business concept or be the creator of an existing business that generates revenue.

If you are among the top three finalists of the business plan competition and successfully receive prize money, you will be required to submit a class schedule under your name for the current academic semester. Failure to do so will result in the forfeit of the prize money.

All competitions are held online. The finalist will receive a trip to the International Career Development Conference, where they have an opportunity to win additional prizes from CEO’s sponsors.

• First Place – $7,000
• Second Place – $5,000
• Third Place – $3,000
• People’s Choice Award – Collegiate Entrepreneur of the Year – $600

MIT 100k Business Plan Competition and Expo

The MIT 100K was created in 2010 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to foster entrepreneurship and innovation on campus and around the world. Consists of three distinct and increasingly intensive competitions throughout the school year: PITCH, ACCELERATE, and LAUNCH. 

• Submissions may be entered by individuals or teams.
• Each team may enter one idea.
• Each team must have at least one currently registered MIT student; if you are submitting as an individual, you must be a currently registered MIT student.
• Entries must be the original work of entrants.
• Teams must disclose any funding already received at the time of registration.

Hosted in Cambridge, MA at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology beginning in October through May of each academic year.

Top finalists will have a chance to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges at a live event for the chance to win the $5,000 Grand Prize or the $2,000 Audience Choice Award.

20 Finalists are paired with industry-specific business professionals for mentorship and business planning and a $1,000 budget for marketing and/or business development expenses.

The 10 Top Finalists participate in the Showcase and compete for the $10,000 Audience Choice Award while the 3 Top Finalists automatically advance to LAUNCH semi-finals.

The grand prize winner receives a cash prize of $100,000 and the runner-up receives $25,000.

Florida Atlantic University (FAU) Business Plan Competition

The FAU business plan competition is open to all undergraduate and graduate student entrepreneurs. The competition covers topics in the areas of information technology, entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, operations management, etc.

All undergraduate and graduate students are eligible to participate.

The business plan competition will be held at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida.

• First prize: $5,000 cash
• Second prize: $500 cash

Network of International Business Schools (NIBS) Business Plan Competition

The Network of International Business Schools (NIBS) Business Plan Competition is designed to offer an opportunity to develop your business plan with the guidance of industry experts. It provides the opportunity for you to compete against fellow entrepreneurs and explore big ideas.

• Participants must be the legal age to enter into contracts in the country of residence.
• Participants may not be employed by an organization other than their own company or business that they are launching for this competition.
• The plan should be for a new business, not an acquisition of another company.

The Network of International Business Schools (NIBS) Business Plan Competition is held in the USA.

There is a cash prize for first, second, and third place. There is also a potential for a business incubator opportunity, which would provide facilities and assistance to the winners of the competition.

Washington State University Business Plan Competition

The Washington State University Business Plan Competition has been serving students since 1979. The competition is a great opportunity for someone who is looking to get their business off the ground by gaining invaluable knowledge of running a successful business. It offers a wide range of topics and competition styles.

• Any college undergraduate, graduate, or professional degree-seeking student at Washington State University
• The company must be an early-stage venture with less than $250,000 in annual gross sales revenue.

The Washington State University Business Plan Competition is held in the Associated Students Inc. Building on the Washington State University campus which is located in Pullman, Washington.

There are a wide variety of prizes that could be won at the Washington State University Business Plan Competition. This is because the business plan competition has been serving students for over 30 years and as such, they have offered more than one type of competition. The common prize though is $1,000 which is awarded to the winner of each class. There are also awards for those who come in second place, third place, etc.

Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition

The Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition is one of the most well-known competitions in the country. They have partnered with many prestigious institutions to provide funding, mentorship, and expertise for the competition.

Education ventures with innovative solutions to educational inequity from around the world are encouraged to apply, especially those ventures founded by and serving individuals from marginalized and historically underrepresented communities.

We encourage applicants working in every conceivable educational setting–from early childhood through corporate and adult training. We also welcome both nonprofit and for-profit submissions.

The competition is held at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

All finalists receive $1,000 in cash and $5,000 in Amazon Web Services promotional credits.

Next Founders Business Plan Competition

Next Founders is a competition geared towards innovative startups with a social impact, looking to transform society by addressing key global human needs. The competition inspires and identifies energetic, optimistic entrepreneurs who are committed to achieving their vision.

Next Founders is for Canadian business owners of scalable, high-growth ventures.

Next Founders is held at the University of Toronto.

You could win up to $25,000 CAD in cash funding for your new business.

Hatch Pitch Competition

The Hatch Pitch competition is one of the most prestigious business competitions in the US. The winners of the Hatch Pitch Competition are given access to mentorship courses, discounted office space with all amenities included, incubators for startups, tailored education programs, financial counseling & more.

The competition is for companies with a business idea.

• The company’s product/service must have launched within the past 2 years, or be launched within 6 months after the Hatch Pitch event.
• Founders must retain some portion of ownership in the company.
• Received less than $5 million in funding from 3rd party investors.
• The presenter must actively participate in Hatch Pitch coaching.

The Hatch Pitch Competition is located at the Entrepreneur Space in Dallas.

The grand prize for this business plan competition is access to resources like incubators and mentorships that could prove invaluable in bringing your startup company to the next level.

TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield

The Startup Battlefield is a business plan competition that is sponsored by TechCrunch.  It awards the winner $50,000. There are two different rounds to this competition:

• First Round – 15 companies from all of the applicants that submitted their business plans for this round.
• Second Round – Two finalist companies compete against each other at TechCrunch Disrupt NY’s main stage.

At the time of the application process, companies must have a functional prototype to demo to the selection committee. In selecting final contestants, we will give preference to companies that launch some part of their product or business for the first time to the public and press through our competition. Companies that are in closed beta, private beta, limited release or generally have been flying under the radar are eligible. Hardware companies can have completed crowdfunding but those funds should have been directed to an earlier product prototype. Existing companies launching new feature sets do not qualify.

TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield is held at different locations.

The Startup Battlefield rewards the winner with $50,000. In addition, the two runner-ups get a prize of $5,000 each.

New Venture Challenge

New Venture Challenge is a competition hosted by the University of Chicago. There are 3 main categories that will be judged:

• Innovative Concept – Arguably the most important category, this focuses on uniqueness, originality, and suitability.
• Market Fit/Business Model – Are you solving an actual problem for your target market? Does your project have the potential for profit?
• Presentation – Did you make a compelling, impactful presentation? Did you clearly communicate your goals and vision to potential investors?

You can find  eligibility information on their website.

The New Venture Challenge competition is held in Chicago, IL.

Finalists are awarded:

• First Place: $50,000 equity investment and access to industry mentors and other resources.
• Second place: $25,000 equity investment and access to industry mentors and other resources.
• Third place: $15,000 equity investment and access to industry mentors and other resources.

New Venture Championship

The New Venture Championship is hosted by the University of Oregon and has been since 1987. The championship brings new ventures and innovative business ideas to life and the competition offers plan writing as a service to those who need it.

The University of Oregon New Venture Championship is open to university student teams with 2-5 members that have at least one graduate student involved with their venture. Students should be enrolled in a degree program or have finished their studies in the current academic year.

The New Venture Championship hosted by the University of Oregon is held in Eugene, Oregon.

Every business plan has a chance of winning a cash prize from $3,000 to $25,000 and additional benefits like plan coaching and office space rental.

Climatech & Energy Prize @ MIT

The Climatech & Energy Prize @ MIT is a competition that focuses on companies that are involved in the area of energy, environment, and climate change.

• Participants must be a team of two or more people.
• At least 50% of formal team members identified in the competition submission documentation must be enrolled as half-time or full-time college or university students.

The Climatech & Energy Prize @ MIT is held in Cambridge, MA.

The grand prize winner receives $100,000 and other winners may receive other monetary prizes.

Baylor Business New Venture Competition

This competition has been offered by Baylor for the last 20 years. It is designed to help aspiring entrepreneurs refine business ideas, and also gain valuable insights from judges and other entrepreneurs.

Must be a current undergraduate student at Baylor University or McLennan Community College.

The Baylor Business New Venture competition will be held at the Baylor University, Waco, TX.

The grand prize winner will receive $6,000. There are also other prizes given out to the other finalists in each category which are worth $1,500 – $2,000.

13th IOT/WT Innovation World Cup

The 13th IOT/WT Innovation World Cup was organized by the 13th IOT/WT Innovation World Cup Association. It was organized to provide a platform for innovators from all over the world to showcase their innovative ideas and projects. The competition aimed at drawing the attention of investors, venture capitalists, and potential business partners to meet with representatives from different companies and organizations in order to foster innovation.

The revolutionary Internet of Things and Wearable Technologies solutions from developers, innovative startups, scale-ups, SMEs, and researchers across the world are invited to participate. Eight different categories are available: Industrial, City, Home, Agriculture, Sports, Lifestyle, and Transport.

Only those submissions that have a functional prototype/proof of concept will advance in the competition, mere ideas will not be considered. 

The competition is held in Cleveland, Ohio also an important center for innovation and cutting-edge technology.

Win prizes worth over $500,000, connect with leading tech companies, speed up your development with advice from tech experts, join international conferences as a speaker or exhibitor, and become part of the worldwide IoT/WT Innovation World Cup® network. 

The U.Pitch is a competition that gives you a chance to share your idea and for the community of budding entrepreneurs, startup founders, CEOs, and venture capitalists to invest in your enterprise. It also provides mentoring by experts in the field.

• Currently enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program
• Applicants may compete with either an idea OR business currently in operation
• Applicants must be 30 years of age or under

The U.Pitch is held in San Francisco, California.

Enter to win a part of the $10,000 prize pool.

At the core of CodeLaunch is an annual seed accelerator competition between individuals and groups who have software technology startup ideas.

If your startup has raised money, your product is stable, you have customers, and revenue, you are probably not a fit for CodeLaunch.

CodeLaunch is based in St. Louis, Missouri. 

The “winner” may be eligible for more seed capital and business services from some additional vendors.

New York StartUP! Business Plan Competition

The New York StartUP! is a competition sponsored by the New York Public Library to help entrepreneurs from around the world to develop their business ideas.

• You must live in Manhattan, The Bronx, or Staten Island
• Your business must be in Manhattan, The Bronx, or Staten Island
• All companies must have a big idea or business model in the startup phase and have earned less than $10,000

The New York StartUP! competition is held in New York, NY.

Two winners are chosen: 

•  Grand Prize – $15,000  
•  Runner-up – $7,500  

First, determine if the competition is worth your time and money to participate.

• What is the prize money?
• Who will be on the judging panel?
• Will there be any costs associated with entering and/or presenting at the competition (e.g., travel and lodging expenses)?

Once you’ve determined the worth of the competition, then shift to focusing on the details of the competition itself.

• What are the rules of the competition?
• Are there any disqualifying factors?
• How will you be judged during the different parts of the competition?

After conducting this research, it’s best to formulate an idea or product that appeals to the judges and is something they can really get behind. Make sure you thoroughly understand the rules and what is expected from your final product. Once you know what is expected from you, you’ll be able to refine and practice your pitch to help you move through the stages of the competition.

These competitions are a fantastic method to get new business owners thinking about business possibilities, writing business plans, and dominating the competition. These contests may assist you in gaining important feedback on your business concept or plan as well as potential monetary prizes to help your business get off the ground.  

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Planning, Startups, Stories

Tim berry on business planning, starting and growing your business, and having a life in the meantime., q&a: winning business plan for a competition.

So that you know, I’m answering this question with reference to the mainstream high-profile business plan competitions I’ve judged many times, including the University of Texas’  Global Venture Labs Investment Competition , the  Rice Business Plan Competition , and the University of Oregon’s New Venture Competition . I’ve done these three at least 10 times each. I’m assuming they are typical – but I could be wrong.

Here’s how the process works, with regard to what you deliver and how decisions are made:

• You submit either a business plan or executive summary to a steering committee that selects a few dozen entrants from hundreds of submissions. These committees vary. Many still use the full plan, but trends favor just the summary. This step takes place behind the scenes, before the visible portion of the competition begins. The entries selected are called semi-finalists. They are invited to go to the competition, at the site, which usually involves a Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, most often in April or May.
• Semi-finalists are divided into groups of four to six. Semi-final judges, mostly angel investors, venture capitalists, and executives from sponsor companies, read and evaluate the full business plans before the competition starts.
• An elevator speech round happens on the Thursday, in the evening. The teams do a 60-second elevator speech for prizes and awards. Winning that competition doesn’t formally help win the main prize, but informally, it affects the judges who see it. About half the judges will attend that first evening.
• The semi-final round takes place on Friday. Teams do pitch presentations and answer questions from the judges assigned to their group, who have read their business plans. Judges choose a finalist based not on the quality of business as a potential investment. The plan matters of course, and the pitch matters as well, but the choice is ultimately about the business. Judges try to make decisions based on investment criteria, including growth potential, defensibility, scalability, and experience of the management team.
• Finalists go through the same gauntlet on Saturday. Finals judges read the plans, listen to pitches, and ask questions. They choose the winner based on the same criteria they use to choose investments.

In all of these competitions, the judges are told to choose the best plan for outside investors, not the best-written or most attractively formatted business plan. So, a mediocre business plan for a great business will always beat a great business plan for a mediocre business. What you want from your business plan is to present your business well in a way that makes it easy for judges to see what you have. Your business plan alone isn’t enough to determine your fate in these competitions, but it does provide the first impression and the detailed background. In fact, all three of the competitions I mentioned above have special prizes for the best business plan, but those awards pale in comparison to the main prizes.

Therefore, the best way to help your chances with your business plan is to make sure the judges see the critical elements that make a business attractive to investors: potential growth and scalability , proprietary technology or some other kind of barriers to entry , and an experienced management team .

Here are some related tips that might also help:

• Make sure you cover the information investors want . Tell a convincing story about the problem you solve and the solution you offer, in a way that will interest the investors and let them believe your market story. Show whatever traction you have, and as much startup experience in the management team as you can. Show how your business will defend itself (proprietary technology, trade secrets, whatever secret sauce you have) from competitors entering the market. Show how you can scale up for high growth. Show that you understand how exits might work in 3-5 years.
• Keep it brief . Be concise. Don’t show off your knowledge, push your main points forward. Bullet points are appreciated.
• Show your numbers and your key assumptions. Numbers without assumptions and underlying story are useless. Forget present value and IRR games that depend on future assumptions. Show unit economics and build forecasts bottom up, from assumptions, not ever as some small percentage of a big market.
• Use illustrations that simplify and explain. Have the detailed numbers to back them up, of course, but use bar charts and line charts and pie charts to help readers get the idea quickly.
• Check your numbers against real world benchmarks . Investors will react negatively, not positively, to unrealistic profitability projections.
• Maintain alignment between the key points you emphasize in the business plan, the pitch presentation, and the elevator speech. Ideally your business plan is like the screenplay for the pitch presentation and the elevator speech.
• Don’t be afraid to revise numbers constantly, and don’t apologize if the numbers you show today are different from what you showed yesterday. Plans are supposed to evolve constantly.

(Image: shutterstock.com)

Hi, My name is Bright Kyeremeh (Ghana) and am working on a business plan competition in my country Ghana. I have a business idea on sanitation and more importantly to establish a Plastic waste recycling plant to create jobs for the teeming youth in our country.

How do I win? What are the best strategies I can employ?

Kindly assist

Bright, thanks for asking. What I can do for you is what I’ve already done, posting my advice on this site, where you can access it any time. Please look up the ‘business plan competition’ category here on this blog, Business Plan Contests

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How to Win a Business-Plan Competition

Smart strategies can lead you to the top of your class, earn you credibility, and even reel in investments..

For serial entrepreneur Mike Cassidy , MIT's Entrepreneurship Competition wasn't just a contest. It was a catalyst for a career. In 1998, one of the two years he won the competition, he won with a plan to provide Web portals with smarter search engine technology called Direct Hit Technologies.

"In the beginning, I was trying to get these other search engines to work with me and nobody would return my calls," he says. "But when we won the MIT competition, I would send that in my intro letter." As a result, he landed a meeting with the search engine company HotBot. That led to deals with AOL, and Microsoft and Lycos. In 2000, Ask Jeeves bought Direct Hit for $532.5 million. Today, Cassidy is director of product management at Google.

Business-plan competitions have expanded into elevator pitch battles and industry-specific contests. The scale has grown, too. When a UCLA team won the 2005 Rice University Business-Plan Competition , it received a $100,000 investment prize to launch the tech company Auditude . But several venture capitalists at the competition were so impressed that they offered to invest $1.1 million.

With that kind of money and influence at stake, here is insider advice from organizers, judges, and competitors:

Winning a Business-Plan Competition: Pick a Strong Team

Megan Mitchell, senior associate director of entrepreneurial programs at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, helps students manage the Wharton Business-Plan Competition . "Make sure you look outside your closest friends for your teammates," she says. Cross disciplines. "If you're a med student, find a business student who might be interested in helping you commercialize your idea."

Internal friction and bickering can be devastating. "I wish someone had really told me, 'Forget everything else and just make sure you get the most amazing people on the team,'" Cassidy says. He recommends looking for smart, hard workers who are team players. "Find some way to have a stressful situation where you can see how your teammates are going to react." Those who can rebound easily make ideal teammates—and future colleagues.

Winning a Business-Plan Competition: Look for Turmoil

Cassidy suggests looking for a business opportunity in an area where there's some sort of turmoil, confusion, or rapid growth. "In those cases, it's a much better opportunity for a new entrant to make some headway," he says. In 2006, when the online gaming was just taking off, Cassidy sold his online gaming startup Xfire to MTV Networks for $102 million. "Also, I really encourage people to pick businesses where you can do a lot with a very small team," he adds.

That said, skip the secrecy. The more transparent you can be, the better. Mitchell says she's seen many students tempted to hold ideas close to the vest and ask everyone around them to sign non-disclosure agreements. "There are some cases where that might be necessary with very technological plays, but the reality is, particularly if you're in school, you're surrounded by people who want to help," she says. Talk to enough people and they know it's your idea.

The Rice University competition is one of the largest in the world. Brad Burke is managing director for the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, which organizes and hosts the competition. Investors are looking for teams with sustainable advantages, he says. "Hopefully if they have a technology, they have a patent on the technology."

Dig Deeper: The Best Industries for Starting a Business Right Now

Winning a Business-Plan Competition: Use Your Resources to Plan Well

Luke Behnke is a second year MBA student at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and one of the directors of the school's $100K Entrepreneurship Competition . Last year he was on a team that didn't get selected as a finalist, a stage where competitors get one-on-one support. "I wish I would have done more in advance to get to that point," he says.

Burke says that while young entrepreneurs can fill their knowledge gap by creating an advisory board. "An advisory board of 10 people, each with 25 years experience, and they are in leadership positions in their companies—that creates huge credibility," he says. If your team is creating a product for the airline industry, try to get executives from United and Boeing on the board, he added. Those trusted advisors could easily become customers, or investors.

And be sure to acknowledge your weaknesses. Teams are naturally going to be missing a key person—a marketer, an engineer. Burke says that's to be expected. However, the team does need to tell the judges something like, "As soon as we get funding, we'll be looking for a chief technology officer."

Cassidy says that once, when the judges asked his team questions they couldn't answer, the team took advantage of a break to find out. "We ran home, we did some research," he says. "We ran in at the end of the day and said, ‘Here's a typed up list of answers to the questions you asked us three hours ago.' They were just blown away."

Dig Deeper: How Business-Plan Competitions Reward Innovation

Winning a Business-Plan Competition: Focus on the Customer

One of Mike Cassidy's teammates for the MIT prize in 1991 was Krisztina "Z" Holly, who has since become vice provost for innovation at USC and executive director of the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation . Having been on both sides of a contest, she recommends getting in a customer-oriented mindset.

"It's not a solution looking for a problem," she says. "Understand the mindset of the consumer, understand what it is they have to do." Then use those insights to develop an idea.

Behnke's team proposed a networking site that would connect parents looking for nannies with college students in their communities. "Mothers really connected to the idea," he says. "If we had focused on what they said, what they needed, and how we addressed that, it would have been more compelling." If you have the greatest product in the world but no customer, you don't have a business, he added.

Dig Deeper: Understanding the Consumer of the Future

Winning a Business-Plan Competition: Be an Expert on Your Product and its Market

Holly has seen teams mistakenly choose the data they have instead of setting out to find the data they need. A prototype makes data collection easier.

"If the entrepreneur is really doing it, not just presenting an idea but has put a lot of effort into making it happen already in real life and could use the funding to move their business forward, that carries a lot of weight with the judges," Behnke says.

Make a beta site and have family members try it. "Even if it's a prototype you mock up in your dorm room that's put together with tape and rubber bands," Mitchell says, "You're going to learn more by having something out there."

One pet peeve that nearly every judge has is teams that present their idea and say that there is no competition in the space. "That's always a red flag because investors will say either you're completely clueless or it means that there's no market," Holly says.

Even if it seems like there isn't obvious competition, think about the alternatives to what your team is proposing. Recognize that, at the very least, those alternatives are competing for your customer's attention.

If the main selling point is a cheaper product, beware. "That's not a competitive advantage, especially for someone coming into the market, unless you're ten times cheaper," Holly says. "Any existing company is going to be able to undercut you until they put you out of business."

When setting a price point, coming in higher than existing products and services can actually be better, Holly says. This shows that the business is offering something with more value.

Dig Deeper: Top Business-Plan Mistakes Winning a Business-Plan Competition: Identify the Real Market Share

Recently Burke encountered an entrepreneur who claimed that in a $9 billion market, the business just needed a 2 percent market share to succeed. "Most of the time if they say there's a big market and they're going to get 2 or 5 percent market share, in truth we know they're going to get zero percent," he says. He suggests identifying the total addressable market, which is a subset of the larger market.

Mitchell has seen teams get overwhelmed. "They've got eight different products they're going to put out in the first six months," she says. "By having too many markets you're going to address and too many problems to solve initially, you spread yourself too thin."

Dig Deeper: Lessons from America's Most Productive CEOs

Winning a Business-Plan Competition: Make it Engaging

Bryce Benjamin, CEO in residence at USC Marshall's Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, heads the school's New Venture Seed Competition . He's seen presenters get caught up with their own cleverness. "Judges and investor panels need to be able to quickly absorb the problem and product solution," he says.

Behnke admits he wishes he had made his business plan less vanilla. "I tried to make sure I came across as very professional and smart," he says. "I think they needed more of my personality to come through."

On paper, the explanation should be simple and memorable. "If it gets to be more than about nine words, stop and make a new sentence," Cassidy advises. To present its automated grocery shopping system, Cassidy's team did a skit. "There's nothing wrong with doing a little show biz in your demos," he says.

Dig Deeper: How to Write a Great Business Plan

Winning a Business-Plan Competition: Accept Feedback and Anticipate Questions

Burke says investors are looking for a coachable CEO, not an arrogant leader who won't take advice. "Listen to the feedback that's given," he says. "Your chance of being successful drops a lot if you're not willing to listen to other people, and the VCs know that."

Some of the most cringe-worthy moments Bryce Benjamin has witnessed involved people who got defensive and argued with the judges. "That will take an otherwise presentable idea and undermine it," he says.

One of the smartest things Burke has seen is making an index slide in PowerPoint that links to backup slides containing answers to possible questions. That way, when a judge asks, "Tell us what your unit cost is in 2015," the team can go to the index, find the hyperlinked slide, and show the answer right away. "It's a preparation trick that most people don't use."

Benjamin suggests picking one spokesperson for a short Q&A to make the strongest impact. He also recommends teams view the Q&A period as a chance to present data that would complicate the initial presentation. "Recognize that judges are going to want to drill into what your assumptions are, so you want backup slides that have been created in anticipation," he says.

Contest participants who don't receive funding or awards can still find success. "We certainly took a lot from the feedback we got," Luke Behnke says. Recognizing a persistent need, his team continues to work on its business plan.

Burke sees enormous value in business-plan competitions. "We've had teams tell us the weekend they came here, they learned more than their entire two-year MBA program."

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Judging Criteria

The judges look for three main criteria in the completed submissions:.

• The quality and thoroughness of the submission;
• The quality of the solution and evidence of customer validation; and
• The commercial viability of the new venture, reflected in the steps taken by the founders to implement the venture.

The following are the judging criteria for this year's Business Plan Competition:

• Presentation : Quality and thoroughness of the presentation and the business plan document.
• The Opportunity/Problem/Need : How well does the presentation explain the Problem or Opportunity being addressed? Does it explain why you decided to pursue this opportunity or solve this problem now?
• The Product/Service and Value Proposition : How well does the presentation explain the proposed business solution? How well does it explain the benefits/value that the proposed product/service provides to the customer, the specific problem it helps to solve?
• Market Size and Customer Profile : How well does the presentation describe the market size and expected growth? Does it clearly profile the most important customers?
• Competitive Advantage : What differentiates this business and its solution from that of its competitors? Does this business have a strategy to achieve competitive differentiation? Is there some kind of ‘underlying magic’ to the proposed solution?
• Business Model & Plan : What is the source of revenue for the business? If there are multiple revenue streams, how much would each revenue stream contribute? Does this business have the potential to develop into a viable enterprise? Does the company have a well-thought-out plan to grow revenues and reach breakeven?
• Go-to-Market Strategy : Does this business have a strategy to reach its customers? Who are its key partners? What tasks will they perform? Are the business development, sales, marketing, advertising, and distribution strategies explained?
• Current Status/Stage of the Venture : What has been accomplished so far? Do you have a prototype, proof of concept? How many potential customers have you interviewed? What did you learn from their feedback?
• The Team : Do the founders have the experience/skills/competency to start this business? Why are they the “right” team to start this business? Are the founders cognizant of management voids? Have they thought through how to fill the gaps in their team? Are they committed to build and expand the team and organization?
• Major Milestones for the next 3, 6, and 12 months : Have the key milestones been identified? Are they realistic? What are the resources required to meet those milestones?
• Startup Capital Requirement : Does the presentation clearly identify the total startup funding requirements for the next 12 months? Does it explain the main uses of the funds?
• Moving Forward : How would winning this Competition impact your plans in starting your business? 

Additional information on a sample format can be found in the sample business plan format.

* Please note that the SVBPC judges will use a variety of criteria to evaluate the entries, including any criteria that the judges develop, or deem necessary, as a group, apart from the ones listed above.

• INNOVATION FESTIVAL
• Capital One

04-28-2011 WORK LIFE

Six Lessons From Judging Harvard’s Business Plan Competition

Harvard’s Business Plan Contest–an annual event since 1997–has spawned hundreds of business plans. Winners and non-winners alike have gone on to implement their plans and start successful enterprises.

BY  Neil Baron 2 minute read

Many people are aware of Harvard entrepreneurial successes such as Tom Stemberg of Staples and Michael Bloomberg. The purpose of the contest was to inspire the next generation of Harvard Business School entrepreneurs.

I was honored to be asked to serve as a judge for this years’ contest. Joining me as a judge were some of the country’s leading investors, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and thought leaders.

After each business plan presentation, the students received feedback from the judges. The insights of my fellow judges are worth repeating and are relevant to both new and mature companies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Neil Baron is an internationally recognized authority on selling and marketing innovative products, services and solutions sold to risk averse customers. He has served in a variety of senior marketing and management roles at companies such as IBM, Digital Equipment Corporation, Sybase, Art Technology Group, Brooks Automation and ATMI   More

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On a meteoric rise through the fiercely competitive luxury retail market, high-end handbag brand Anima Iris has been picked up by Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, and even Beyoncé. With geometric and bold designs, founder Wilglory Tanjong G22 WG22 expresses her ancestry in a fashionable and sustainable way. The bags are made in Senegal by expert craftspeople who have honed their techniques over decades and draw inspiration from centuries of heritage. The leather and other materials are sourced through local African business merchants. Anima Iris is environmentally friendly and employs a zero-waste model that ensures all materials are used and that no two products are the same.

Bilt Rewards

Bilt Rewards launched in 2021 and achieved immediate success in its first year. The startup credit-card rewards program by founder and CEO Ankur Jain W11 makes redeeming points from purchases easy with a unique twist — the card can be used toward rent payments. Jain explains that renters today are living with inflation and rising rent costs, resulting in many who now must pay close to 50 percent of their earned income on rent. Bilt helps this generation build credit while earning rewards that open up affordability in other areas of their lives, such as travel experiences and eventual home ownership.

An organic coconut butter with its early roots in Venture Lab’s Food Innovation Lab can now be found in 1,300 stores, including national chains Sprouts and Wegmans. Couple-turned-business-partners Breanna Golestani WG23 and Jared Golestani WG23 founded Kokada in 2020 to provide a healthier alternative to sugar-laden snacks and spreads typically found at the grocery store. Kokada offers a range of coconut butters that are all peanut-free and sugar-free and designed to be enjoyed as a dip, with a treat, or as part of a meal. The company gives back two percent of all sales to SERVE, a certified NGO based in Sri Lanka, where its ingredients are sourced.

Flagler Health

Developed by Albert Katz WG23 and Will Hu GED19, Flagler Health combines patient data and the power of AI to help physicians recommend treatments to their patients. (“It’s like giving a calculator to a mathematician,” says Katz.) Backed by $6 million in funding, Flagler Health now serves more than 1.5 million patients and recently launched a new product that provides remote patients with exercises to keep joints moving pre- and post-op. The startup made the Poets & Quants “Most Disruptive MBA Startups of 2023” list and was a finalist in Penn’s 2023 Venture Lab Startup Challenge.

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The Business Plan Competition Experience

The first thing you realize when you sit in on a pitch session in the Wharton Business Plan Competition Semi-Finals is how quickly five minutes pass. That is all the time each team had to present to the judges. The next thing you realize is that these judges don’t hold back. After the formal pitch, the judges ask questions and throw out advice in staccato succession for seven minutes, barely giving presenters time to find their footing and respond.

“You’re spraying everything,” one judge said about a team’s business plan.

“I don’t understand why it’s important to the sellers,” said another to a team.

Lisa Lovallo, Hemishare

I had the privilege of watching how three teams (out of 26) fared against the judges during Semi-Finalist presentations on March 22.

One of the teams—Hemishare—was a team I followed during the first round of the Wharton BPC. (Read my story about its founder, second-year Lauder MBA/MA Lisa Lovallo , “ A Day in the Life: Student Startups in This Year’s BPC .”)

For Lovallo, she knew that her business plan—a recruiting firm for Brazilian startups looking for North American talent, and vice versa—does not leverage a cool new technology that could be showcased in a couple of PowerPoint slides. Still, she managed to sell her business plan in five minutes and field questions from the few dozen judges in the room.

“I was prepared for all of the questions, but it was definitely hard to change directions every 30 seconds,” she told me afterward.

But she appreciated the judges’ feedback—“real-world filters,” she called it—and knew it would improve her business plan. Another benefit was the automatic networking within the Wharton community. One BPC participant asked for Lovallo’s information because he knows someone invested in Brazilian businesses.

Bredesen (Brett) Lewis of SkylBridge awaits the judges’ questions

Another team, second-year MBAs Raj Jeyakumar and Bredesen (Brett) Lewis of SkylBridge—an online talent market where businesses can find top-notch freelance consultants for short-term projects—also appreciated the PR and positive feedback gained from the BPC. Jeyakumar noticed how judges got to the “next order” of questions, unlike other pitching experiences they have experienced in the pursuit of funding. They have also already experienced the benefits of the network; one of the judges mentioned in his feedback that he wants to connect SkylBridge with a recruiting firm.

Sadly, despite the overwhelming positive experience for all, only one team out of the three I witnessed got voted to move to the Finals. (Read about all eight of the 2013 Wharton Business Plan Competition Finalists .) They are second-year MBAs Jean-Mathieu (Jim) Chabas and Venkat Jonnala . Of course, it is happy days for them and their startup ZenKars, an online platform that allows consumers to buy used cars directly from corporate sellers.

Overall, the judges’ feedback has already been fruitful for them. Insights from the first round, for instance, helped ZenKars to double the size of their business plan.

Chabas reports that ZenKars has also participated in a Dreamit Ventures incubator, pitched to the Dorm Room Fund, applied for grants, and planned a West Coast trek in June to find angel and seed round investors. They already have  a supply of cars lined up. They have shown what they can do, said Chabas, and now they just need more funding to go out and do it.

What would a win in the Wharton Business Plan Competitions Finals mean for ZenKar? It would be a “stamp of approval” for investors.

As for our two other teams—Hemishare and SkylBridge—they’ve earned a hearty pat on the back. We were disappointed that they didn’t move forward in the competition. Yet, do not fret too much for them.  Both teams will be the first to tell you that the experience was a positive one, and that they planned to move their startups forward no matter what.

Wharton has been a “two-year incubator,” said SkylBridge’s Jeyakumar, and now he and partner Lewis are setting out to grow the business in the real world and are considering funding opportunities.

“The BPC has helped us make the first few steps. Now we need to figure out the rest of the path,” Jeyakumar said.

Editor’s note: Want to find out how the 2013 Wharton Business Plan Competition turned out? Who won? Watch our video, “ ZenKars and the 2013 Wharton BPC: Student Entrepreneurs Day in the Life .” 

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We catch up with a Wharton Business Plan Competition team as it takes the next step at the Highland and Mass Challenge incubators.

The Startup Survival Master Class

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A New Twist on an Old Favorite

The 2012-2013 Wharton Business Plan Competition is kicking off with a new format for Phase 1.

Business planning expert

Q&a: winning business plan for a competition.

So that you know, I’m answering this question with reference to the mainstream high-profile business plan competitions I’ve judged many times, including the University of Texas’  Global Venture Labs Investment Competition , the  Rice Business Plan Competition , and the University of Oregon’s New Venture Competition . I’ve done these three at least 10 times each. I’m assuming they are typical – but I could be wrong.

Here’s how the process works, with regard to what you deliver and how decisions are made:

• You submit either a business plan or executive summary to a steering committee that selects a few dozen entrants from hundreds of submissions. These committees vary. Many still use the full plan, but trends favor just the summary. This step takes place behind the scenes, before the visible portion of the competition begins. The entries selected are called semi-finalists. They are invited to go to the competition, at the site, which usually involves a Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, most often in April or May.
• Semi-finalists are divided into groups of four to six. Semi-final judges, mostly angel investors, venture capitalists, and executives from sponsor companies, read and evaluate the full business plans before the competition starts.
• An elevator speech round happens on the Thursday, in the evening. The teams do a 60-second elevator speech for prizes and awards. Winning that competition doesn’t formally help win the main prize, but informally, it affects the judges who see it. About half the judges will attend that first evening.
• The semi-final round takes place on Friday. Teams do pitch presentations and answer questions from the judges assigned to their group, who have read their business plans. Judges choose a finalist based not on the quality of business as a potential investment. The plan matters of course, and the pitch matters as well, but the choice is ultimately about the business. Judges try to make decisions based on investment criteria, including growth potential, defensibility, scalability, and experience of the management team.
• Finalists go through the same gauntlet on Saturday. Finals judges read the plans, listen to pitches, and ask questions. They choose the winner based on the same criteria they use to choose investments.

In all of these competitions, the judges are told to choose the best plan for outside investors, not the best-written or most attractively formatted business plan. So, a mediocre business plan for a great business will always beat a great business plan for a mediocre business. What you want from your business plan is to present your business well in a way that makes it easy for judges to see what you have. Your business plan alone isn’t enough to determine your fate in these competitions, but it does provide the first impression and the detailed background. In fact, all three of the competitions I mentioned above have special prizes for the best business plan, but those awards pale in comparison to the main prizes.

Therefore, the best way to help your chances with your business plan is to make sure the judges see the critical elements that make a business attractive to investors: potential growth and scalability , proprietary technology or some other kind of barriers to entry , and an experienced management team .

Here are some related tips that might also help:

• Make sure you cover the information investors want . Tell a convincing story about the problem you solve and the solution you offer, in a way that will interest the investors and let them believe your market story. Show whatever traction you have, and as much startup experience in the management team as you can. Show how your business will defend itself (proprietary technology, trade secrets, whatever secret sauce you have) from competitors entering the market. Show how you can scale up for high growth. Show that you understand how exits might work in 3-5 years.
• Keep it brief . Be concise. Don’t show off your knowledge, push your main points forward. Bullet points are appreciated.
• Show your numbers and your key assumptions. Numbers without assumptions and underlying story are useless. Forget present value and IRR games that depend on future assumptions. Show unit economics and build forecasts bottom up, from assumptions, not ever as some small percentage of a big market.
• Use illustrations that simplify and explain. Have the detailed numbers to back them up, of course, but use bar charts and line charts and pie charts to help readers get the idea quickly.
• Check your numbers against real world benchmarks . Investors will react negatively, not positively, to unrealistic profitability projections.
• Maintain alignment between the key points you emphasize in the business plan, the pitch presentation, and the elevator speech. Ideally your business plan is like the screenplay for the pitch presentation and the elevator speech.
• Don’t be afraid to revise numbers constantly, and don’t apologize if the numbers you show today are different from what you showed yesterday. Plans are supposed to evolve constantly.

(Image: shutterstock.com)

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One thought on “ q&a: winning business plan for a competition ”.

Thankyou for the information ,its very informative.I have to say the competitions you judge remind me of the tv show Dragons Den,

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How to make business plan competitions and pitch contests more meaningful.

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Are business plan-competitions and pitch contests useful? Or are they a form of top-down venture selection that is counter-productive?

No one can predict winners before Aha : Many of us believe we have great instincts. This must be a trick our memory plays since we tend to remember our guesses that turned out to be right, and forget the losing guesses. The list of billion-dollar entrepreneurs who were rejected by venture capitalists and investors is long. Tom Perkins, one of the most successful VCs, noted that Steve Jobs’ genius was not evident early on. He rejected Apple. So did HP (Steve Wozniak worked for HP) and Atari (Steve Jobs worked for Atari). Howard Schultz (of Starbucks fame) was rejected by 217 of the 242 investors he approached. He would not have been able to buy Starbucks if Bill Gates Sr. had not helped him. Bessemer Venture Partners notes some of the famous names they rejected on their web site, including Google. When asked if he wanted to meet with Page and Brin who were working in his host’s garage, a partner was noted to have said, “ How can I get out of this house without going anywhere near your garage ?”

No one can predict losers before Aha : Just as you cannot predict winners, it is tough to predict losers. The business plan that looks like a sure-fire winner could end up being a disaster. There are no guarantees in life, or in venture capital. About 80 percent of VC investments are said to be total or near failures, and this percentage is likely to be higher at early stages when there is no history. So all those who judge these contests should keep in mind that they may be rejecting a potential Google.

Falsely motivating or demotivating : By guessing winners and losers incorrectly, are VCs and other investors falsely motivating or demotivating entrepreneurs? On the flip side, you could also make the argument that if entrepreneurs are dissuaded this easily, they should not be looking to start a business because they will have many more rejections down the road.

Wrong use of resources : Can the money and resources being used for these business-plan competitions be better used elsewhere? I know some business-plan competitions where the cost and the prize money easily reach into the hundreds of thousands. Should this money be used to set up a business-development competition where entrepreneurs who implement their plan well get the money. This way you don’t need all the judging and the infrastructure of the mega plan competitions.

Unknown criteria – if you don’t count instinct : Using an informal survey, I have tried to ascertain the criteria used by judges – especially for startups where there is no history. The only common factors seem to be how well the plan is researched or written. Some honest judges have told me that they are just using their instinct to pick winners.

My suggestion is to dump these business plan competitions. They are a waste of time and money. Worse, they send out false positives and false negatives. Instead do the following.

Develop a system to train everyone : Since you cannot predict who will win, train everyone in the skills needed to succeed. This is different from the multi-evening program taught by “experts” and successful entrepreneurs. If you can train the CEO of a new venture in a few weeks, why are we wasting two years training MBAs when they are going to join the lowest rung of an established, low-risk corporation? If you are going to teach them, teach them well in the needs for a new venture. As an example, this does not mean taking the regular marketing course used for corporate classes and adding a case or two for new ventures. Corporations have money. Entrepreneurs do not. Teach them to grow without capital.

Develop an environment to let the motivated grow : The truly motivated will grow on their own. But those who are not sure of their innate talent, or who need to join a partner to take off, might be able to do so in the right environment where there is a lot of handholding, where the cost of failure is low, and the rewards for success are high.

If you want to invest, do so after Aha : If you truly want to invest in ventures as part of a business-development competition, invest in the venture(s) that takes off with limited or no cash. You may have a winner on your hands. Then train them at each stage of growth.

MY TAKE: If you are going to keep your instinct-based business plan competitions, make the judges invest their own, personal money in the winners. And give them the choice of not picking a winner. That will make them careful, and will show the entrepreneurs that it is not easy picking a winner before Aha.

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No One Wins In Business Plan Competitions

Last week one of the schools I teach at invited me to judge a business plan contest. I suggested that they first might want to read my post on  why business plans are a poor planning and execution tool for startups . They called back laughing and the invitation disappeared.

At best I think business plan competitions are a waste of time . But until now I haven’t been able to articulate a framework of why or had a concrete suggestion of what to replace them with.

Business Plan Versus Business Models Where did the idea that startups write business plans come from?  A business plan is the execution document that large companies write when planning product-line extensions where customer, market and product features are known. The plan describes the execution strategy for addressing these “knowns.”  In the early days of venture capital, investors and entrepreneurs were familiar with the format of business plans from large company and adopted it for startups. Without much thought it has been used ever since.

Instead of business plans I have suggested that startups use business models .

Business models are dynamic and reflect the iterative reality that startups face. Business models allow agile and opportunistic founders to keep score of the Pivots in their search for a repeatable business model.

Business Plan Competitions are Great for Schools and Bad For Students Almost every university, region and car wash now has a business plan competition; the rules, who can participate, how large the prizes and who are the judges vary by school.

Business plan competitions perpetuate everything that is wrong about trying to make plans that were designed to be used in large companies fit startups. (One of my favorites: “ Judging will include such factors as: Market opportunity, reward to risk, strategy, implementation plan, financing plan, etc.”) All of which may be true in large companies. But little of it is relevant to the chaos and uncertainty in the life of a startup.

Yet an ever increasing number of schools keep holding Business Plan competitions.  Why?

• They’re a match for the “How to write a business plan” classes that are offered.
• It makes the school appear relevant to their constituencies; students, donors, faculty, VC’s.
• Business plans are easy to grade, score and judge.
• Schools can get Venture Firms to fund prizes for the best business plan.
• Venture Firms use the contests as another source of deal flow and talent.
• There is no alternative.

The irony is that business plan competitions ought to be held for plans from large companies not for startups.

The Alternative – Business Model Competitions I’ll offer that to be useful for startups Business Plan competitions need to turn into  Business Model c ompetitions . A Business Model competition has a radically different goal than writing a business plan.  The Business Model c ompetition measures how well students learn how to Pivot by getting outside the building (not by writing a plan inside one.)

Each team would be judged by their business model presentation on these five steps.

• What did you initially think your initial business model was? (initial business model hypotheses)
• What did you build/do? (built first product, talked to users, etc.)
• What did you learn outside the building? (parts of our feature set/business model were wrong)
• Then what did you do? (iterated product, changed business model, etc.)
• Repeat steps 1-4

The business model would be scored and judged based on steps 3 and 4.  And extra credit for multiple times through the loop.

For the first time we’d have a competition that closely resembled the reality that founders face, rather than a creative writing exercise.

There are now  examples of business model presentations on the web . They were also at the heart of the Startup Lessons Learned conference .

——–

I’ll be happy to hand out the prizes at the first competition.  Lets call it the “Pivot Award for Excellence.”

Lessons Learned

Business plans are the wrong tool to search for a startup business model They are best suited for large companies Yet we have startup business plan contests Experienced entrepreneurs know that business model iteration and validation occurs outside the building Some school will be first to hold a contest that rewards what matters

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46 Responses

Are you a fan of “Business Model Generation”? I imagine that modeling approach could be a second step that follows an executive summary (a necessary doc for funding conversations). It’s about the interplay of the elements of a business, and it is also suitable for next step analysis.

My ideal competitions: (1) Executive Summary (2) Business Modeling (3) Business model environmental analysis (4) …maybe still a business plan because investors like to see a body of research

And for competition (0), I’ve seen idea pitch competitions do really well. Here’s my favorite: http://www.1000pitches.com

Steve I had the doubt about something wrong about BPCs…the main indicator was that i know many competitors that never become a brilliant start up ( or even a start up!). I would be happy to apply in Italy your PA4E!

Thanks Steve!

Great insight into an enigma that I’ve long pondered but could not resolve.

There’s a reason why entrepreneurs resist the torture of the ‘traditional’ business planning process. It is not relevant to their needs.

Duh … “It’s the model, stupid!”

— Mike (www.fintelligence.org)

I was actually going to try to do a pseudo-track in Customer Development, Lean Startups, and so on as a student-directed activity when I attend Ross/Michigan next year. (The West’s expert on Lean Manufacturing is at Michigan.)

Would love to have you involved in any way you can!

Great post. I was a lead organizer of a large, nationwide business plan competition (mitcep.org) in 2009; we’re always trying to improve and we’re delighted whenever we can learn from thoughtful customer feedback.

I’ll note that MIT’s competitions are also split into 2 phases; an initial vetting and finals 2 months later. The 2 month period is all about speaking to people in industry (incl. through assigned mentors) and potential customers – whether you call the result of that a business “plan” or a “process” is semantics.

I do think you’re somewhat missing the point of what these competitions are doing. They are taking students who’ve never before considered themselves entrepreneurs (and who’ve gotten to where they are largely by getting A’s in classes or being consultants, from the business side, or by being amazing technical people in engineering labs) and encouraging them to become a part of the startup world, by forming interdisciplinary teams, attacking a market need, and pitching to investors. At the end of the competition, the winner is not the team that gets the cash (although I’m sure it doesn’t hurt their egos) but every student who participated and pushed themselves to learn about startups and themselves. A lot of future succesful entrepreneurs don’t need that introduction because of where and who they grew up with, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have these on-ramps to entrepreneurship out there for everyone else.

In terms of follow-on investments, companies that have participated in the MIT Clean Energy Prize do have raised tens of millions of dollars, which isnt’ bad either – story from the Boston Globe: http://bit.ly/9AemTe

Actually, I think your post confirms the point Steve is trying to make. You take a group of people who have gotten to where they are by getting better grades than their compatriots and put them in yet another situation where success is defined by grading. I personally believe that measuring success by who has the best pitch is the wrong approach (as is defining longer-term success by follow-on investments.) These only demonstrate proficiency at raising money, not creating a sustainable business, and IMHO teach entrepreneurs the wrong lessons.

I recently wrote that biz plan competitions “are the air guitar championships of the startup world”.

http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2010/4/27/hacking-innovation-education-in-new-york.html

I think, however, without putting evaluating stages 1 through 3…judges will sneak evaluations of 1 through 3 into 3 and 4 by even well meaning judges. (the internal process of ….”shouldn’t they get some credit for….” or just the overall draw of unique ideas).

Certainly, the business model competition’s “brand”/uniqueness/story is probably best preserved by your description of the model.

Is there some place for rewarding both the process and result? Perhaps focusing on 3 and 4 does that….I’m not honestly sure.

Often I agree with Steve on his approach to businesses, but I find the vehemence with which he attacks business plans and these competitions somewhat unwarranted and disagree with some of his conclusions. Let me state at the outset that I agree with him that an entrepreneur’s ability to change course (“pivot”) based on changing circumstances and information is probably the most important action he will take. Doing so, rather than being married to a static business plan, is vital to the success of any start-up venture. Why then do I disagree with this post? Because the process of creating a business plan is fundamentally important. As a consultant who works with entrepreneurs (frequently pre-revenue), some of the biggest mistakes I have seen stem from 1) lack of knowledge about the market, 2) lack of any business strategy, 3) focus on following through on a product idea without validation of a need for the product, or 4) no idea how to commercialize the product. Each of these problems can (and should) be solved by the process of creating a business plan. I agree with Steve’s assessment that far too often founders become “married” to their business plan, refusing to make the changes necessary because it is not in the plan, but that is a problem with how business plans are used, not a problem intrinsic to the plan. A good business plan should be constantly updated. It should reflect management’s thinking at the present and include all new developments and understandings. It should include all those changes in course (pivots) that the entrepreneur has made and understand that more will have to be made in the future. Rightly, Steve addresses the importance of a business model, but the model should be a part of any good plan (and I will be the first to admit that many, poorly created plans, lack one), but I believe dismissing business plans and business plan competitions outright is throwing the baby out with the bath water.

I have to agree with you on what I’ll call the fallacy of the business plan.

I was brought into a startup less than a year in to save it from itself. The company was hampered by the bible it called its business plan. After ditching the business plan, we developed into a liquid organization, able to move with the markets.

We eventually did develop into three distinct divisions each with a business plan, but only after we broke 10% profits yearly, in the seven digits, with solid cash flows and no debt.

10 years later I left and entered an MBA program, filled with “kids” who have never had a job outside of an internship. Have never seen the 20 hour days of a startup. Have never wondered if they were going to be paid that QUARTER (and if they would have to push more of their own cash into the business…now THAT is being an entrepreneur! SKIN IN THE GAME!!!). And they are all chomping at the words of the so called skilled professors, who themselves have never lived outside of the walls of yesterdays mega-corps. This includes believing every word uttered about business plans, regression analysis, marketing blitzes.

It’s time we move out of the 50’s blue suit mentality and into a new era of light, lean, fluid business beliefs including iterative business development for startups.

Cheers to you for your ideas of a new way of doing business that matches our current environment!

I was a business major and participated in said Business Plan competitions. First time I learned about the concept of “Business Model” vs “Business Plan” I saw how much better the idea of a Business Model fits my Startup. About the Business Model competition… It would have never worked for me. I just had the first major pivoting and I would have never, seen this coming without seeing my “Business Plan” fail in the real world. The only way to learn the importance of pivoting is by actually loosing money every day you don’t. I guess it is a little like Poker. Extremely boring game, but in the moment you play for money you discover a new side about yourself.

I understand the point you’re trying to make but I feel it’s software-centric.

I’ve run a University business creation competition and the best teams are those that *do* get outside the building and begin talking to potential customers.

If a team has an idea about a biotech advancement or something that’s just come out of the Physics lab it will likely require a significant amount of money up front due to equipment/R&D costs. In that scenario, a document that has information on the customer pain, likely market segments, finances etc will help a fledgling team organise their thoughts and research the things that matter before committing resources (as well as communicating that information succinctly). During this process they may realise that they have to pivot and solve a different problem. Whether the document they produce is text, powerpoint slides or something else is not important but the learning it contains is. However, for software startups I can see that the initial costs are lower so it’s easier to pivot as you get early feedback rather than spending time on documenting the learning.

I used to run Cambridge University Entrepreneurs and we run a Business Creation Competition*. Our Tech stream is modelled on how many tech business get going (i.e research, write a plan, pitch etc) but our software stream is modelled on getting a demo out (i.e write a demo, get users). Talking to potential customers is common to both streams.

Overall, I believe business plans have their place, even for startups.

* Please note that I called it ‘Business Creation’ not ‘Business Plan’. Some of our teams even drop out part way though because things take off. That actually happened this year and one team has withdrawn from our Software competition, is raising a seed round and considering a move to the valley.

Thanks so much! http://aaltoes.com/ is new student-run initiative to get Helsinki, Finland and specially our new innovation university http://www.aalto.fi/en/ to heavily support the startups.

We have been fighting for our rights, and trying to explain that the local businespaln competition makes no sens for startups, now we got the courage to go and launch our own Business Model Competition next Autumn!

Thanks and we´ll wait for more great thoughts!

Great idea. Why not award exclusive rights to any patent apps the university files to the winning team?

I don’t believe in writing business plans either – but the business plan competitions I’ve been to had nothing to do with the old 20 page paper document with lots of excel graphs that we normally think of.

They were just presentations pitching to potential investors. So in that sense the words mean totally separate things.

A number of commenter’s were concerned that by building a business model versus business plan founders would miss analyzing competition, market size, putting together a detailed financial plan and wouldn’t understand customer needs and pain.

I’m not advocating skipping any of these things.

What I am advocating is to stop the detailed analysis of each of those elements as if putting them on paper or PowerPoint makes them true – and instead: 1) assume they are untested hypotheses 2) get out of the building and test those assumptions 3) keep track of what you learned and which parts you changed

Another theme in the comments is that while this type of learning out of the building may be possible for Web 2.0 startups it can’t be done for hardware or medical devices.

That’s simply not true. It confuses the difficulty of iterating the physical product with all the additional learning that can be done outside the building for any type of product. The reality is that this process works for all startups that have customer and market risk. Biotech is the only place where I wouldn’t advocate its use.

Finally, there’s no need to get rid of the excitement of the competition, the prizes or the connections with VC’s. I’m not advocating stopping the contests, just changing its format to better match the real world.

Does anyone really look at a business plan and assume that any of the assumptions will hold 100% true? It seems to me as if we are all familiar with with the uncertainty surrounding startups – and no one wouldn’t expect a true entrepreneur to be getting of the building and testing the assumptions.

I think the real disconnect lies in that BPC’s pull from an academic setting – meaning they often include those that are not really entrepreneurs, but are students performing an academic exercise. Real entrepreneurs are few and far between, but I bet even in the most regimented BPC the true entrepreneurial students are out testing their hypotheses and adjusting their model as need be, or pivoting as you would say.

A business plan is a road map showing how an entrepreneur is going to start and run his or her business. The benefits far outweigh the time it takes to write the plan because it gives the entrepreneur the ability to develop assumptions, consider alternatives before committing resources. It’s a sales tool for attracting investors and partners.

At its core a business plan is a description of the company and how to launch, run and grow it. Like any other journey things go a lot more smoothly if you prepare and bring a map. Of course, if an opportunity or challenge presents itself a good entrepreneur will veer off course and recalibrate.

While not every turn in the road needs to be mapped, smart business owners know the direction they’re going, the obstacles that may crop up — obstacles always crop up! — and what they’ll need to reach their goal.

Still not convinced, take this free webinar Are Business Plans Necessary? ( http://ventureneer.com/webclass/are-business-plans-necessary )

Check out the founder of Twitter Jack Dorsey 3 keys to Twitter’s success. There was no business plan.

Jack Dorsey outlines three core takeaways from his experiences building and launching Twitter – and more recently – Square, a simple payment utility.

1) Draw: get your idea out of your head and share it, 2) Luck: assess when the time (and the market) is right to execute your idea, 3) Iterate: take in the feedback, be a rigorous editor, and refine your idea.

http://the99percent.com/videos/6528/jack-dorsey-the-3-keys-to-twitters-success

[…] 最近也讀到另一篇關於「創意」的文章，這位作者竟然強烈批評那些「創業計畫書比賽」(business plan competition)，他認為，所謂的「創業計畫書」這個字，本身就是一個大「矛盾」，他在這篇文章中特別主張，創業計畫書這樣的文件，其實緣自於以往大公司的文化，由於大公司本身有客戶、有市場、知道產品的種種功能…因此，在這樣的情況下，可以寫出一份完整的「計畫書」，完整的規畫接下來會發生的事。後來不知怎麼搞的，這樣的計畫書變成給小團隊拿來籌資用，遂變成了現在大家都知道的「創業計畫書」－－ […]

Steve, love the blog but have to agree with Amir and Michael that this is an unnecessarily harsh criticism of bplan competitions.

But maybe we’re just getting caught up on semantics here…for example, about two weeks ago I was a judge at one of the largest “business plan competitions” in the world, and I can accurately state that it was anything *but* a document-focused bake off…these were real startups that had built some amazing businesses.

Each of the 40 companies that presented was pursuing a really big idea; to make it to this particular competition, they had to win a previous bplan competition (e.g. regional feeder events); and, I would say 90% had some very meaningful and tangible customer traction (in other words, there was a high correlation between customer traction and bplan competition results).

In fact, many of the startups had strong elements of your Customer Development process, though I doubt many were familiar with the term…there was simply an awareness amongst the teams that presenting external evidence (sales, partnership deals, etc.) gave them a serious leg up when presenting their pitch.

Another notable benefit is that bplan competitions give the teams– often made up of younger entrepreneurs– practice in handling hard Q&A under fire with poise, which was evident in spades. And, they provide a relatively “safe” venue to hone the pitch. After all, pitching is a cornerstone skill for sales, marketing, fundraising, partnerships, exit, etc.

(Having said all the above, after 25+ years, the competition referenced above is changing its name from Moot Corp to Venture Labs Global Investment Competition, partly to reflect the fact that it is no longer a “business plan competition”…so perhaps this really IS evidence of your thesis?)

Anyway, fun fodder for discussion! Nathan Beckord http://www.venturearchetypes.com

I couldn’t agree more! A business plan is – as the term states – a planning document. What start-ups need to focus on is the business model and not the planning document, since the model will change several times until the right one is found.

Your post reminds me of a discussion that Alan Smith (designer of “Business Model Generation”) and I recently had on a long working walk in the Swiss Alps. We considered writing a manifesto for start-ups. One major point was that “business plans are dead” – at least as a “technique” to figure out how to succeed…

The key to success for entrepreneurs is the ability to rapidly adapt the business model to a customer jobs-to-get done… and for that you need business model prototyping & testing and not business plan writing…

Warm regards from Switzerland, Alexander

Most founders/entrepreneurs are driven by passion and the end-dream and are thus unable to relate to external stakeholders who, naturally, are not similarly driven. The “business plan” serves the useful role of compelling the entrepreneur to temporarily exit this “all-heart” mode and compose thoughts in a cool, dispassionate, nearly mechanic way. The benefit of such a process is that it then leads to a common vocabulary with external stakeholders and allow conversations to be mutually less tormenting and frustrating. Entrepreneurs hate it, but sadly the world is not made up only of entrepreneurs and influence isnt necessarily distributed in their favour either.

Here is an interesting video for entrepreneurs from a business pitch competition.

[…] recently read an article decrying business plans, their static nature, and business plan competitions. (Steve Blank is new […]

[…] No One Wins In Business Plan Competitions « Steve Blank […]

Not only are business plans a “port” of strategic planning from a large firm to a small firm setting but the existing critiques of strategic planning in a large firm setting reveal what a bad fit BPs are for the startup setting. Many people criticize strategic planning because it is difficult to plan for the future, unknowns and change or to adpat the strategic plan once change does happen. In a startup these problems are multiplied 10-fold which makes strategic plans (or as they are called in an entrepreneurial setting–business plans) almost totally irrelevant.

For those who feel business plans have some merit, I think the heart of what they appreciate is really the essence of lean startup / customer development / Durant School of Entrepreneurship: validating assumptions with customers, understanding their buying process, etc. Clearly that part of the process is right but I don’t think that BPs or BP competitions deserve the credit or should be protected for that reason.

[…] No One Wins In Business Plan Competitions Last week one of the schools I teach at invited me to judge a business plan contest. I suggested that they first might […] […]

[…] contests. Given the choice, I would do it all again.   That said, I agree with Chris Dixon and Steve Blank that while contests are a good start, they are not great.  I’d like to preserve the […]

I completely agree that contests today are not set up to help advance businesses.

I suggest modifying the contest slightly, to focus more on the identification of risks, the testing of those risks, and then making changes based on these validated learnings.

I call it the “Business Development Contest”. Read more at http://www.philmichaelson.com/fundraising/introducing-the-%e2%80%9cbusiness-development-contest%e2%80%9d/

Wow, great post, well said, even though I disagree there are points here worth making.

I’m with Nathan, I really like the business plan competitions, I judge several, and I think you’re putting up a straw man here by equating business plans misused with business planning. It’s sort of like saying regular exercise is bad because some people try to do a marathon without training.

The major business plan competitions give mostly real businesses an opportunity to pitch to investors/judges and get real feedback. As Nathan and others suggest, it’s about the pitch, and ultimately, about the business, not just the plan document.

I posted recently about my favorite moment at the recent Moot Corp, when the entrepreneurs put up projected numbers and the judges noted it didn’t match their plan. “Sure, that was several iterations ago,” they answered. the point being that in the real world the planning process, well used, is pretty much the same as what you’re calling modeling. It’s changing quickly, reflecting new developments all the time.

The contests you describe are pretty much in the past now. In recent years they’ve evolved from an academic exercise to mostly real businesses doing mostly real pitches for mostly real investors.

And what you probably don’t see, unless you’re a judge (like I am, and Nathan is), is the back side of these contests, when the entrepreneurs get time alone with their investor/judges for real discussion about their pitch, their business, and what they might do next.

And I do agree completely with your underlying point, which is that business planning is management, steering, reviewing and revising, never a static document. My favorite quote is Dwight Eisenhower’s: “The plan is useless; but planning is essential.”

We are going to launch the first business model competition. At this point the intent is for it to be a national competiton, the Moot Corp of business model competitions (open to all, especially readers of Steve’s blog). If there are any thoughts about what to call the competition, how to organize it, and how to promote it, I would love thoughts and feedback from the community. Feel free to reach out to me directly at [email protected] or at http://www.nathanfurr.com

Maybe the exception proves the rule but I’m sure IBM’s Sandy Carter and Phaedra Boinodiris would disagree. Phaedra won a case competition getting her MBA at UNC that lead to the development of Innov8 and the Serious Gaming division within IBM. For more on this story, see Gaming is Serious Business (even at IBM) | Fast Company http://bit.ly/bR6LD6

[…] After you watch that, then take a look at his Blog … here is a particularly interesting post. […]

[…] by davidcummings on May 23, 2010 The startup process: there is none. Much like the debate around business plan competitions being bad (too much making up stuff) and a potential solution being business model competitions, startups […]

I couldn’t agree with you more Steve! I’m a Director at Startup Weekend, and we are currently launching a new brand “Startup Weekend University” to quell the overwhelming demand for an alternative to Biz plan competitions. We can model entrepreneurship as a means of educating students and founders while focusing on tangible results without having to focus on non-productive, static, and misaligned plans.

[…] model competition measures how well the team learn how to pivot, for example. For more about this, read his blog post here. How to Apply to PITCH […]

I’m really intrigued by this post. While our existing business, Granada Advisors, focuses on finance and strategy work for SME clients, we are in the process of launching a digital consultancy called Crux & Gage. One of the services we will provide in this new business is “rapid prototyping” of digital deployments, including websites, web apps, mobile apps, etc. I have to believe there is an analog to this “rapid prototyping” / wire-framing approach when it comes to startup business models. I’m going to be noodling on this for a while; there are still aspects of what you would do in a business plan that you would want to create for a business model, however to rapidly prototype such a model you would want to strip it down to its bare essentials. I would imagine that what you DON’T Do in such a situation would be nearly important, if not more so, than what you DO Do.

Brad Heitmann Chief Executive Officer Granada Advisors | Crux & Gage Mobile: +1.801.824.4168 | Skype / Twitter: bradheitmann [email protected] | [email protected]

[…] Steve Blank’s post No One Wins in Business Plan Competitions: Where did the idea that startups write business plans come from?  A business plan is the […]

Thanks Steve, As a business school survivor I resonate with this on a deep level. I love my alma mater but believe that business education is something of an oxymoron. Rather than go to school I think it far more effective to learn by either starting a business yourself or apprenticing yourself to smart people you respect and actually engaging with a market rather than sitting around theorizing about it.

Outstanding, Bob. I teach an entrepreneur class and will use this as a quote in the new edition of my Business Plan Creation Guide.

The requirement of the course is to actually create a business that the student can realistically do right now.

Hi Steve- Great article. Your thoughts on pivoting are even more articulated than when we spoke last (MIT Sloan talk). As a veteran of the business plan competitions on both the managing (Cleantech Open) and competing side (MIT, Rice, CTO, DFJ/Cisco)- I often do feel a love/hate relationship with business plan competitions because of how often they de-railed and almost killed my startup because of misaligned incentives. Waxed poetic about it here: http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/06/15/hatching-a-lark-an-entrepreneurs-journey-through-the-business-plan-competitions/

Of all my experiences, I think that the MIT 100K successfully baked the right incentives built in- namely, the encouragement to pivot- by de-emphasizing the business plan as a final beautiful product to be untouched and followed, but rather a series of mini competitions where pivoting and user testing worked in your favor. Maybe it’s a step towards what you are envisioning? I do believe business competitions have their place in the world as a motivator, discipliner, and network expander for new entrepreneurs.

[…] stumbled across a post by Steve Blank of the Lean Startup movement and “Four Steps to the Epiphany” fame talking about […]

[…] to question the value of “MBA business plans”. Silicon Valley legend, Steve Blank*, is not a fan of business plan competitions, which are fairly analogous to the EP. I can see his point – with many startups, you’d […]

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Customer Development

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• Stanford Entrepreneurial Leadership Talks by Steve Blank
• The Lean Startup by Eric Ries & Steve Blank – slides

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2024 San Angelo Business Plan Competition Forum 2

Join us for a review of the 2024 San Angelo Business Plan Competition and the $100,000 in grant awards!

This annual competition is hosted in partnership with the ASU Small Business Development Center, Norris–Vincent College of Business and the City of San Angelo Development Corporation. The speakers will discuss the competition guidelines, how to apply, the application window and how the grant funds can be utilized. The presentation will also include an overview of the elements of the business plan to help you submit an award-winning application!

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ASU Small Business Development Center [email protected] 325-942-2098

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Money blog: Energy bills 'to rise 10% in October' as wholesale costs head up again

Welcome to the Money blog, your place for personal finance and consumer news and tips. Enjoy our Weekend Money content below and we'll be back with live updates on Monday - when we'll also have a Q&A on energy prices. Submit a question below.

Sunday 30 June 2024 09:34, UK

Weekend Money

• Winter energy bills projected to rise for millions of households - submit a question for Q&A on Monday above
• How to split housework fairly with your partner
• Ofgem urged not to lift ban on acquisition-only energy tariffs
• Your comments : Paying off a mortgage into retirement and new cars turning faulty

Essential reads

• A week when probable future of mortgage rates became clearer
• Women in Business : How accident in cafe and £400 turned into a genius business idea that's about to go global
• Money Problem : 'I bought a new car but it's been back six times with same fault - what can I do?'
• How to stop your car from being stolen - or even 'cannibalised'
• Best of the Money blog - an archive

Ask a question or make a comment

Winter energy bills are projected to rise significantly due to an uptick in the wholesale market, according to a closely watched forecast.

Market specialist Cornwall Insight released an updated winter forecast ahead of the latest price cap change kicking in on Monday.

Britons who pay by direct debit will see their typical annual bill for gas and electricity go down 7%, or £122, to £1,568 this week until 1 October.

However, a 10% rise is then expected, taking the annual bill for a typical household back up to £1,763, Cornwall predicts.

This is actually slightly lower than its previous forecast - but still represents bad news for Britons who may have thought energy bills were on a linear path down following two years of sky-high prices.

"The drop in forecasts for October are positive, but we need to keep this in perspective," the Cornwall report says.

"We are still facing an average 10% increase in bills from October, and as winter approaches this will put a strain on many household finances."

We'll have experts from Cornwall Insights and consumer group Which? answering your energy-related questions here in the Money blog on Monday afternoon - so whether it's about why bills could rise again or if now is a good time to switch, submit your query above.

By Jess Sharp , Money team

Splitting up household jobs, whether that be cleaning, washing or life admin, is an issue that affects a lot of couples. 

Starling Bank found women do a total of 36 hours of household tasks and admin per week - equivalent to a full-time job. 

This is nine hours more than men - and yet men believe they do the majority in their household. The average man estimates they do 52% of work overall.

It's the discrepancy between perception and reality (and, of course, this can work both ways) that leads to arguments.

Couples who don't divide the housework equally have roughly five arguments about housework each month - rising to eight for couples who rely on just one person for the work.

We spoke to relationship expert Hayley Quinn about the best ways to split household work - and how to deal with arguments should they arise with your partner. 

She explained that it's necessary to be "transparent" when deciding how to split the workload - but also to be flexible in order to find a solution that suits all involved. 

While a 50/50 split might be your idea of perfection, Hayley said it was "almost inevitable that one partner may take on slightly more of the load" at different periods of time. 

"Striving for perfect 50/50 fairness at all times is a really nice ideal, but it just may not be that practical for modern life," she said. 

She said some jobs may be more visible than others, like cleaning, sorting out the washing, and taking the bins out.

Other jobs can take up just as much time and resource, but will fly under the radar. She gave the examples or sorting out travel insurance or changing over internet provider. 

How should you approach a conversation with your partner about splitting the work? 

To start off, Hayley said you should enter the conversation with a positive mindset - think how you are both contributing to the relationship in different ways.

"When you're having these conversations, it's not that many people are sitting around feeling like they're not contributing," Hayley said. 

"In fact, I think if there's a discrepancy in how people contribute, it's just due to a lack of awareness as to what the other partner does, and some chores are just more obviously visible than others."

Try to avoid starting the chat with the perspective that you are working a lot harder than your partner and they're not pulling their weight. 

"That way, you start from a place of we're all on the same team," she said. 

"When you're doing that as well, it's really important not to make statements which assume what the other partner is thinking, feeling, or contributing. 

"So, for instance, saying something like 'I'm always the one that's picking the kids up from school and you never do anything',  becomes easily very accusational, and this is when arguments start.

"Instead, most partners will be much more receptive if you simply ask for more help and assistance." 

When asking for help, Hayley said it's important to ask in a way that's verbal and clear - don't assume your partner is going to intuitively know what share of household chores to take on if you just complain. 

"In a nice way, explicitly ask for what you want. It could be something like saying, 'Look, I know that we're both working a long week, but I feel like there's so much to do. It would be really helpful if... I'd really appreciate it if you take over lunch,'" she explained. 

"Again, start from a place of appreciation. Acknowledge what your partner contributes already, and be explicitly clear as to what you would like them to do. Phrase it as a request for their help." 

She also said some people can feel protective of how jobs are completed, and learning to relinquish that control can be helpful. 

"If you want it to feel more equitable, you have to let your partner do things in their own way," she said. 

What happens if that doesn't work? 

If you find the conversations aren't helping, you can always try organising a rota, Hayley said. 

She recommended using Starling Bank's Share the Load tool to work out your chore split. 

However, she said if you feel there are constant conversations and nothing is changing then the issue is becoming more about communication than sharing the workload. 

"It's actually about someone not hearing what you're trying to communicate to them, so it's more of a relationship-wide issue," she said. 

She advised sitting down and trying to have another transparent verbal conversation, making it clear that you have spoken about this before and how it's making you feel in a factual way, without placing blame. 

Using phrases like "I've noticed" or "I've observed" can help, she said. 

If after all that, the situation still isn't getting better, she said it's time to consider confiding in friends or family for support, or seeing a relationship counsellor. 

The oldest and most prestigious tennis event in the world returns on Monday, with the best of the best players to battle over two weeks to be named champion.

Crowds in their thousands will flock to Wimbledon to enjoy a spot of sport - as well as the range of food and drink on offer.

It's not the cheapest day out, with a cool cup of Pimms setting you back just under £10 and a bottle of water coming in at nearly £3.

But did you know that despite souring inflation in recent years sending food prices through the roof, one fan favourite - the quintessentially British strawberries and cream combo - has stayed at the same price since 2010?

A pot of the sweet snack costs just £2.50, making it one of the more affordable offerings at the All England Club. It has been served up there since the very first Wimbledon tournament in 1877.

Perdita Sedov, Wimbledon's head of food and beverage, previously told The Telegraph the price freeze "goes back to a long-standing tradition" of strawberries and cream being associated with the championship.

"It's about being accessible to all," she said.

According to the Wimbledon website, each year more than 38.4 tonnes of strawberries are picked and consumed during the tournament.

Ofgem is being urged not to lift a ban on acquisition-only energy tariffs (deals that are available only to new customers, not existing ones).

A coalition of consumer organisations and energy companies led by Which? has penned a letter to the government regulator for electricity and gas warning it of the risk of a "return to a market which discriminates against loyal customers". 

They have also raised the potential impact on customers in debt, who may not be able to switch but could also find themselves struggling to access a better deal with their current supplier under the plans. 

The letter also notes the "very recent history" when more than 30 suppliers went bust - many after trying to win customers with unsustainably cheap tariffs.

Ofgem has said it could remove the ban on acquisition-only tariffs from 1 October but consumer choice website Which?  has research that shows the public are opposed to cheap deals that exclude existing customers, with 81% feeling it would be unfair if their supplier was offering cheaper deals to new customers only. 

The consumer champion has signed the letter to Ofgem alongside E.ON, Octopus, So Energy, Rebel Energy, End Fuel Poverty Coalition, Citizens Advice and Fair by Design.

Two topics dominated our inbox this week.

Many readers got in touch about our Weekend Money feature on older Britons who face having to work past pension age to pay off long-term mortgages.

Lots of you share the fears of those we spoke to in the feature...

I am in my 70s with still about five years to go on my mortgage. It stands at 30k on a 300k house. The mortgage repayments are £800 a month, this doesn't sound much but on a static pension it is massive and I am literally on the point of not having sufficient money to pay it. Red

I was supposed to retire in 2.5 years at 66 and 4 months, my mortgage finishes when I'm 70. I was paying off extra (double) on my previous rate to reduce an interest only mortgage, but the recent increases in mortgage rates have meant I'm paying off hardly any. AVB

I'm 67 and still trying to pay off a mortgage that has another five years to run. I can't stop working and do over 10 hours a day, 5 days a week. Keith

My problem is going to be paying off an interest-only mortgage. More than anything I wish I hadn't changed when I had my twins but we couldn't make ends meet at the time. Sazavan

Six years ago I reached the age of 70 and my interest-only mortgage ended - to extend it was impossible with the conditions attached. This then threw me into the rental market, paying more than my mortgage. Now I am facing eviction from the rental due to it being sold. Marianj

We also heard from a mortgage adviser, whose recommendations matched those of Gerard Boon, the managing director of online mortgage broker Boon Brokers, who we spoke to for the feature...

I am a mortgage adviser in Leicestershire and have found an increasing number of people asking to go as long as possible past normal retirement age. I always point out that it's great to have lower payments in the short term but you will need to work to 75. There's no choice. Semaine

Onto the second topic that dominated your correspondence, and we were sorry to learn that lots of you face similar issues as reader Adam, who has had to take his faulty car back to the garage six times - and is still not convinced it is fixed. 

Scott Dixon, from The Complaints Resolver , was on hand to help break down what Adam could do for our Money Problem feature - read his advice here:

Same thing happened to me, except that they didn't let me refund the vehicle and claimed it was my fault even though I told them about the issue during the six months' warranty multiple times... they barely replied. K

I have bought a used car and there is an engine management light on. The garage where I bought it from has since changed name and moved premises (found out by accident). When I call to book in I am told to expect a call back or the mechanic will ring me but they never do. Andy D

I have taken my car to Halfords four times in the last 14 months. Each time they guarantee me it's fixed and within a week it's back to normal. Can I get it repaired elsewhere and bill Halfords? Simon

I have a JAG SVR that's been faulty since day one, the garage sent me home with it faulty and not working correctly. I have tried to reject it but the finance company are playing David versus Goliath... we can prove issues from day one, we have two vehicle reports to back it up. Jezza

Have a Nissan Juke, which has a seat issue where it sinks on its own… Nissan saying it's not a manufacturing fault, but "user error". Where do I stand in getting it fixed? Technical team keeps fobbing it off as our fault. Esmith97

If you're in a position like this, do check out Scott Dixon's advice in the feature above.

The Money blog is your place for consumer news, economic analysis and everything you need to know about the cost of living - bookmark news.sky.com/money.

It runs with live updates every weekday - while on Saturdays we scale back and offer you a selection of weekend reads.

Check them out this morning and we'll be back on Monday with rolling news and features.

The Money team is Bhvishya Patel, Jess Sharp, Katie Williams, Brad Young, Ollie Cooper and Mark Wyatt, with sub-editing by Isobel Souster. The blog is edited by Jimmy Rice.

Starting from next month, gamers will be able to play Xbox titles like Fallout 4, Starfield and Fortnite using Amazon Fire TV.

A new upgrade coming to the Fire TV 4K devices transforms your television into a console, thanks to Xbox Cloud Gaming.

You'll need to be a member of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate to take advantage, plus you'll need a compatible controller and a solid internet connection.

"One of the biggest benefits of cloud gaming is the ability to play premium games without needing a console," Amazon explained.

"The Fire TV Stick may be compact, but it can stream and run graphically intense Xbox games like Senua's Saga: Hellblade II.

"This portability also means you can easily move your cloud gaming setup from the living room TV to a different room or even take it on the road.

"As long as you have a solid internet connection and your compatible Fire TV Stick, and a compatible controller, you can take your Xbox Game Pass games and saved progress travels with you."

Once downloaded, the Xbox app is designed to offer a smooth and seamless experience. Here’s how it works:

• Install and launch the Xbox app from your Fire TV device;
• Sign in with your Microsoft account to play. If you’re an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate member, you’ll have instant access to hundreds of cloud-enabled games;
• Connect a Bluetooth-enabled wireless controller. Controllers like the Xbox Wireless Controller, Xbox Adaptive Controller, PlayStation DualSense, or DualShock 4 controller are all compatible.

A new Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K will set you back £59.99 on Amazon, while a new Xbox Wireless Controller costs £49.59.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate currently costs £1 for the first 14 days for new members, then is billed at £12.99 per month.

House prices are overvalued by thousands of pounds, according to a major property company.

The typical property is £20,000 more than is affordable to the average household, says Zoopla.

But rising incomes and longer mortgage terms mean the "over-valuation" is expected to disappear by the end of the year.

Zoopla's report said: "House prices still look expensive on various measures of affordability.

"We expect house price inflation to remain muted, likely to rise more slowly than household incomes over the next one to two years."

The average house price is around £264,900 – but according to Zoopla's calculations, the affordable price is £245,200.

"A new government will add a dimension of political stability when the autumn market starts in September and even if the [Bank of England base] rate is not lower by then, a cut will be imminent," said Tom Bill, head of UK residential research at estate agent Knight Frank.

"Given that mortgage rates will steadily reduce as services inflation comes under control, we expect UK house prices to rise by 3% this year."

Zoopla's over-valuation estimate was reached by comparing the actual average house price in its index with an "affordable" price, which was calculated based on households' disposable incomes, average mortgage rates and average deposit sizes for home buyers.

It's one of the most iconic and popular music festivals in the world, and it's notoriously hard to get a ticket.

Glastonbury has rolled around once again and roughly 210,000 people have flocked to Somerset this year as Dua Lipa, Coldplay and SZA headline the UK's biggest festival this weekend.

Those in the crowd are in the lucky minority — an estimated 2.5 million people tried to get tickets for this year's event, meaning the odds really aren't in your favour if you fancy going.

Tickets routinely sell out within an hour of going on sale, and that demand is unlikely to decrease next year, given the festival will likely take a fallow year in 2026.

So, if you're feeling jealous this year, how do you get tickets for Glastonbury 2025, and how can you give yourself the best possible chance?

We've run through all the available details as well as some tips so you're best prepared when the time comes.

Registration details:  Before potential festivalgoers get the chance to buy tickets, they must register on the official website.

One of the reasons this is done is to stop ticket touting, with all tickets non-transferable. Each ticket features the photograph of the registered ticket holder, with security checks carried out to ensure that only the person in the photograph is admitted to the festival.

Registration is free and only takes a few minutes. You will be asked to provide basic contact details and to upload a passport-standard photo.

Registration closes a few weeks before tickets are released.

Where to buy tickets:  Tickets can be bought exclusively at  glastonbury.seetickets.com   once they become available.

No other site or agency will be allocated tickets, so if you see anyone else claiming to have Glastonbury tickets available for purchase, it's most likely a scam.

When tickets go on sale: We don't know the details for next year yet - but Glastonbury ticket sales usually take place in October or November of the year before the festival. 

This year's ticket sales began, following a delay, in November 2023. Coach tickets typically go on sale a few days before (traditionally on a Thursday), with general admission tickets following on the Sunday morning a few days later.

For those that miss out, there's also a resale that takes place in April for tickets that have been returned or for those with a balance that has not been paid.

This year's April resale took place on 18 April (for ticket and coach travel options) and 21 April (general admission tickets and accommodation options).

How much it costs:  General admission tickets for this year's festival cost £355 each, plus a £5 booking fee. That's an increase on last year's price of £335 each, which was also an increase on the 2022 price of around £280.

So, we can probably assume that ticket prices will go up once again for next year's festival. 

Remember, there are options to pay for your ticket in instalments, so you won't have to pay the full price in one go if you don't want to. All tickets are subject to a £75 deposit, with the remaining balance payable by the first week of April.

It's also worth noting that Glastonbury is a family festival, and that's reflected in the fact that children aged 12 and under when the festival takes place are admitted free of charge.

TIPS FOR THE BIG TICKET SALE DAY

The scramble for tickets when they go on general sale is nothing short of painstaking, with demand far outweighing supply.

Here are some tips to give you the best possible chance of bagging tickets:

Familiarise yourself with the website: You may see a reduced, bare-looking version of the booking page once you gain entry. The organisers say this is intentional to cope with high traffic and does not mean the site has crashed, so be sure not to refresh or leave the page.

Once you reach the first page of the booking site, you will need to enter the registration number and registered postcode for yourself and the other people you are attempting to book tickets for.

When you proceed, the details you have provided will be displayed on the next page.

Once you have double checked all of your information is correct, click 'confirm' to enter the payment page, where you will need to check/amend your billing address, confirm your payment information, accept the terms and conditions, and complete the checkout within the allocated time.

Timekeeping: You can get timed out if you don't act fast, so it's a good idea to have your details saved on a separate document so you can copy and paste them over quickly.

You might also have to approve your payment, which could mean answering security questions from your card issuer. Have a device on hand to ensure you're ready for this.

Internet connection: This should go without saying, but you won't stand a chance without a solid internet connection.

Avoid trying to rely on your mobile phone signal, and politely ask those you might share the internet with to delay any online activity that might slow your connection.

Don't give up: Until the page tells you that tickets have sold out, you still have a chance. 

Shortly before that point, there will be a message saying 'all available tickets have now been allocated,' which users often think means their chances are up. 

What it actually means is that orders are being processed for all the tickets that are available. But if somebody whose order is being processed doesn't take our previous advice and runs out of time, their loss could be your gain.

Multiple tabs and devices: Glastonbury advises against its customers trying to run multiple tabs and devices to boost their chances of getting a ticket.

Glastonbury's website says running multiple devices simultaneously is "a waste of valuable resources, and doesn't reflect the ethos of the festival".

"Please stick to one device and one tab," it adds, "so that you can focus on entering your details without confusing your browser and help us make the ticket sale as quick and stress free as possible for all."

Shoppers have been buying bigger TVs to enjoy this summer's European Championships, according to the electrical retailer Currys.

The chain said UK sales were up by more than 30% in the past month, with "supersize" screens — 85-inch and above — selling well in the run-up to the Euros.

"Having a third of the TV market and the Euros being a big event for many people, we're seeing that super-sizing trend keep on giving," said Currys chief executive Alex Baldock.

The most popular, and also cheapest, 85-inch TV on the Currys website costs £999. 

The most expensive super-size TV is a 98-inch offering from Samsung that will set you back £9,499.

Currys reported adjusted pre-tax profits of £118m for the year to 27 April. That represented a 10% increase from the previous year's profits of £107m.

Like-for-like sales for Currys UK and Ireland declined by 2% to £4.97bn in the 12 months to 27 April, with consumer confidence knocked by high inflation levels and rising interest rates.

"We can see our progress in ever-more engaged colleagues, more satisfied customers and better financial performance," Mr Baldock added.

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Five Business Plan Competition Mistakes to Avoid

4 min. read

Updated March 15, 2024

For the last several years, employees of Palo Alto Software have been judging business plan competitions. We sponsor many of them, in some cases providing business plan software for entrants to use to write their plans, and even giving cash awards for the best written business plans.

When we’re judging plans, we have unique criteria we use. We’re not necessarily looking for a business that we’d give our money to, since we’re not investors. We’re judging based on the quality of the business plan itself. Is it complete? Is it written, edited, and organized well? Are the financials all there, are they realistic, and do they make sense?

Over the years, we’ve read some great plans. And in fact, some of the sample business plans in our software were winners of business plan competitions that we judged and were authorized to incorporate into our products. That said, we’ve also seen some really… well… some really not great plans.

You’ll have to keep reading to find out.

Here are five inexcusable mistakes we’ve seen in business plans entered into competitions we’ve judged.

1.  The bad analogy

We received a business plan for a device that justified the pricing of their product by saying buying one would cost less than a lawsuit. As the reader of that plan said, is that really the best yardstick? If so, why aren’t running shoes priced just below an angioplasty?

2.  Flowery language

Competition plan writers should consider their readers. Sometimes that means remembering not to use tiny fonts that “aging eyes” have trouble reading. Sometimes that just means remembering that judges are reading a LOT of plans (when you get to page 40, it might be too late).

But it also means remembering that these are business plans, not romance novels. Three beautiful, awe-inspiring, ‘bright beacon’-type adjectives per page might ( might… ) be okay. But in one paragraph? You may have crafted a beautiful piece of prose. But that doesn’t make it appropriate for your business plan.

3.  Admitting defeat

We saw a plan that started great. It was well researched, full of detailed information about the potential market, product offering, even retail space design. It was looking like a good plan. Until the summary just before the financials, which basically said “Yeah, after all that research, we’ve determined that it would cost too much to launch this business. So we’re not going to.”

We ask for realism in the business plans we read. But there is such a thing as too much realism. If your business plan illustrates that your business is doomed, why would you submit a plan saying so to a business plan competition?

4.  Exorbitantly loquacious and pretentious

Many of the business plan competitions we judge are sponsored by colleges. So it’s safe to assume that the people submitting the plans are at least part of the way through a college education. Now, when you’re 10 years old, knowing a lot of big words and using them extensively is kind of cute. It’s also kind of annoying, but you’re forgiven because you’re 10. When you’re a college student and you load your business plan with the biggest words you can think of, and use them at every opportunity, it’s just annoying.

Even more annoying is when you use the same $2 words repeatedly. Two pages and four uses of the word “paradigm” is too much. No matter how old you are.

Overusing words is one thing. Misusing them is much more amusing. One plan we read discussed how they were going to employ ‘gorilla marketing’ tactics. Which must be a large, hairy, dangerous version of the more common guerilla marketing.

And my favorite, the weirdest business plan competition mistake that I’ve had the pleasure of seeing…

5.  A little too hip hop

You know that fake Latin text often used as a placeholder in publishing and graphic design? It looks like this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco l aboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.

If lorem ipsum text is used in a business plan to get across the message “this is where it’s going to say something that hasn’t been determined yet and isn’t actually important in the business plan itself,” that’s one thing. Maybe you are including a screen shot of what your website is going to look like, but all the text hasn’t been written yet. That’s acceptable (though not pretty).

That block of odd text at the beginning of this post? Those are lyrics from a Notorious B.I.G. song. They appeared in an actual business plan that was submitted to a contest we were judging, showing where some text would go in an example of the company’s logo and design plans.

There might be times when hip hop references are appropriate in a business plan. For instance, if you know that the judges of the business plan competition you’re entering are hip hop afficianados. But considering the gravity of your need for funding, your desire to win the competition, and the anonymity of the judges in most cases, it’s probably going to be best to stick to lorem ipsum .

Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software , a co-founder of Borland International, and a recognized expert in business planning. He has an MBA from Stanford and degrees with honors from the University of Oregon and the University of Notre Dame. Today, Tim dedicates most of his time to blogging, teaching and evangelizing for business planning.

Table of Contents

• 1.  The bad analogy
• 2.  Flowery language
• 3.  Admitting defeat
• 4.  Exorbitantly loquacious and pretentious
• 5.  A little too hip hop

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The Bank for International Settlements warned on Sunday that rising government debt levels amid a number of major elections this year could roil global financial markets.

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Judges temporarily halt part of President Biden's student debt forgiveness plan

The Associated Press

President Biden speaks at an event about canceling student debt, at the Madison Area Technical College Truax campus, April 8, 2024, in Madison, Wis. Kayla Wolf/AP hide caption

TOPEKA, Kan. — Federal judges in Kansas and Missouri on Monday together blocked much of a Biden administration student loan repayment plan that provides a faster path to cancellation and lower monthly payments for millions of borrowers.

The judges’ rulings prevent the U.S. Department of Education from helping many of the intended borrowers ease their loan repayment burdens going forward under a rule set to go into effect July 1. The decisions do not cancel assistance already provided to borrowers.

In Kansas, U.S. District Judge Daniel Crabtree ruled in a lawsuit filed by the state’s attorney general, Kris Kobach, on behalf of his state and 10 others. In his ruling, Crabtree allowed parts of the program that allow students who borrowed $12,000 or less to have the rest of their loans forgiven if they make 10 years’ worth of payments, instead of the standard 25.

But Crabtree said that the Department of Education won’t be allowed to implement parts of the program meant to help students who had larger loans and could have their monthly payments lowered and their required payment period reduced from 25 years to 20 years.

In Missouri, U.S. District Judge John Ross’ order applies to different parts of the program than Crabtree’s. His order says that the U.S. Department of Education cannot forgive loan balances going forward. He said the department still could lower monthly payments.

3 things you need to know about student loans this summer

Ross issued a ruling in a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey on behalf of his state and six others.

Together, the two rulings, each by a judge appointed by former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, appeared to greatly limit the scope of the Biden administration’s efforts to help borrowers after the U.S. Supreme Court last year rejected the Democratic president’s first attempt at a forgiveness plan. Both judges said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona exceeded the authority granted by Congress in laws dealing with students loans.

Bailey and Kobach each hailed the decision from their state's judge as a major legal victory against the Biden administration and argue, as many Republicans do, that forgiving some students' loans shifts the cost of repaying them to taxpayers.

“Only Congress has the power of the purse, not the President,” Bailey said in a statement. "Today’s ruling was a huge win for the rule of law, and for every American who Joe Biden was about to force to pay off someone else’s debt.”

The White House said it strongly disagrees with the judges’ rulings and would continue to defend the program, and use every available tool to give relief to students and borrowers.

In a statement, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Biden administration “will never stop fighting for students and borrowers — no matter how many roadblocks Republican elected officials and special interests put in our way.”

In a statement posted on the social media platform X, leaders of the Student Borrower Protection Center, which advocates for eliminating student debt, called the decisions “partisan lawfare” and “a recipe for chaos across the student loan system.”

“Millions of borrowers are now in limbo as they struggle to make sense of their rights under the law and the information being provided by the government and their student loan companies,” said the group’s executive director, Mike Pierce.

In both lawsuits, the suing states sought to invalidate the entire program, which the Biden administration first made available to borrowers in July 2023, and at least 150,000 have had their loans canceled. But the judges noted that the lawsuits weren't filed until late March in Kansas and early April in Missouri.

“So the court doesn’t see how plaintiffs can complain of irreparable harm from them,” Crabtree wrote in his opinion.

Both orders are preliminary, meaning the injunctions imposed by the judges would remain in effect through a trial of the separate lawsuits. However, to issue a temporary order each judge had to conclude that the states were likely to prevail in a trial.

Kobach framed the Biden plan as “unconstitutional” and an affront to “blue collar Kansas workers who didn’t go to college."

There was some irony in Crabtree's decision: Kansas is no longer a party to the lawsuit Kobach filed. Earlier this month, Crabtree ruled that Kansas and seven other states in the lawsuit — Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Lousiana, Montana, Nebraska and Utah — couldn't show that they'd been harmed by the new program and dismissed them as plaintiffs.

That left Alaska, South Carolina and Texas, and Crabtree said they could sue because each has a state agency that services student loans.

But Crabtree said that lowering monthly payments and shortening the period of required payments to earn loan forgiveness “overreach any generosity Congress has authorized before.”

In the Missouri ruling, Ross said repayment schedules and “are well within the wheelhouse” of the department but the “plain text” of U.S. law doesn’t give it authority to forgive loans before 25 years of payments.

Missouri also has an agency that services student loans. The other states in its lawsuit are Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma.

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Student-loan payments will be paused for 3 million borrowers after federal judges blocked debt cancellation and cheaper bills through Biden's new repayment plan

• The Education Deparment is placing 3 million student-loan borrowers on administrative forbearance.
• It's a result of recent court rulings that blocked key parts of the SAVE plan, including debt relief and lower bills.
• The department will also be taking down online applications for income-driven repayment plans to avoid inaccurate information.

After federal courts blocked key parts of President Joe Biden's new repayment plan , the Education Department announced additional steps to help borrowers during this time.

On Monday, two separate rulings from federal judges in Kansas and Missouri placed preliminary injunctions on key provisions in the SAVE income-driven repayment plan . These included blocking a shorter timeline for student-loan forgiveness and new provisions set to go into effect on July 1, including lower monthly payments for undergraduate borrowers.

The Justice Department appealed both decisions and while courts have yet to make a final decision on the fate of the SAVE plan, relief is temporarily blocked. An Education Department spokesperson told Business Insider that as a result of the rulings, the department will place about 3 million borrowers with payment amounts greater than $0 on administrative forbearance, during which they will not owe any payments, and interest will not accrue.

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Additionally, the department is taking down all online applications for income-driven repayment plans and loan consolidations to ensure borrowers do not receive inaccurate information during this time. These changes are expected to take about four to six weeks, and borrowers can continue to submit paper applications for income-driven repayment programs or SAVE, which servicers will continue to process.

"President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Secretary Cardona remain committed to fixing a broken student loan system and making college more affordable for more Americans," a department spokesperson said in a statement. "They will not stop vigorously defending the SAVE Plan, the most affordable repayment plan in history, and will continue to fight for this long-overdue relief, no matter how many times Republican elected officials and their allies try to stop them."

The department will directly communicate these changes to impacted borrowers in the coming days.

The lawsuits in question were filed earlier this year by a group of GOP state attorneys general who argued the relief through the SAVE plan was an overreach of Biden's authority and harmed their states' tax revenues.

Both judges ruled that elements of the SAVE plan that have already gone into effect can remain in place, but any forthcoming relief — like continued batches of borrowers qualifying for loan forgiveness — cannot be implemented as the legal process progresses.

Following the rulings, some advocates and Democratic lawmakers called on the Education Department to place impacted borrowers on forbearance or implement another form of relief, given the confusion that could result from the injunctions.

"This damning and harmful lawsuit will only throw struggling borrowers further into chaos, deny them the student debt cancellation they demand and deserve, and prevent them from purchasing homes, growing their families, and so much more," Rep. Ayanna Pressley said in a Tuesday statement. "The Biden Administration must continue to take immediate action to ensure borrowers receive the student debt cancellation they were promised."

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