Over the course of that afternoon, these two teams, along with the other finalists—Hemova Port, NeoPersona, and Momo Scientific—presented both in front of a panel of distinguished judges and at a public forum. After careful consideration, ToolSpinner was selected the winner.  All of the presentations were impressive, well-prepared, and the concepts were not only innovative but socially conscious.

During the discussions, the judges provided insightful financial, marketing and management advice.  The competition was stiff, but; after intense deliberation, it was decided that ToolSpinner offered the most viable business concept.

The first place prize package is valued at $17,400 and includes a monetary prize of $4,000, a 90-day Resident membership to TowsonGlobal and executive coaching from CEOIQ.  The second place winner also receives a prize package valued at $5,200, which includes a monetary prize of $1,000, 90-day Associate Membership to TowsonGlobal and one year membership to the online community and resources of CEO IQ.

We would like to thank our sponsors and judges for their support and for helping us make this successful event!

TowsonGlobal’s latest effort in encouraging and strengthening entrepreneurial spirit and innovation in the Baltimore area has surpassed expectations. The response to the competition has been gratifying and shows the great potential of entrepreneurs in our region.  Stay tuned for the next competition in 2013!

Business Plan 1 - The first plan had big dreams. This entrepreneur wanted to completely take over a multi billion dollar industry. I mean literally take over the entire industry. Here were just a few of the problems:

• The team had no experience working in the industry
• The team needed millions to get started, but could only contribute a small amount personally
• The team had no technical/coding ability despite the fact that the business was based on technology

I admired the team’s passion to solve this problem, but there were so many holes that they could not realistically fill.

Business Plan 2 – The second business plan was technically very strong. The business owner understood the industry and did great research to determine exactly what it would take to start the business, and what to expect in terms of revenue and expenses. The plan had a high chance of success, but here where the problems:

• Success for the business would be $500,000 in sales someday
• Success would be hiring 3 part time employees
• Success would only impact a small group of people in their local community

This business will probably succeed, but will never make much of an impact. Realistically, this was a solid plan, but they will never win the competition because the business is too limited in scope.

Business Plan 3 – The third business plan had the best of both worlds. This team claimed that in 5 years they could be a $100 million in annual revenue company with over 100 employees. That is big dream, but here is how they backed it up:

• Customers want/need their products and services so much that in their first 3 months in business they generated over $50,000 in sales
• The team had experience in the industry
• The business plan had a very specific timeline and strategic plan to reach their goals

Do I think this company will actually reach $100 million in annual sales in 5 years? Probably not, but I do think they will win the business plan competition simply because they had the perfect mix of big dreams and a realistic plan.

Photo credit: mikebaird

About the Author: Adam Hoeksema is the Founder of ExecutivePlan. ExecutivePlan helps entrepreneurs write business plan executive summaries in order to raise capital. For more business plan competition tips read Adam’s blog post “How to Win a Business Plan Competition“

“Get your key message across in as little time as possible,” he advises. “Summarize the key points of your venture in two sentences if at all possible and keep your overall pitch to no more than 10 to 12 minutes.” Rossi honed Sweet Tooth’s pitch in front of numerous VCs and won the Road to Banff Pitch Competition.

Rossi believes the best way to lose the interest of a VC or a pitch competition judge is to be overly focused on technical details, display insufficient enthusiasm and fail to showcase the past successes of your team. “Capturing the attention of your audience is key — no one is going to remember or care about a bland pitch,” he continues.

Terry Ellison, founder and CEO of Shoplet.com, an online discount office supply retailer, agrees, saying, “You need to deliver your pitch with enthusiasm, a sense of experience and effectively communicate your product and the problem it solves. Most importantly you need to give your pitch with confidence. If you aren’t confident in your business why should anyone else be?”

Many entrepreneurs can’t sift through all they want to communicate about their business and pull out the really compelling nuggets, says Jerry Rackley, vice president of Marketing and Product Development for Demand Metric Research Corporation. “The biggest barrier for entrepreneurs when writing compelling elevator pitches is the fact that they know too much about their innovation,” he adds.

“It is difficult or impossible for them to have an ‘out of body’ experience that allows them to see their innovation through the eyes of someone who needs it but knows nothing about it,” he continues. “Before you can write an effective business plan, you need to figure out your innovation’s positioning. Once you understand how to position it in the market, writing the unique selling proposition statement becomes much easier.”

Mike Scanlin of Born To Sell, a covered call investment tools website, boils down an effective elevator pitch to three key components:

• Market size: “Anything over $1 billion is fine, or $200 million if it’s growing fast. Don’t dwell on it. But do make sure it’s accessible. If you’re selling mobile games then the market size is not the sum of all mobile apps; it’s the sum of all mobile games. Be accurate.”
• Technology: “This includes your unique differentiators, barriers to entry — patents or exclusive license or distribution deals — and a thing or two that you do differently or better than anyone else.”
• Team: “Absolutely critical at this stage. Enthusiasm and passion are important, but so are prior successes and credentials — certain number of years in the space. Also, the number of people needs to be more than two or three and none of them should be related to or dating each other.”

Finally, a current status or “early proof” that your market will buy what you sell is vital, he adds. “Making a statement such as ‘we’ve grown (customers, revenue, users, transactions, etc) by some number (50 to 100%) quarter over quarter or the last two to four quarters’ will get the attention of most VCs.”

Photo credit: MrSchuReads

Writing a business plan or entering a business plan competition is far from the first step. While a business plan is a necessity, a plan that is adaptable to change as circumstances dictate is what is needed after some beginning and intermediate steps are completed, Houser says. Would-be entrepreneurs first need to answer several fundamental questions about their business idea: what are their goals for the business, what are their life goals and how do they see the start-up business fitting into their lives.

Other questions to consider include:

• What is the environment like for your start-up’s industry?
• What financial goals do you have for the business?
• What feedback have you gotten from potential customers?
• Do you have a prototype of your product?
• How do you plan to market your product to early adopters?
• How much funding will you need to get the business off the ground?
• How do you plan to raise that funding? If you don’t have the funds yourself, how do you plan to solicit them?

Many would-be entrepreneurs fail because they aren’t comfortable selling, Houser notes. “If you aren’t a salesperson, you need to find a partner who is, because your business won’t make it if your product or service doesn’t sell,” she says. “And partnering with others or hiring staff creates a whole other set of issues that many idea-people aren’t experienced in dealing with.”

Once you’ve considered these issues and are ready to move into a more formal stage of proceeding with your business idea, it’s time to write a plan, Houser says. “We recommend drafting a power point deck that covers 15 key topics relevant to investors, partners and customers,” she says.

Writing a plan is important because it forces you, the would-be business owner, to formulate your ideas in writing and fill in any holes. But don’t just sit in front of your computer writing a plan; get out and talk to potential customers, meet with potential investors and partners and above all, try to sell your product or service, she adds.

“A common mistake many entrepreneurs make is not sharing their idea, and not executing their business plan,” she says. “Too many of them are afraid that their idea will get stolen, but that rarely happens. To have any chance of succeeding, you have to get feedback, talk to customers and see if your idea has legs and will go somewhere.”

Photo credit: London Permaculture

Additionally, Ben Walsh, owner of PureBang Games and Lisa Druillard owner of My Hopeful Journey sat down to provide some insight on how participating and winning in the competition helped them gain more experience when it comes to attracting potential investors and how it has helped them expand their business. They also discuss the benefits of becoming a member of a business incubator like TowsonGlobal.

Both Lisa and Ben believe that part of what made him successful, was the continuous mentoring and support from experts and guidance throughout the competition’s stages. They also believe that obtaining affordable resources and training is necessary, especially during the initial stages of starting a business; these are some of the benefits that TowsonGlobal offers as one of the competition’s main prizes.

For more information on eligibility and criteria or deadlines, please visit our Business Plan Competition page or email us at info@towsonglobal.com

1. Know the Purpose of the Competition – In an extensive guide/blog post on “How to Win a Business Plan Competition” I discuss the importance of understanding what the organizing entity is trying to accomplish by hosting the business plan competition.  There are 3 primary competition organizers:

• Universities
• Economic Development Organizations
• Business Incubators

Each organization has a slightly different end goal.  You need to understand their goals, and then clearly demonstrate that your business can match those goals.  Economic development organizations host competitions primarily to support new companies that can create jobs in their geographic region.  If your business plan says you will create 2 jobs in the host’s state, and then you plan to move to California to create 40 new jobs, you may want to reconsider whether you should even waste your time competing.  You will be at an immediate disadvantage with the judges if you don’t meet the goals of the competition.  If you do plan to create jobs in the area, then you should strategically use that to your advantage.

2. Research the Judge’s Background - Many business plan competitions like to publish who their judges will be for the final presentation day. If you are able to find out who will be judging I encourage you to do as much research as you can on each judge. If possible, try to make your pitch personal to the judges. For example, if you know that one of the judges is a Bank President, and your product or service can help solve a common problem for banks, you might consider using the President’s bank as a use case in your presentation.

It is also good to know the judges background so that you can be prepared for the question and answer section. If you know there is a marketing expert on the judging panel, then you should be prepared to answer detailed questions about your marketing strategy.

3. Demonstrate How Winning Impacts Your Business - Lastly, you should demonstrate how winning the business plan competition would positively impact your business. Maybe winning the competition will allow you to:

• Develop a Prototype
• Hire an Employee
• Fulfill a Large Sales Order
• Open your Doors for Business

It is to your advantage to make the judges understand that winning this competition will turn into results for your business. The judges want you to be a future success story so that they can brag one day by claiming that your business got started through their competition. So if the judges fear that you might not use the prize money for the business, or that your business is likely to fail, they are unlikely to choose your business to win the competition. Make it clear how you will use the money, and the impact that money will have.

If you keep these three tips in mind as you develop your strategy, you just might have a chance at winning a business plan competition.

About the Author:  Adam Hoeksema is the Founder of ExecutivePlan which helps entrepreneurs create powerful business plan executive summaries.  Adam is also the author of the free guide “How to Win a Business Plan Competition.” 

“It was clear from the results of our previous business plan competition and our entrepreneurial classes that some students will fix on an idea that isn’t feasible and carry it through in a written plan,” she says. “We’re trying to mirror what we do in the classroom and focus on taking action and helping students realize that entrepreneurship isn’t a formulaic endeavor.”

At Babson, every student takes an entrepreneurship class, no matter what his or her major is, Strimaitis says. To put the ideas taught by professors in those classes into action, the B.E.T.A. challenge will reward students for the actions they take to test and refine their business plans based on talking to potential customers, business partners and competitors. Students can’t just sit in their dorm rooms working on a website and expect to win the competition, she notes.

“The competition focuses on awarding points to students for taking action — for constantly testing, learning and revising their business plans,” she notes. The retooled competition completely avoids business plans — instead, students submit a short presentation deck addressing their potential market, expertise of their team members, and their business model rather than the traditional 30 to 50 page business plan.

Competitors will submit their materials to a panel of alumni judges, who will select six undergraduate and six graduate student teams to move to the next level of the competition. Those students will make a short pitch to another panel of judges and will participate in a Babson College Venture Demo Day where community members, venture capitalists, students and others can visit booths set up by those competitors and get more information about the products and services they are proposing in the competition.

Three undergraduate and graduate teams will move into the finals in April of 2012 where they will be judged based on the actions they have taken to test and refine their business and the practicality of their concept, Strimaitis says. The prize money is weighted to favor the winners over the runner ups — both the undergraduate and graduate team that win will receive $20,000 in prize money.

Formerly, the graduate team received a bigger prize than the undergraduate team, but the college found that just as many worthy and actionable business ideas came from the undergraduate side as the graduate side. So they decided to level the playing field and give both graduates and undergraduates the same pot of prize money, Strimaitis added. Runners up will receive $2,500 in prize money.

Photo credit: Babson College

One of the biggest inconsistencies in business plans is the gulf between the financial sections and the narrative sections, says Jerry Pradier, a business coach and author of Financial Success: Ten Shortcuts to a Profitable Business. “The numbers in the financial section have to support the narrative,” he adds. “Investors will check to see if they match up, making sure areas like the development plan have enough financial resources allocated to them. You have to be realistic with the numbers and reconcile them to the narrative.”

Potential investors and good critics of business plans will challenge every assumption the plan makes, notes Terry Murray, founder of Performance Transformation, LLC. “Before you finish your plan, ask yourself serious questions about all of your assumptions,” he says. “Make sure you include the data points that are going to substantiate your position. If they don’t, open up your thinking, do more research and explore possibilities that might not have occurred to you.”

A business plan tells the story of the company you plan to start, articulating the business’ goals and objectives in a measurable, tangible way. By tying those goals to the present, entrepreneurs keep the plan and themselves grounded. The process of writing a business plan creates a road map to implementing those goals in the months and years following the opening of the business, Murray says.

Pradier sees the goals section as the hardest part of the plan to write and present because there are so many potential variables involved in growing a business once it’s started. “The goals need to be authentic and reasonable,” he asserts. “You need to think about the smaller steps that it will take to meet the larger goals and make sure that they have the characteristics of being measurable and observable. Each goal should be assigned to be the responsibility of one staff member.

Many business plans fail just because of the lack of “chunking” goals down into smaller more manageable steps, Pradier believes.

Finally, testing your business plan’s assumptions through some type of prototyping or market testing will either validate your assumptions or send you back to the drawing board, says Murray. “It will help you incorporate real world lessons and validate the intuitive leap that brought you to create the business plan if you do it with discipline and honesty. You have to be flexible and willing to change your plan if you need to.”

There are many great resources available if you need assistance writing your business plan. One step is to check with your local economic development agency to find out about programs that they may offer. If a business plan competition is being held in your area, check there for resources as well. Many times competitions host workshops or mentoring sessions that are open to the public in addition to competitors.

Photo credit: mhaithaca

For nearly 300 men at the Cleveland Correctional Facility — a state prison near Houston, Texas — the opportunity to participate in entrepreneurship classes and a business plan competition is literally a chance at a new life. These men, who are at risk for returning to a life of crime and ending up back in jail, work with business leaders and MBA students who mentor them and instructors who teach them how to operate a legitimate business once they are released from jail, according to Erin Davis, communications specialist at the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP), a non-profit organization in Houston, Texas.

The program focuses on entrepreneurship because it’s so difficult for former inmates to get a job upon release from prison. By helping them think about and plan for a business that can financially support them upon release, the PEP program offers an alternative to unemployment and also prepares them for employment if they are able to find a job, she adds.

“We take guys who have two or three years left in their sentences and work with them intensively on entrepreneurship, business training and character,” she says. “Right now we have 300 inmates at the Cleveland Correctional Facility who participate in our program and by the end of 2013 the entire prison population of 520 will be enrolled in our program.”

It is an intensive program that is designed to focus on inmates who are the most receptive to PEP’s message. The inmates are chosen from prisons across Texas and upon acceptance are moved to the Cleveland facility. The program assists men who haven’t graduated from high school in getting their GEDs and once they have accomplished that, they spend eight hours a day, five days a week in college-level business classes, many taught by volunteer executives who agree to mentor the inmates on an ongoing basis, Davis says.

“Once they get involved with us their first assignment is to read Crime and Punishment in a week,” Davis notes. “This sends a couple of messages. One is that this is a serious program — we will kick them out if they don’t read it. We’re trying to see how serious they are. Also, the theme of the novel ties into the mindset of many of the inmates.”

From that first assignment, the program moves into intensive classes in marketing, finance, psychology, accounting and other topics. Many of the men in the program have committed serious crimes but also have some practical business acumen from running criminal enterprises before they got arrested, she adds.

“We work a lot on character issues as well — we talk a lot about healthy behavior, understanding boundaries and integrity,” Davis notes. “Those are as, if not more, important than the classes that focus strictly on business issues.”

The business plan competition is a major event in the program. The competition begins with a kick off that welcomes participants into the program and progresses through a number of events including:

• The Venture Capital Panel where participants pitch preliminary business plans to a group of VCs.
• Etiquette Night features discussions and lessons around business etiquette and proper dress, culminating in the crowning of Mr. Manners.
• Business Plan Workshop, a day long session where mentors give written and verbal feedback to business plans in progress.
• Business Plan Competition and Graduation, where one participant will win the competition and everyone who completes the program graduates.

The results of the program have been nothing short of remarkable, according to Davis.  After three years of graduates, 89 of the 100 businesses started by inmate graduates are still operating. Many of these are food service, landscaping and similar businesses. During those three years, only 9 percent of graduates have been imprisoned again, versus a rate of 48 percent for all Texas prisons, Davis says.

“We estimate our program is saving the taxpayers of Texas $7 million, because that is what it would cost if more of our graduates went back to prison,” she states. “We’re excited about the opportunity we have to work with more inmates at the Cleveland facility and to eventually expand our program to two additional prisons in Texas.”

Through the course of studying entrepreneurship and entering business plan competitions, they learned a lot about what makes — or breaks — new business ventures. Their team has won awards in three business plan competitions sponsored by MIT:

• 2011 LinkedData Prize, MIT 100k Entrepreneurship Competition: Co-Winner with two other companies
• 2011 Deployment Category Winner, MIT Clean Energy Prize
• A 2011 MIT Global Challenge Development Grant, MIT Global Challenge 

Key to their success in wining competitions and launching their company is the support that MIT provides around entrepreneurship and their business plan competitions, he says. “MIT has built a very successful entrepreneurial eco system that provides ongoing mentorship, feedback and help constructing a viable business plan,” Loijos continues.

“We were appointed a mentor through the process of competing for the MIT Clean Energy Prize and he was phenomenal,” he comments. “He helped us put together a very solid pitch and understand how to get the key compelling points across that would resonate with the judges.”

A major motivator through the competition process was that Loijos and his team planned all along to launch their business; it wasn’t a theoretical exercise. “It was a business that we really wanted to get off the ground so everything we did around the competition and in other areas, including applying for SBA grants, forced us to refine our ideas and get them down on paper,” he adds. “We didn’t get the grants, but the feedback was very helpful.”

While competing in business plan competitions in the midst of grad school and starting a business didn’t leave him and his team members much leisure time, the time put into formulating the business plan was definitely worth it. “It was a nice break from research, more applied, more relevant to my future,” he notes. “Working on the business and competing in the MIT competitions motivated us to keep going forward on the business. Having the deadlines of the business plan competition forced us to prioritize and get what we needed to get done.”

Loijos graduated from MIT with a Master’s in Technology and Policy last year. Sahni is a PhD candidate in Materials Science and Engineering at MIT. Both are working full time on getting the company off the ground. “It’s challenging,” he admits. “Being such a small company that is brand new, it’s hard to convince potential clients to work with us. We have to sell our experience in practice and fulfill multiple roles, from running marketing campaigns to keeping the sales pipeline full.”

Photo Credit: LinkCycle

The Plan Fund’s 2011 Business Plan Competition, sponsored by Capital One, awarded grants and software to four entrepreneurs. The Plan Fund’s Business Plan Competition is designed to help specific disadvantaged populations — including men that have been recently released from jail and graduates of a small business training program at the YWCA of Greater Dallas — learn more about starting their own businesses, according to Jeremy Gregg, executive director of The Plan Fund.

“We focus on low to moderate income entrepreneurs, those who are disadvantaged and extremely credit challenged,” he says. “Our business plan competition, which concluded in November, gave us the opportunity to bring attention to what we do, attract more applicants and provide grants and QuickBooks software to the four entrepreneurs who won the competition.”

The Plan Fund’s focus is quite different from that of most organizations that sponsor business plan competitions, notes Gregg. “We focus on micro loans — our average loan is $2,000, but can be as low as $500,” he says. “We’re trying to help men who are out of prison, battered women and the homeless start their own businesses so that they can earn a decent income of anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000.”

As part of the business plan competition, 10 applicants who submitted proposals were chosen to partner with business bankers from Capital One to work on their fully-blown business plan. Those bankers gave the contestants anywhere from eight to thirty hours of mentoring and helped them write their business plan to the contest’s specifications.

Those specifications included descriptions of the business plan in 10 different areas, including marketing, finance and operations. The business plan couldn’t be any longer than 10 pages, which forced contestants to boil their idea down and make it as easy to understand as possible, Gregg says.

“The entrepreneurs really benefitted from being matched up with a mentor, who guided them through the process of putting the business plan together,” he adds. “And it was good for Capital One, because they were able to fulfill some of their community development requirements by sponsoring the contest.”

Next year, The Plan Fund will hold two separate business plan competitions, which Gregg is already planning for; the year after, he hopes to scale up the format to four different business plan competitions. The goal is to attract as much attention to the Plan Fund as possible to get more loan applications and help these underserved populations get a head start on becoming entrepreneurs.

To win, contestants had to score the most points in three areas: the business plan competition, a 10 minute pitch competition in the Shark Tank format and a 10 minute question and answer session with the judges.

Photo credit: Jeremy Gregg

For Paul Kirsch, program manager at the Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich., team formation in business plan competitions is one of the “biggest black boxes of the entire process.” The Zell Lurie Institute sponsors the Michigan Business Challenge, a business plan competition for University of Michigan undergraduate and graduate students.

“We sponsor live events and provide opportunities online for students to interact with each other so that they can find the best partners for their venture,” he says. “It’s not something that we can get involved in, in terms of matching students with each other, because then there might be problems if a team didn’t work out.”

The Institute provides opportunities to register online both for students who have an idea that they want to build a business plan upon as well as students who are looking to join a team that already has a business idea and plan in place. In the past, more than 1,000 students have registered on its site.

In addition, the Institute runs three or four “mingle and match” events before the competition begins so that students can gather in a room, listen to students with ideas pitch those plans and have the opportunity to talk with them about those plans, according to Kirsch. “We provide the space, pizza and soda over an hour and a half time period so students can mingle and form teams,” he adds.

Because putting the right people together is so critical to the success of a business plan competition team, students need to think through what they are looking for in other team members and seek complementary skills when forming a team. Learning how to form a team and work with team members with differing perspectives and skills is an important part of learning how to partner successfully with others on an entrepreneurial level, he notes.

“It’s important that students do their due diligence and take the initiative to find team members who they are compatible with and who will help them navigate the various events in the competition,” Kirsch says. “This is a critical skill for our students to develop as they move through the program.”

Photo credit: Jiheffe

For community colleges, there’s a great opportunity to partner with local banks, venture capitalists and other stakeholders to start business plan competitions and grow their entrepreneurship programs. To get a business plan competition off on the right foot, getting buy-in from community college executives is critical, says Nevels.

“You have to get buy-in from the top to filter down to get what you need to have in order to try something new, if starting a business plan competition is what you want to do,” she says. Establishing a time line around all the tasks involved in a new competition is key, Nevels adds. Reaching beyond the college to find partners to help sponsor the competition and get buzz going in the community around it is critical as well.

Local banks and credit unions can make for great partners and sponsors because they are required to spend dollars on community reinvestment projects. Business plan competitions are the perfect venue for a bank or credit union to use these funds, not only to boost their image in the community but also to have a chance to connect with budding entrepreneurs, she says.

It’s essential to have a schedule and plan in place before you start the ambitious process of launching a business plan competition. It takes time and effort to start a competition, find sponsors, raise money and market it to the college and the greater community.

“Before you start, think about your purpose,” she advises. “What are you going to do after the first competition? What are you trying to achieve? What are your goals for the contestants, both winners and losers? Because everyone has to get something out of this whether they win or not.”

Nevels urges plan organizers to be savvy about how they publicize their competitions and connect with stakeholders. Social media, including using videos, Twitter, Facebook and blogs are great free ways to get the word out about a new or continuing competition.

Finally, she urges community college — and other — organizers to aim for big prize pools. “You can’t have a viable business plan competition and give away $1,000. Many community colleges are scared of the financial commitment, but if they line up donors in advance and really sell what they can get out of sponsoring a competition and prizes, they can do it.”

Photo credit: lambdachialpha

Contestants must use Corelytics Financial Dashboard and Tigerpaw Software. Over a year’s time, these contestants must track the progress of their business goals using these tools and must hit certain benchmarks every three months in order to move to the next round in the race. Winners will be selected in three categories:

• Best sales organization
• Best service management organization
• Highest business profitability

“What makes this a unique competition is that part of becoming a racer requires that each company participate in a 13-point management assessment to evaluate the state of their current business model, business plan and management practices,” says Lael. “Then, along the way we will be connecting with each racer at pre-determined check points. This is a much more interactive competition than any business plan competitions I’ve been a part of or judged.”

Earlier this year, Corelytics won the Intuit App Showcase, a business plan competition for Intuit Apps. The Corelytics Intuit app for QuickBooks Pro was selected from among 159 applications and the 30 finalists who appeared at the competition final in San Francisco in August. Lael has also judged several competitions, including the Washington State University Business Plan Competition.

When creating the Tigerpaw Amazing Race, Lael sought to incorporate methods by which contestants could be judged on their implementation and results of their business plan. “In our view, a true business plan competition is the company that can make their business plan happen,” he notes. “The Tigerpaw Amazing Business Race is going to allow us to do just that over a one-year period.”

As part of the contest, the organizers, including Lael, will connect with contestants every three month to assess their progress. “Every business plan competition I’ve been in or have judged presents participants with rules and deadlines, then the contestants get up in front of a panel to pitch their plans,” he adds. “Traditionally, contestants only get feedback at one point.

“This makes it difficult to both validate whether the contestant really deserves to win because they were able to execute on their plan and no ongoing visibility for judges of the results obtained based on the plan given,” he continues. The goal for the Tigerpaw competition is to judge contestants where the rubber hits the road — how they execute their plan on a consistent basis.

“We believe this will transform the way business owners who enter the race will think about where their business is going and how they manage that business based on their plan,” Lael says. In real life, business owners have to constantly adapt their strategies and measure their results and the Amazing Business Race will enable competitors to be judged on how well they execute on a consistent basis.

Photo credit: Stewart Yu

The Center’s business plan competition is the Olin Cup Competition, which began in 1988 and began awarding funding in 2003 in the form of seed investments. Judges award the $20,000 – $50,000 prizes based on their judgment as to whether an idea is likely to succeed as a viable business.

Rosemary Gliedt, Center director, notes that the confluence of events surrounding the business plan competition supports competitors, students and community members who are interested in entrepreneurship. “We have a really strong relationship with the community,” she says. “All of our events are free and open to the public.”

The Center partners with Youthbridge, a St. Louis-based foundation, to sponsor the Social Enterprise and Innovation Competition, which has been held for the past six years, Gliedt says. Here are some of the events the Center offers:

Idea Bounce: Gliedt describes this program as “the gateway” to all the events sponsored by the Skandalaris Center. The website, which is free and open to all entrepreneurs and students, is a place where they can post business ideas. Idea Bounce events, which are held four or five times a year, bring together budding entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, community leaders and community members. People who have posted ideas to the Idea Bounce website attend these events to pitch their ideas to the crowd. It provides a forum to help them hone their pitch and connect with the resources that they need to move their idea forward, she says.

Coffee with the Experts: In this forum, budding entrepreneurs can make appointments with a panel of experts. It’s an open forum so that each participant has 10 to 15 minutes to describe their business idea to this panel and get feedback.

Non-Credit Seminar Series: Offered in both the fall and spring, this series of four classes takes place over an eight week period and allows students to learn concrete skills to help them think through their business idea and write a business plan. The series includes lectures on topics including idea evaluation and testing, finances and writing a business plan, and panel discussions with entrepreneurs about the evolution of business ideas. The classes end with a reception to allow for networking opportunities, Gliedt says.

The Hatchery: The Center’s flagship entrepreneurial course is open to students from across Washington University, as well as outside entrepreneurs. Students form teams that are expected to make two presentations to a panel of judges and to prepare a complete business plan. Business plans developed via the Hatchery can be used to participate in the Center’s Youthbridge Social Enterprise and Innovation Competition.

Photo credit: binkle_28

While the basic format of the competition remains the same, a few changes have been made to help participants to make the competition more interactive. For this second competition, interested participants will be able to attend free workshops, which focus on the basics of a business plan, including writing an effective executive summary, conducting useful market analysis, and developing realistic financial projections. The five chosen finalists will attend a required boot camp to help prepare for their final presentations.  This time around, presentations will be made both in private and at a public forum, after which, the winner will be announced at a networking reception.

Timeline & Process

• October 19, 2011— Business Plan + Executive Summary Workshop
• October 26, 2011— Market Analysis Workshop
• November 10, 2011— Financial Projections Workshop
• February 6, 2012 — Executive Summaries Due (3-5 pages)
• February 20, 2012 — Finalists (5) selected and notified to submit business plans
• February 27, 2012 — Presentation boot camp for finalists
• March 27, 2012 — Deadline for finalists’ submissions of business plans and PowerPoint presentations
• May 2, 2012—Finalists present in front of judges, winner selected

TowsonGlobal is looking forward to seeing the exciting, innovative concepts that will be brought to the competition.  For more details on the competition, visit TowsonGlobal’s Business Plan Competition page or email info@towsonglobal.com .