online business plan competition

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.

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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.

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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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The Best 20 Business Plan Competitions to Get Funding in (2024)

Free Business Plan Template

Radhika Agarwal

• October 18, 2023

11 Min Read

Brilliant business ideas deserve 2 things for sure – Feedback and Funding.

And if you think you have a good business idea and have some bit of groundwork figured out, you may want to look into business plan competitions.

Now, what is a business plan competition? Why should you participate in one? How to find one that’s just right for your business?

We’ll discuss all of the above and more through this article.

What is a Business Plan Competition?

A business plan competition is an event that allows small businesses and startups to compete with each other, get feedback and advice on their business, and also can help you get your business funded.

Businesses are judged on several factors including execution, feasibility, innovation, etc.

How to Find a Business Plan Competition?

There are several business plan competitions listed on Google that you can look through. Different competitions have different eligibility criteria and guidelines. Go through all of that to know if it fits your business or not.

At the same time, it is important to check the credibility and check for any scams or illegitimate sites.

To make finding business plan competitions a little easier we have compiled a list of 20 popular and credible competitions that you can apply for.

Business Plan Competitions

• Global Student Entrepreneur Awards
• tecBRIDGE Business Plan Competition
• HATCH Pitch
• Rice Business Plan Competition
• New York StartUP! Business Plan Competition
• MIT 100k Business Plan and Expo
• FAU Business Plan Competition
• NIBS Business Plan Competition
• Pistoia Alliance President’s Startup Challenge
• College of New Jersey’s Mayo Business Plan Competition
• Next Founders Business Plan Competition
• TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield
• New Venture Challenge
• New Venture Championship
• Climatech & Energy Prize @MIT
• Baylor Business New Venture Competition
• 13th IOT/WT World Cup

1. Global Student Entrepreneur Awards

To encourage students across the globe to become entrepreneurs GSEA organizes this competition for students from all disciplines and countries. The main aim of the awards is to draw people towards entrepreneurship, shape their ideas, and become a catalyst for their business’s growth.

Eligibility

The student must enroll in a part-time or full-time undergraduate or graduate course.

The student should own or work as a founder or co-founder of the startup.

Only one person from the startup can represent it.

The person should either be 30 or under 30 years of age.

The startup should be running for at least 6 months from the date of application.

The startup should either generate $500 or get $1000 as investments at the time of application.

The startup shouldn’t have reached the final round of the competition in previous years.

For more details check out their website.

The competition is held at several locations across the world over months during a school year. The finals among the Top 4 teams are held at Goldman Sachs New York.

• First Prize: $25,000
• Second Prize: $10,000
• Third Prize: $5,000

Lodging and travel expenses are covered and additional prizes are handed out at the event.

2. tecBRIDGE Business Plan Competition

The tecBRIDGE competition is divided into two parts, with one for college students across 14 colleges and universities and a non-collegiate one for early-stage entrepreneurs.

( For Collegiate )

At least one member as a college student

The product must identify commercial solutions through technical processes.

( For Non-Collegiate )

The startup must gross less than $250k in revenue from its start date up to the last tax filing date.

It is held in Northeastern Pennsylvania every year. The businesses that win have to establish their headquarters there as well.

Prizes worth $100,000 are shared amongst the winning teams.

3. HATCH Pitch

Through the Hatch Pitch program, you get access to mentorship courses, discounted spaces, funds, education programs, financial consulting, and so on.

The product/ Service was launched within 2 years.

Founders should retain some part of the ownership.

Must actively participate actively in Hatch Pitch coaching.

Must receive less than $5 million in funds from third-party investors.

The competition is held at Entrepreneur space in Dallas.

Access to high-level incubators and mentorship.

4. Rice Business Plan Competition

The Rice University business plan competition is specially designed for college students to present their ideas to investors , get mentorship and help shape their ideas and business journey better.

Students managed or created businesses.

Consists of at least 2 college students, and one student pursuing a graduate degree.

Have raised less than $250k in equity capital.

Have generated less than $100k in any 12-month period.

Houston at Rice University, graduate school of business, hosts this event.

In 2021, the winners were awarded investments worth $1.6 Million , cash prizes, etc.

5. New York StartUP! Business Plan Competition

New York Public library sponsors this competition to help entrepreneurs from around the world. They give wings to their ideas.

Must live in Manhattan, Staten Island, or The Bronx.

Your business should be in any of the above places as well.

The idea or business model is in the startup phase and shouldn’t have earned more than $10,000.

The competition is held in New York.

A grand prize worth $15000 and a Runner Up prize worth $7500 .

6. MIT 100k Business Plan and Expo

MIT organizes this competition to promote innovation in the university as well as the world. It consists of 3 competitions throughout the year namely Pitch, Accelerate, and Launch.

Each team should enter one idea.

Participants must have original work ideas

Should disclose the received funding.

Hosted in Cambridge MA MIT campus from October to May through the academic year.

• Pitch: $5000 jury award and $2000 audience choice award.
• Accelerate: 20 finalists get industry-specific mentorship programs with a budget of $1000 each. The top 10 finalists compete for the Audience Choice award worth $10,000. The top 3 finalists immediately get into the finals of the launch.
• Launch: The winner gets a whopping amount of $100,000 while the runner gets $25000 .

Official Website MIT 100k

7. FAU Business Plan Competition

The Florida Atlantic University Business Plan Competition is for graduate and undergraduate students spanning all continents.

Undergraduate or graduate participants.

The competition is held at Florida Atlantic University, in Boca Raton, Florida.

First Prize: $5000 and Second Prize: $500

8. NIBS Business Plan Competition

The NIBS competition helps you discuss and give a boost to your ideas. It also helps you get industry experts guidance.

Entrants of legal age to have contracts as per the rules of their country of residence.

Should not hold any employment apart from their own company.

The plan must stand for a startup business and not an acquisition.

It is held in the USA.

There’s a cash prize for the first three places as well as an opportunity to get an incubator program for the winners.

9. Get Seeded

Get Seed is a two-part funding program for students in launching their businesses.

At least one student from a higher education institution in Utah is a must.

Should be enrolled for nine credit hours during that semester.

Utilization of funds to take the idea further.

Salt Lake City in Utah hosts the business plan competition.

A micro-grant worth $500 and a seeded grant from $501 to $1500

10. Pistoia Alliance President’s Startup Challenge

This competition was designed for startups focusing on digital and health technology.

Legally formed entities

The company must have less than 50 people.

Annual sales under $5 million.

The product should have been launched within 3 years.

Your country should not have USA’s trade restrictions imposed.

You can submit your ideas from anywhere.

Five finalists win $5000 and 2 winners receive $20,000 .

Official Website

11. College of New Jersey’s Mayo Business Plan Competition

This competition is held for students to appreciate new challenges.

The teams must consist of two and bot more than four students from the College of New Jersey.

The College of New Jersey hosts this event.

The winners get mentorship and guidance programs.

Check Official Website

12. Next Founders Business Plan Competition

This competition focuses on startups with an innovative approach to solving social problems and global needs.

It is for Canadian entrepreneurs with scalable, high-potential ventures.

The University of Toronto.

Up to 25,000 CAD$ in cash for funding your startup.

13. TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield

TechCrunch sponsors this competition which comprises two levels.

The companies must have a functional prototype of their product or service to present to the committee.

Different locations.

The winner gets $50,000 and two runner-ups get $5000 each.

Check Competition Website

14. New Venture Challenge

This competition is held at the University of Chicago. Three evaluation points for participants are – Innovation, Product Market Fit , and presentation.

The eligibility information is available on their website.

Chicago, IL.

1st Place: $50,000 ; 2nd Place: $25,000 ; 3rd Place: $15,000 . In addition to that, the winners get access to mentorship and resources.

15. New Venture Championship

This competition is for those with a good business idea. Even if you don’t have a business plan, you can participate as the competition provides optional plan writing services.

The team should have 2-5 members.

Should have at least one graduate student.

The students should be pursuing their undergraduate or graduate degrees.

Eugene, Oregon.

Teams have a chance to win cash prizes ranging from $3000 to $25,000 with additional benefits like mentorship and rented office spaces.

16. Climatech & Energy Prize @MIT

This competition is ideal for companies with a core focus on energy, climate change, and the environment.

The team must have more than 2 members.

At least 50% of part-time or full-time university students.

Cambridge, MA hosts this competition

The winner gets a sizable sum of $1,00,000 .

17. U.Pitch

This competition gives entrants a chance to present their ideas to people from different levels and spectrums in the business space and get an opportunity for investments and mentorship programs.

Undergraduate or graduate program students.

Functioning Business

Age up to or below 30

San Francisco, California hosts this competition.

Prizes worth $10,000 are given.

18. CodeLaunch

It is a seed accelerator competition for entrepreneurs who have technology startups.

The detailed eligibility criteria can be found on their website.

St. Louis, Missouri hosts these competitions, usually.

The winner gets seed fund capital and access to other additional resources.

19. Baylor Business New Venture Competition

Baylor launched this competition to help entrepreneurs discuss their ideas and get advice from judges.

An undergraduate student at Baylor University and McLennan Community College.

Baylor University, Waco, Texas hosts this competition.

The first prize winner receives $6000 . The other finalists win prizes ranging from $1500-$2000 .

20. 13th IOT/WT World Cup

The innovation world cup was started to give startups a chance to display their ideas and business. The competition aims to attract venture capitalists, investors, and potential business partners .

The startup should have a concept of innovative technologies.

You should have a functional prototype of the product.

Cleveland, Ohio hosts this event.

You get a chance at winning prizes worth $500,000 and connect with leading tech companies in your field.

Even if you don’t receive funds, there’s a lot of chance to network, get exposure, and get your ideas validated. Especially, if you are someone who’s new in the business space business plan competitions are a great way to learn the ropes of the trade.

So, go ahead, write your business plan , look up the details, and register for a competition that fits your business the best!

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with step-by-step Guidance & AI Assistance.

About the Author

Radhika is an economics graduate and likes to read about every subject and idea she comes across. Apart from that she can discuss her favorite books to lengths( to the point you\'ll start feeling a little annoyed) and spends most of her free time on Google word coach.

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A hand-picked list of the 25 top startup pitch competitions of 2024

Wondering what are the best pitch contests for you to showcase your ideas in 2024? Check out our hand-picked roundup and start applying!

• Founder at GrowthMentor
• 12 Dec 2023

Pitching competitions are to startup entrepreneurs what skydiving is to most people: a bucket-list item that’s both exciting and terrifying. To take the skydiving analogy further, joining a Startup Pitch Competition may be the only way for your business to land where it’s supposed to.

During such an event, you get to pitch to multiple investors, gain some valuable exposure, and get some equally valuable feedback. You will network, you will potentially build partnerships, but, most importantly, you will get a chance to secure funding and accelerate your business. All you need to do is jump from the airplane… but which one?

To take the guesswork out of the process, we’ve compiled below a list of the best Startup Pitch Competitions you can attend this year. Do your research to decide which one (or ones) is the best fit for you and your startup idea/business. Check the qualifications for entry and prepare your best pitch deck yet — make sure to steer clear of too much text or super busy visuals/animations.

And when it’s time to stand in front of the judges, contrary to skydiving, remember that you should open your “parachute” right away. Usually, you’ll have only a few minutes to wow your audience, so don’t wait: Cut straight to the chase, using language that’s simple but captivating. Show them you are your brand’s biggest fan… and they will probably become its fans too. See you on the stage!

Does pitching your idea make you nervous?

This could be the single most important moment of your life and determine your entire future – no pressure though!

Hopping on 1:1 calls with vetted startup mentors who have already raised millions of dollars themselves is an excellent way to prepare for your startup pitch.

Suggested Mentors for Pitch Prep:

• Itay Forer: YC alumni, Founder, Entrepreneur, Investor & Advisor
• Frank M. Savine: Portfolio raised $100mn in VC money, 4 exists under the belt
• Felix Wong: Seed Investor. Community Manager for Techstars in Asia Pacific.
• Manish Balakrishnan: Pitched to raise pre-seed and seed funding of $1.3mn at various startups
• Martin Adams: 3 exits, £40m in investment and £100m in revenue
• Miguel Á. López Trujillo: Fundraising + Sales & Business Development Mentor
• Erik Bullen: Top-ranked VC advisor and investor, Judge at MassChallenge, Mentor at Techstars
• Satwik Govindarajula: Head of Products at Seedstars
• Ari Bencuya: 3x Founder, ex-partner at incubator/accelerator, multiple exits

Learn more about how to connect with fundraising mentors here .

1. Startup World Cup 2023

Why you should go:.

The cream of the crop of the startup world will be there. The Startup World Cup (SWC), powered by Pegasus Tech Ventures, comprises 60+ regional events which culminate in the Grand Finale event in Silicon Valley.

There, the finalists can compete for one million USD in investment and attendees can network with top industry players. The all-star cast of judges has in previous years included names such as Apple’s Steve Wozniak and Netflix’s Marc Randolph.

KEY INFORMATION

• Location: San Francisco, California, USA
• Date: November 29-December 1, 2023. On 30th November you can attend workshops led by industry professionals
• Cost: Tickets to attend the finale on December 1 are between $100 – $490. You can buy them on Eventbrite
• Industry focus: Geared towards improving lives and transforming industries — such as with healthcare, artificial intelligence, robotics, transportation, financial technologies, IoT, augmented reality, and agriculture
• Amount you can win: $1,000,000 in investment

Official Website

2. Collision 2024

Despite the change of venue last year (bringing its 36,000 attendees to Toronto after three years in New Orleans), Collision still remains the fastest-growing tech conference in North America.

Attend various startup workshops, get in-person advice from investors, and join the ultimate startup battle at PITCH, the contest section of the conference where you can compete for three days with the top 70 startups, in order to be crowned winner.

You can use the event as an opportunity to connect with top-tier investors from the world’s leading funds and use the matchmaking tools to identify the best investors in your industry.

• Location: Toronto, Canada
• Date: June 17-20, 2024
• Cost: They are releasing a limited number of discounted tickets for Collision 2024 in Toronto; you can save 50% by registering for their flash sale where tickets cost CA$446
• Industry focus: Broad
• Amount you can win: There is no money — but there is a ton of exposure, and a PITCH trophy

Want help with your pitch?

3. TechCrunch Disrupt 2024

With previous winners including companies such as Dropbox and Trello, you know this is an event (and a pitch competition) not to miss. The Startup Battlefield at the Disrupt SF is always the place to be for early-stage startups who dream of taking over the world and impressing the TechCrunch judges.

200 of the top startups from around the world get to battle it out for the prize. As part of the event, they get access to training, masterclasses, and investor meet and greets.

Of the top 200, 20 finalists are invited for the final pitch round on the Disrupt Stage to battle it out for a $100k equity-free investment. Probably doesn’t get more Silicon Valley than that.

• Application: Applications for 2024 entrants open soon
• Date: Dates still tbc, 2024
• Cost: TBD, but you can get a $500 discount by registering early
• Industry focus: Ranging from Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and VR, to HealthTech and FinTech
• Amount you can win: A $100,000 equity-free prize

4. Web Summit PITCH 2024

If you haven’t had a major change in your business model in the last three years and your overall funding still amounts to less than five million euros… well it’s time to change all that.

Prepare to battle live with the world’s leading early-stage startups in front of more than 2,500 global journalists — and the CEOs and founders of some of the biggest companies in the world.

• Location: Lisbon, Portugal
• Date: November 11-14, 2024
• Cost: €950, but by pre-registering, you can get one extra ticket for free
• Industry focus: Technology
• Amount you can win: There is no monetary prize, but ask every previous winner and they will tell you the exposure is priceless

5. Slush 2023

This is the cool kids table. Or tables, given that Slush events take place in Tokyo, Shanghai, Singapore, and Helsinki, where the festival/conference first started. Slush is all about community building and facilitating founder and investor meetings run by successful entrepreneurs such as Nokia’s Risto Siilasmaa.

• Location:  Helsinki
• Date: November 30 – December 1, 2023
• Industry focus: Tech
• Amount you can win: There is no monetary prize, but you can take advantage of the Slush community; get speed mentoring and resources

6. South Summit Startup Competition

If you think your startup belongs among the world’s 100 most innovative, the South Summit Startup competition gives you the chance and the tools to prove it. You get the opportunity to attract the investment you need to take your business to the next level. Mentoring, exposure, and networking are all included for the 50 finalists who get to pitch at the event.

Taking place in Madrid, Spain, and Porto Alegre, Brazil, and with almost half of the projects having a Spanish origin, South Summit is a great place for all entrepreneurial voices to be heard.

• Locations/Dates: Porto Alegre, Brazil March 20-22 2024, Madrid, Spain, June 5-7 2024
• Keep in mind: Applications for Brazil close on 20 December 2023, and applications for Madrid close on January 31, 2024
• Cost: Prices range from €153-€1,364, depending on the types of ticket and areas of access, it’s free for startups to apply to pitch
• Industry focus: Any sector at any stage in development

7. Demo Day 2024

Demo Day is less of a startup competition and more of a culmination of a “slower” process. It starts with applying to Y Combinator for seed funding — they do two batches of mass funding per year, in return for a small equity in the funded companies — and relocating to the Bay Area if you are selected.

Demo Day takes place about 11 weeks after so that you can present your startup to an invite-only audience of approximately 1,500 investors and media, which can help you find later-stage investors.

• Location: Virtual
• Date: Applications for Winter 2024 are officially closed, but they accept applications until the end of Jan 2024; you can also apply for the Summer 2024 batch — Demo Day dates TBC
• Cost: There is no cost, but the event is private and attendance is invitation-only. You just need to snag that invite!
• Amount you can win: No monetary prize in Demo Day, but to even be in the process means you’ve already gotten funding from Y Combinator

8. Next Founders 2024

Another slower and more immersive option — this one geared to the Canada startup ecosystem. Next Founders accelerates your startup’s growth and your personal growth as a founder through mentoring and access to capital… You will also get your chance to present your startup during various events and attend many workshops before the big presentation on Venture Day.

• Location: Toronto, Ontario
• Date: The 2024 cohort runs from May 1 until August 8. Applications are open from February 1 – March 19, 2024. Get notified when applications open by filling out this form .
• Cost: There is no cost to participate in the program
• Industry focus: Broad, but you need to have a product in the market with existing customers

9. Utah Entrepreneur Challenge 2023-2024

This statewide business model competition is an excellent opportunity for students at one of Utah’s universities to compete for a cash prize — and also get valuable feedback and coaching.

• Location: Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
• Date: The application period for the 2024 UEC is September 18, 2023, to February 21, 2024. The competition final is on March 23, 2024
• Cost: Free — but you can only join if you are a university student in Utah
• Amount you can win: $100,000 in cash, prizes, and awards to the top 20 finalists

10. Jacob Startup Competition 2024

JSC is one of the biggest startup competitions in Germany and brings together pre-seed startups from universities around the world with investors, speakers, mentors, their business partners, and more representatives from the German Startup scene. Each team or individual can benefit through the one-to-one mentoring process and win up to €3,000 in prizes.

To enter, at least half of your team needs to be bachelor’s or Master’s students enrolled in university.

• Location: Bremen, Germany
• Date: Applications are open until December 4, 2023, the second application round is between December 10 and January 8, followed by online mentoring for selected participants to meet their mentors. The final event, where the final 10 pitch their ideas takes place between 14th-16th March 2024
• Cost: Free. They cover parts of the travel cost and accommodation in Bremen for two of each team member at the final event. More members can attend without financial assistance
• Amount you can win: Prizes of up to 3,000€

11. SXSW EDU Launch Competition 2024

The Launch Startup Competition has a great impact on the future of teaching and learning. By attending, you can seek feedback, investment, strategic partnerships, and exposure.

Finalists have additional opportunities to showcase their ideas in front of the SXSW EDU community.

• Location: Austin, Texas
• Date: Applications to participate in the 2024 competition are now closed. The event takes place March 4-7, 2024.
• Cost: Free for the participants of the competition, but you can get SXSW EDU Badge which includes primary access to all EDU Events for $645 if you register early
• Industry focus: EdTech
• Amount you can win: No cash prize is awarded for winning the competition. Finalists receive a number of benefits, such as the opportunity to win one out of several awards, participate in Startup Spotlight, a cocktail-style reception where teams can connect one-on-one with attendees, demo products and receive valuable, real-time feedback, and many more

12. WMF Startup Competition 2024

With more than 4,300 startups applying, the WMF Startup Competition is one of the largest international competitions for innovative projects in Southern Europe, with attendees and international delegates from 89 countries.

Companies have a chance to present their reality to an audience of major players in the digital sector, investors, entrepreneurs, and experts in innovation, an audience who may actually decide to support the growth of a great business idea.

For the final 3-minute pitch, 6 finalists will be chosen to present, and then votes cast to decide the winner. One of the criteria for entering is that startups need to prove how they are accepting the challenges of the future.

• Location: Rimini EXPO Centre, Italy
• Date: June 13-15, 2024
• Cost: €549+VAT
• Industry focus: Broad, but requires innovative projects or ideas regarding the digital/technological sector
• Amount you can win: There isn’t a specific cash prize but the total value of prizes (services from the event’s partners) to date has been more than 3,300,000€

13. AWE USA Startup Competition 2024

The AWE USA Startup Pitch Competition is part of the AWE USA Event, which includes more than 6,500 attendees and 500 speakers. Since 2010 over 5,000 companies and 60,000 professionals have trusted AWE to connect, learn, and grow their business in the XR ecosystem.

By joining the Competition or attending the Event, you get the chance to present your company to a huge audience. You also get to be a part of a community that includes end-users and solution providers, investors and startups, brands, and creators and developers, job seekers, and recruiters.

• Location: Long Beach, California
• Date: June 18-20, 2024 (The deadline for pitch submissions is May 8 and pitching is on June 19)
• Cost: Prices range from $695-$2499, depending on types of ticket and areas of access. For finalists attending the final event is free. Early bird pricing ends on March 14
• Industry focus: Attendees are from a broad variety of industries, the startups pitching need to have an AR/VR-focused startup
• Amount you can win: No cash prize is awarded for winning the competition. The winning startup takes home a grand prize and is honored on the main stage at AWE USA 2024 with the winning title of “Start-up to Watch”

14. Inventures Startup Pitch Event

Inventures Startup Pitch finalists will have the opportunity to pitch their product or service to the program’s audience of venture capitalists, angel investors, entrepreneurs, early adopters, business educators, and service providers.

Moreover, anyone attending will be able to network one-on-one with the audience members. There is free registration to all Inventures programming, access to professional coaching and on-site mentoring opportunities, and a chance to win $10,000 in funding.

• Location: Telus Convention Center, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
• Date: May 29-31 2024 (Deadline for pitches March 15)
• Cost: There is no fee to apply when attending the program. Tickets for visitors are $749
• Industry focus: Any ALPHA and BETA startup in food tech, earth, tech, Quantum, AI, or IoT
• Amount you can win: $10,000 in funding, along with coaching and mentoring opportunities

15. Elevator Pitch Competition 2024

EPiC 2024 is a unique, worldwide competition for global startups to expand their footprints into Asia, giving both global and local mid-late-stage startups a chance to expand further, accelerate faster, and make a mark in Hong Kong and beyond.

Join EPiC 2024, challenge yourself with a 60-second pitch, and see how far you can reach!

Through the event, you get access to 1,000 potential investors and 350+ corporate partners.

• Location: Hong Kong Science Park
• Date: April 26, 2024
• Cost: There is no fee to apply when attending the program; they also offer sponsored air and accommodation to Hong Kong
• Industry focus: FinTech and PropTech
• Amount you can win: Up to $5,000,000.00 in investment and cash prizes worth a total of $240,000.00

16. Green Alley Award

The Green Alley Award is the first startup prize for the circular economy and, in 2024, will celebrate its 10-year anniversary. With 1,600 applications from more than 30 countries till today, the Green Alley Award’s purpose is to help realize ideas that make the most efficient use of resources and reduce waste drastically – from products to services and technologies.

Six startups will make it to the Grand Finale in Berlin, 5 selected by the judges and 1 by a public vote.

Applications to be in the 2024 Grande Finale are now closed.

• Location: Berlin, Germany
• Date: April 2024
• Cost: There is no fee to apply when attending the program
• Industry focus: Circular Economy – you need to have a product that focuses on recycling, waste prevention and digital solutions
• Amount you can win: 25,000€

17. Global Startups Awards

The Global Startups Awards has been running for 12 years in over 120 countries. The awards have produced 12 unicorns worth more than $47 Billion.

You first need to apply on a regional level; if you succeed you can make it to the global final. You need to apply in your region before 31st December 2023.

Even if you don’t make it into the competition, the GSA has a vast global network, and they can help introduce you to potential investors or help you get investment-ready.

• Location: Worldwide
• Date: Announcements for the finale will be made after regional events take place
• Cost: Free to enter, you need to buy tickets to attend the finale event
• Amount you can win: Undisclosed

Based in Slovenia, Podim has become the most influential startup event for businesses in the CEE region.

Get the chance to learn from world-class entrepreneurs, mingle with investors, and get inspired by other innovators. The conference also isn’t super-sized, which makes networking and connecting with relevant people much easier.

If you want to pitch your startup, you need to apply by March 15th, 2024; the Demo day is on May 7th, followed by the summit event in mid-May.

• Location: Maribor, Slovenia
• Date: 13-15th May 2024
• Cost: Between €145 – €590 depending on the level of access
• Amount you can win: The main prize is a 3-day accelerator event in London organized by Fundraising Bootcamp

19. Tech Chill Fifty Founders Battle

Fifty of the most promising startups from across Central and Western Europe, the Nordics, and the Baltics battle it out on the Tech Chill stage to impress the 200 investors in attendance at the event.

You can only apply if your startup hasn’t received more than €300,00k in equity investments.

Attending the event gives you media exposure and the chance to impress potential investors if you make it to the final pitch.

• Location: Riga, Latvia
• Date: April 19, 2024
• Cost: Between €79 – €259 (€700 if you want an expo package)
• Industry focus: Broad: you will be split into categories based on industry
• Amount you can win: €10,000 no-strings investment

20. Hello Tomorrow

With over 3,000 attendees and €150k given in past prizes, this competition is a great opportunity for emerging startups in the deep tech sector to get visibility.

This event is for you if you want to connect with relevant industry professionals, showcase your technology, and secure 1-1 meetings with potential VCs.

Finalists pitch in front of an audience of 400 and a jury of deep tech experts.

• Location: Paris, France
• Date: March 21-22 2024
• Cost: Between €370- €1,290
• Industry focus: Broad, but you need to be an early-stage deep-tech startup to compete
• Amount you can win: €100K Grand Prize, €30K 2nd prize and €20K 3rd prize – all equity-free, no strings attached

The Next Web is one of Europe’s biggest tech conferences, with attendees from the world’s biggest companies and investment funds.

If you’re actively looking to scale your business, being part of this event can help elevate your visibility.

Joining the TNW for Startups program gives you the opportunity to compete in the Pitch Battle Competition. Your deck will get reviewed by a jury of sponsors and investors, and if they like your idea, you’ll be able to pitch on stage in front of media, industry experts, and investors.

To be eligible, your company needs to be founded between 2016-2024, build or market software or hardware products and employ under 100 people.

• Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Date: June 20-21, 2024
• Amount you can win: No cash prize, but you get free press, free tickets, and a booth at the next TNW conference

22. EU Startups Summit

A gathering of more than 2,000 founders, angel investors, VCs, and media gather for two days of showcases, talks, and a pitch competition.

The 15 finalists (selected from over 1,500 applicants) get the opportunity to give a 3-minute pitch in front of a panel of judges and the event attendees. The winning team gains international visibility, new investor connections, and a prize package.

• Location: Valletta, Malta
• Date: May 9-10, 2024
• Cost: Between €169 – €600
• Amount you can win: Not disclosed

23. START Summit

A student-powered conference where future founders and leaders can connect with industry titans.

With over 6,000 participants and 160+ speakers, you can meet potential collaborators, and investors, and find opportunities in whatever industry you’re interested in.

Thirty early-stage startups (founded no later than 2021) can virtually present their venture to renowned VCs and industry leaders. The startups who make it to the final four will pitch in real life at the event in March.

• Location: Gallen, Switzerland
• Date: March 21-22, 2024
• Cost: Tickets go on sale December 5, 2023
• Amount you can win: 10,000 CHF

24. Venture Z

An exciting startup competition for Gen-Z entrepreneurs, this competition offers a platform for young founders to present their business ideas to a panel of expert judges.

Organized as part of the International Conference on Sustainability, this competition is for founders who want to build a lasting impact on society through a sustainable future.

If you are successful at getting into the program, you will get the opportunity to be part of the mentorship scheme.

• Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
• Date: February 18-22, 2024
• Cost: Free to enter
• Industry focus: Sustainable businesses
• Amount you can win: First prize wins 30,000 SAR, second place 20,000 SAR, third place 10,000 SAR

25. Startup Day

If you’re looking for funding and already have traction and a scalable business model, you can compete for up to €200k in investment.

The final 40 startups will receive pitching training, showcase their product on the main stage, and potentially receive equity-free cash.

Dozens of workshops will help you fill your skills gaps and meet potential collaborators. Get involved in the matchmaking service and attend networking events.

• Location: Tartu, Estonia
• Date: January 26, 2024
• Amount you can win: Up to €200k syndicate investment

Think you can win a startup competition?

Now that you know which startup pitch competitions are worth your time, here are a few tips on how to prepare for your startup pitch.

But if you need more 1:1 help, a mentor can help.

Talking to startup mentors that have “been there done that” and successfully raised funding from investors is a great way to soundboard your pitch and increase your confidence.

Get help with your pitch

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• Business Planning

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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How to create a competitive analysis (with examples)

Competitive analysis involves identifying your direct and indirect competitors using research to reveal their strengths and weaknesses in relation to your own. In this guide, we’ll outline how to do a competitive analysis and explain how you can use this marketing strategy to improve your business.

Whether you’re running a business or playing in a football game, understanding your competition is crucial for success. While you may not be scoring touchdowns in the office, your goal is to score business deals with clients or win customers with your products. The method of preparation for athletes and business owners is similar—once you understand your strengths and weaknesses versus your competitors’, you can level up. 

What is a competitive analysis?

Competitive analysis involves identifying your direct and indirect competitors using research to reveal their strengths and weaknesses in relation to your own. 

Direct competitors market the same product to the same audience as you, while indirect competitors market the same product to a different audience. After identifying your competitors, you can use the information you gather to see where you stand in the market landscape. 

What to include in a competitive analysis

The purpose of this type of analysis is to get a competitive advantage in the market and improve your business strategy. Without a competitive analysis, it’s difficult to know what others are doing to win clients or customers in your target market. A competitive analysis report may include:

A description of your company’s target market

Details about your product or service versus the competitors’

Current and projected market share, sales, and revenues

Pricing comparison

Marketing and social media strategy analysis

Differences in customer ratings

You’ll compare each detail of your product or service versus the competition to assess strategy efficacy. By comparing success metrics across companies, you can make data-driven decisions.

How to do a competitive analysis

Follow these five steps to create your competitive analysis report and get a broad view of where you fit in the market. This process can help you analyze a handful of competitors at one time and better approach your target customers.

1. Create a competitor overview

In step one, select between five and 10 competitors to compare against your company. The competitors you choose should have similar product or service offerings and a similar business model to you. You should also choose a mix of both direct and indirect competitors so you can see how new markets might affect your company. Choosing both startup and seasoned competitors will further diversify your analysis.

Tip: To find competitors in your industry, use Google or Amazon to search for your product or service. The top results that emerge are likely your competitors. If you’re a startup or you serve a niche market, you may need to dive deeper into the rankings to find your direct competitors.

2. Conduct market research

Once you know the competitors you want to analyze, you’ll begin in-depth market research. This will be a mixture of primary and secondary research. Primary research comes directly from customers or the product itself, while secondary research is information that’s already compiled. Then, keep track of the data you collect in a user research template .

Primary market research may include: 

Purchasing competitors’ products or services

Interviewing customers

Conducting online surveys of customers 

Holding in-person focus groups

Secondary market research may include:

Examining competitors’ websites

Assessing the current economic situation

Identifying technological developments 

Reading company records

Tip: Search engine analysis tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush can help you examine competitors’ websites and obtain crucial SEO information such as the keywords they’re targeting, the number of backlinks they have, and the overall health of their website. 

3. Compare product features

The next step in your analysis involves a comparison of your product to your competitors’ products. This comparison should break down the products feature by feature. While every product has its own unique features, most products will likely include:

Service offered

Age of audience served

Number of features

Style and design

Ease of use

Type and number of warranties

Customer support offered

Product quality

Tip: If your features table gets too long, abbreviate this step by listing the features you believe are of most importance to your analysis. Important features may include cost, product benefits, and ease of use.

4. Compare product marketing

The next step in your analysis will look similar to the one before, except you’ll compare the marketing efforts of your competitors instead of the product features. Unlike the product features matrix you created, you’ll need to go deeper to unveil each company’s marketing plan . 

Areas you’ll want to analyze include:

Social media

Website copy

Press releases

Product copy

As you analyze the above, ask questions to dig deeper into each company’s marketing strategies. The questions you should ask will vary by industry, but may include:

What story are they trying to tell?

What value do they bring to their customers?

What’s their company mission?

What’s their brand voice?

Tip: You can identify your competitors’ target demographic in this step by referencing their customer base, either from their website or from testimonials. This information can help you build customer personas. When you can picture who your competitor actively targets, you can better understand their marketing tactics. 

5. Use a SWOT analysis

Competitive intelligence will make up a significant part of your competitor analysis framework, but once you’ve gathered your information, you can turn the focus back to your company. A SWOT analysis helps you identify your company’s strengths and weaknesses. It also helps turn weaknesses into opportunities and assess threats you face based on your competition.

During a SWOT analysis, ask yourself:

What do we do well?

What could we improve?

Are there market gaps in our services?

What new market trends are on the horizon?

Tip: Your research from the previous steps in the competitive analysis will help you answer these questions and fill in your SWOT analysis. You can visually present your findings in a SWOT matrix, which is a four-box chart divided by category.

6. Identify your place in the market landscape

The last step in your competitive analysis is to understand where you stand in the market landscape. To do this, you’ll create a graph with an X and Y axis. The two axes should represent the most important factors for being competitive in your market. 

For example, the X-axis may represent customer satisfaction, while the Y-axis may represent presence in the market. You’ll then plot each competitor on the graph according to their (x,y) coordinates. You’ll also plot your company on this chart, which will give you an idea of where you stand in relation to your competitors. 

This graph is included for informational purposes and does not represent Asana’s market landscape or any specific industry’s market landscape. 

Tip: In this example, you’ll see three companies that have a greater market presence and greater customer satisfaction than yours, while two companies have a similar market presence but higher customer satisfaction. This data should jumpstart the problem-solving process because you now know which competitors are the biggest threats and you can see where you fall short. 

Competitive analysis example

Imagine you work at a marketing startup that provides SEO for dentists, which is a niche industry and only has a few competitors. You decide to conduct a market analysis for your business. To do so, you would:

Step 1: Use Google to compile a list of your competitors. 

Steps 2, 3, and 4: Use your competitors’ websites, as well as SEO analysis tools like Ahrefs, to deep-dive into the service offerings and marketing strategies of each company. 

Step 5: Focusing back on your own company, you conduct a SWOT analysis to assess your own strategic goals and get a visual of your strengths and weaknesses. 

Step 6: Finally, you create a graph of the market landscape and conclude that there are two companies beating your company in customer satisfaction and market presence. 

After compiling this information into a table like the one below, you consider a unique strategy. To beat out your competitors, you can use localization. Instead of marketing to dentists nationwide like your competitors are doing, you decide to focus your marketing strategy on one region, state, or city. Once you’ve become the known SEO company for dentists in that city, you’ll branch out. 

You won’t know what conclusions you can draw from your competitive analysis until you do the work and see the results. Whether you decide on a new pricing strategy, a way to level up your marketing, or a revamp of your product, understanding your competition can provide significant insight.

Drawbacks of competitive analysis

There are some drawbacks to competitive analysis you should consider before moving forward with your report. While these drawbacks are minor, understanding them can make you an even better manager or business owner. 

Don’t forget to take action

You don’t just want to gather the information from your competitive analysis—you also want to take action on that information. The data itself will only show you where you fit into the market landscape. The key to competitive analysis is using it to problem solve and improve your company’s strategic plan .

Be wary of confirmation bias

Confirmation bias means interpreting information based on the beliefs you already hold. This is bad because it can cause you to hold on to false beliefs. To avoid bias, you should rely on all the data available to back up your decisions. In the example above, the business owner may believe they’re the best in the SEO dental market at social media. Because of this belief, when they do market research for social media, they may only collect enough information to confirm their own bias—even if their competitors are statistically better at social media. However, if they were to rely on all the data available, they could eliminate this bias.

Update your analysis regularly

A competitive analysis report represents a snapshot of the market landscape as it currently stands. This report can help you gain enough information to make changes to your company, but you shouldn’t refer to the document again unless you update the information regularly. Market trends are always changing, and although it’s tedious to update your report, doing so will ensure you get accurate insight into your competitors at all times. 

Boost your marketing strategy with competitive analysis

Learning your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses will make you a better marketer. If you don’t know the competition you’re up against, you can’t beat them. Using competitive analysis can boost your marketing strategy and allow you to capture your target audience faster.

Competitive analysis must lead to action, which means following up on your findings with clear business goals and a strong business plan. Once you do your competitive analysis, you can use the templates below to put your plan into action.

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Rice Business Plan Competition

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Showcasing The Best University Startups from Around the US and the World

The competition, having completed its 24th year, gives collegiate entrepreneurs real-world experience to pitch their startups, enhance their business strategy and learn what it takes to launch a successful company. Hosted and organized by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship —which is Rice University's internationally-recognized initiative devoted to the support of entrepreneurship—and Rice Business . Over 23 years it has grown from nine teams competing for $10,000 in prize money in 2001, to 42 teams from around the world competing for more than $1 million in cash and prizes. It is the largest and richest student startup competition in the world.

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Billion In funding raised by startups

Still in business or with successful exits 

Jobs created

Explore the Rice Business Plan Competition

Get involved, explore the judge network, learn more about the $1.5 million in prizes, hear about successful rbpc competitors, meet our alumni—the 2022 competitors.

The RBPC is unique in its stature, size, format, participants—and especially, our judges. RBPC judges act as (and often are) early-stage investors, evaluating startups investment potential.

In total, more than $1.3 million in investment, cash and in-kind prizes was awarded to the teams at the 2020 Rice Business Plan Competition—with seven teams winning $100,000 or more in prizes. 

From our first startup going public to IPOs, grants and more than $4.6 in funding, our startups are progressing and achieving success. 

The 2022 competition provided the mentorship, guidance and access to capital that RBPC is known for and brought everyone back together on campus at Rice University! Check out the startups for the 2022 competition. 

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To help finance an MBA degree that now costs more than $200,000 at some of the best private business schools, future entrepreneurs could do what most MBA students typically do: apply for scholarships or take out student loans—or, they could enter a business plan competition.

In April 2019, two teams from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University won combined prizes from Rice University’s business plan competition that totaled over $500,000. Incredibly, neither of Kellogg’s two teams—one a neurology medical device startup firm and the other a coffee vendor—won the competition. That honor went to a team from Minnesota’s Mitchell Hamline School of Law who walked away with an even larger award for their innovation in helicopter safety: almost $700,000.

What’s even more interesting is that large prize pools for business plan competitions for student startups appear to be increasingly common, including the Hult Prize, the Hello Tomorrow Global Challenge, the International Business Model Competition, the Baylor New Venture Competition, and perhaps the most lucrative: the Rice University Business Plan Competition (RBPC).

The Rice Business Plan Competition: A Money Machine for Student Startups?

So just what is this competition, anyway? According to Rice University, the Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC) amounts to “the world’s richest and largest graduate-level student startup competition.” The event began 19 years ago as a joint initiative between the university’s Jones Graduate School of Business, the Brown School of Engineering, and the Wiess School of Natural Sciences, along with the school’s sponsored projects office. That year, in 2001, only nine teams competed for a paltry $10,000 prize pool.

Times have certainly changed for the RBPC. In 2013, another Northwestern University team that enhanced rechargeable lithium batteries took home almost 100 times that much —$1,000,000—after winning first-place honors. In the most recent 2019 event, the total prize pool amounted to a record $2.9 million, with the top seven finalists winning $355,000 on average and none of these teams receiving less than $100,000.

The RBPC appears to owe many of its larger awards in recent years to a single investor organization. A major sponsor of the competition is the oddly-named GOOSE Society of Texas; the acronym stands for “Grand Order of Successful Entrepreneurs.” Started by Jack Gill—the principal behind Vanguard Ventures, one of Silicon Valley’s first early-stage venture capital firms—this investor network funded $1,275,000 (or about 44 percent of the event’s awards) in 2019.

But the GOOSE gravy train doesn’t necessarily stop at the awards banquet. The network’s executive director, Samantha Lewis, told Houston’s online business magazine InnovationMap that the GOOSE Society may invest more after wrapping up their due diligence investigations . For example, the RBPC’s 2017 winning team from Carnegie Mellon University received a $300,000 GOOSE grand prize during the awards ceremony, but eventually netted $2 million from the network overall.

What is the RBPC’s Track Record in Creating Successful Companies?

Are the RBPC’s contestants mainly student projects or do these ventures live on as successful companies? Clearly, most of these teams experience considerable success long after the competition.

This interesting infographic summarizes the track record of the RBPC’s success stories. It illustrates how about 60 percent of the teams transformed into companies that raised about $2.36 billion in capital. Of the 239 successful firms, 197 continue to operate and 32 firms successfully “exited,” meaning they were acquired or conducted successful initial public offerings (IPOs). The value of these exits amounts to over $1.18 billion.

The chart also shows how two industries (tech innovation and life sciences) have the highest percentages of successful firms, with the life sciences and energy industries accounting for most of the funding.

These success stories are also geographically diverse. RBPC’s alumni teams represent 162 universities from 36 U.S. states and 18 nations on six continents. And despite the way that startups cluster in Western states like California and Washington, only three universities dominate the awards: Pennsylvania’s Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Role of Angel Investors as Judges and Donors

Traditionally, as this classic Harvard Business Review article points out, the venture capital industry has not provided the earliest seed funding to startups . Instead, angel investors typically invest in startups at the earliest stages, long before venture capital firms. Sometimes referenced by names like “angel funders,” “business angels,” or “seed investors,” angel investors often tend to be high net-worth individuals and families , sometimes with personal connections to the entrepreneurs they fund. They typically inject capital into startup firms in exchange for convertible debt —loans that can be converted to stock—or a proportion of the stock in the startup company.

For example, in 1977 former Intel electrical engineer Mike Markkula helped launch Apple with arguably the best investment of any angel in history. According to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak , Markkula provided $250,000 to Wozniak and Steve Jobs. Of that sum, only $80,000 was an equity investment and the balance was a loan. In exchange, Markkula received a third of the company’s stock as the third employee, ran the company as CEO from 1981 to 1983, and served as chairman of the board from 1985 to 1997.

So-called “super angel” investor networks such as the GOOSE Society represent a blend between venture capital firms and angel investors. Here is how Fast Company described this newer breed of firms:

These crafty interlopers represent a hybrid between the two investing models that have long ruled the normally placid world of startup funding. Super angels raise funds like venture capitalists but invest early like angels and in sums between the two, on average from $250,000 to $500,000. By being smaller, faster, and less demanding of entrepreneurs than VCs, super angels are getting first dibs on the best new ideas.

So it’s not surprising that at RBPC’s 2018 competition, 40 percent of judges were angel or super angel investors . That’s more than double the proportion of judges from the venture capital industry and triple the proportion from the next highest sector: legal and financial services. It’s also not surprising that—barring some notable exceptions like Cisco Systems, NASA, and the Texas Medical Center—angel investors donated most of the largest prizes.

Other Business Plan Competitions With Large Prize Pools

Although our research disclosed no other competitions with prize pools quite as substantial as the RBMC’s nearly $3 million, we did find several events offering prizes large enough to provide compelling incentives for starving graduate students. Here are a few examples:

The objective behind the Hult Prize is to “launch a start-up enterprise that can radically change the world and breed the next generation of social entrepreneurs.” The prize is known for the involvement of the United Nations and President Bill Clinton, who presents awards to recipients. The top prize is $1 million for the winner.

Hello Tomorrow Global Challenge

The focus in the Hello Tomorrow Global Challenge , a Paris-based competition, encompasses launching “deep tech” emerging technology ventures with funding requirements far greater than cloud- or mobile-based Web applications. The current prize pool is about $235,000.

International Business Model Competition

The IBMC isn’t a business plan competition, per se. Technically, it’s a business model competition, which means that startup teams must adhere to lean startup methodologies and organize their pitches using a lean canvas framework. This Utah-based event offered a 2019 prize pool of $200,000. ( Learn more from our article about how the lean canvas approach provides an alternative to traditional business plans.)

Baylor New Venture Competition

Another Texas-based event, Baylor University’s New Venture Competition only offers about $100,000 in cash prizes. However, IBM has kicked in $120,000 in cloud credits for each of the top three finalists, making this competition especially attractive for cloud-based technology startups.

Douglas Mark

While a partner in a San Francisco marketing and design firm, for over 20 years Douglas Mark wrote online and print content for the world’s biggest brands , including United Airlines, Union Bank, Ziff Davis, Sebastiani, and AT&T. Since his first magazine article appeared in MacUser in 1995, he’s also written on finance and graduate business education in addition to mobile online devices, apps, and technology. Doug graduated in the top 1 percent of his class with a business administration degree from the University of Illinois and studied computer science at Stanford University.

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WomensNet News

15 Best Business Plan Competitions for Startup Entrepreneurs

March 13th 2019

by Marcia Layton Turner

Many members of the WomensNet community have asked us about more opportunities to get start-up money.  Well, here’s an idea that might help you.

Business plan creation is an exercise required of many MBA students, as a teaching tool, which is why many colleges and universities sponsor business plan competitions – to help students apply what they’ve learned in class. Winners of these contests often receive a combination of startup cash, mentoring, and other resources to help them get their venture off the ground.

A number of successful companies have come out of these competitions, which may be why more organizations and institutions of higher education have begun admitting non-students to these events. There are also business plan competitions open to anyone, student or not.

If you’re looking for ways to land early stage funding, or to network with fellow entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, it may be worth your time to enter a business plan competition. Winning means money and bragging rights, which can open doors to other opportunities.

Deadlines for entries vary throughout the year, so if you’ve missed this year’s window, next year’s window of opportunity will be here before you know it. Most have no entry fee, though you’ll want to read the fine print to see what you’re responsible for (such as travel expenses).

Here are 15 of the best business plan competitions worth your attention:

Arch Grants Global Startup Competition

For entrepreneurs currently residing in or willing to move to St. Louis, Missouri. Prizes include a $50,000 equity-free grant and free business support services, as well as becoming eligible to pursue up to $1 million in follow-on funding for winners. Idea-stage to pre-Series A companies are welcome to apply.

“Where software startups are launched” is how Codelaunch bills itself, which is a combination competition and startup networking festival held in Frisco, Texas. You need to have an idea for a software product or app to participate, with the prize being training and mentoring. There is also an annual seed accelerator for entrepreneurs with ideas for apps in search of funding.

Get in the Ring

While not as much as competition as a networking event on steroids, Get in the Ring brings together 150 startups to participate in three days of workshops to “unlock business opportunities” with 350 mentors, investors, and advisors. In Berlin.

Jack Daniels’ Pitch Distilled

According to Jack Daniels, “Pitch Distilled is a multi-city pitch competition…pairing aspiring entrepreneurs with a diverse cast of judges tasked with helping them kick-start the next big idea.” The grand prize is $5,000.

MassChallenge Accelerator

Not quite a business plan competition, MassChallenge involves selecting the “highest-impact and highest-potential startups” to participate in an accelerator program. There are locations in Boston, Rhode Island, Texas, and Switzerland. The accelerator session involves receiving mentoring, business services, and, ultimately, the chance for funding if your company is selected as a finalist.

Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition

The Milken-Penn Graduate School of Education (GSE) business plan competition may be the best-funded competition around, having awarded more than $1 million in prize money in the last ten years and sparked more than $135 million in follow-on funding. It is open to anyone in the world, but particularly “entrepreneurs with innovative ideas in education.” Its goal is to foster innovation in the field of education.

New York Start Up! 2019 Business Plan Competition

This competition is for residents of New York City, the Bronx, and Staten Island only. Businesses must not have generated more than $10,000 in revenue since startup. The top prize is $15,000, plus access to guidance and resources available through the New York Public Library.

Next Founders

Canadian entrepreneurs should apply for the annual Next Founders program, which is designed to help build the skills of the company founder(s) and provide training, mentoring, and access to capital to help scale promising business concepts and companies.

North of Boston Business Plan Competition

Entrepreneurs currently operating a business on Boston’s North Shore, or are willing to commit to locating the company in the area, are eligible to compete in this annual competition. “The purpose of the Competition is to identify and support businesses who want to grow and expand on the North Shore and thereby build the region’s economy.” The top prize is $10,000, with runner-up awards of $6,000 and $4,000.

Pistoia Alliance President’s Startup Challenge

This competition is for startups focused specifically on informatics and technology. Two winners receive six months of mentorship from industry experts and $20,000. Five finalists also receive $5,000 each.

This U.K.-based event isn’t so much about winning free cash, but about participating in a free boot camp. The top 300 startups are invited to participate, rubbing elbows with mentors and investors, as well as peers.

Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation New Venture Challenge

The Edward L. Kaplan New Venture Challenge, now based at the University of Chicago’s Polsky Center, is one of the leading business accelerators. It is “a year-long business launch program” that involves idea generation, critical feedback from advisors, and pitches to the investing community.

Startup Festival

Dubbed “the music festival for startups,” the 2019 Startup Festival, held in Montreal, provides numerous opportunities for entrepreneurs to pitch their startup concept to potential investors. Those pitches could result in funding or enhanced visibility, with the chance to pitch to the crowd or a group of grandmother judges. More than $750,000 in funding is on the line here.

tecBRIDGE Business Plan Competition

Students are separated into their own division in this competition for companies in the Northeast Pennsylvania region, with non-students in another. Early stage entrepreneurs from the area are welcome and can compete for prizes valued at more than $100,000. Concept must be technology-based and have had sales of no more than $250,000 in the prior 12 months to qualify for inclusion.

Y Combinator

Perhaps the best known business accelerator, Silicon Valley-based Y Combinator sponsors an annual competition to identify startups worthy of funding. Successful applicants are flown out to Mountain View, California for meetings and those funded are expected to spend 90 days in the area receiving support services.

Whether you’re looking for feedback on your new product idea, are looking for an advisory board, need space in which to locate your company, or really just need funding, these competitions will connect you with some of the most supportive startup organizations out there.

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Two Parts Writing – Two Parts Presenting

 annual wisconsin governor’s business plan contest.

The mission of the Governor’s Business Plan Contest is to encourage entrepreneurs in the startup stage of tech-enabled businesses in Wisconsin. The contest links up-and-coming entrepreneurs with a statewide network of community resources, expert judges, mentors and possible sources of capital.

Produced by the  Wisconsin Technology Council and a growing list of partners, led by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. ,  the Governor’s Business Plan Contest engages contestants in a five-month process that includes the opportunity to work with mentors and receive feedback from judges. It also leads to valuable public and media exposure for the top business plans and helps spur economic growth in Wisconsin.

Since 2004:

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From past contestants:

"The Wisconsin Governor's Business Plan Contest was a very valuable experience for SixLine Semiconductor and I highly recommend other entrepreneurs take part in this program! Participating in the Business Plan Contest and receiving constructive feedback from the judges helped us improve and further develop our business plan, better positioning SixLine for success in the future. Furthermore, the connections received through participating in this program have been incredibly useful and it's also just inspiring to be part of such a program and get to meet other driven entrepreneurs from around the state!"

Katy Jinkins, SixLine Semiconductor, 2023 1st Place Overall; Advanced Manufacturing Category Winner

"Rapid Radicals' experience participating in the BPC was both rewarding and challenging because the feedback received through the many rounds really helped us critically evaluate some aspects of our business model that formed the foundation of how we make money. Winning the BPC in our second year of competing was a clear turning point in our company's development due to the exposure and credibility we gained. We're grateful to the Tech Council for supporting this unique and important competition!"

Paige Peters, Rapid Radicals, 2022 1st Place Overall; Advanced Manufacturing Category Winner

"The Wisconsin Governor's Business Plan Contest helped us develop the infrastructure for our continued success. It allowed Atrility to improve its business plan, to connect with Wisconsin startups and investors and provided prizes including in-kind support. "

Dr. Nick Von Bergen, Atrility Health Care, 2021 1stFirst Place Overall; Life Sciences Category Winner.

"The Governor’s Business Plan Contest was one of the best programs in which we have participated. eCourt Reporters Inc., continues to benefit greatly with our improved business plan and the guidance from many connections through the process. We highly recommend that entrepreneurs in the state of Wisconsin take part for significant growth in a new business!”"

Karen Renee, eCourt Reporter, 2021 Information Technology Category Winner

"We have participated in the BPC contest over the last several years. The competition is incredibly well organized, the staff immeasurably helpful, and the fairness and transparency of judging compelling. The competition epitomizes the commitment of Wisconsin to developing the small business community. In addition, the prizes offered to competitors are exceedingly useful in terms of both cash and in-kind services. A great competition to enter and participate in during the three stages of evaluation."

Stephen Naylor, ReNeurogen, 2021 Life Sciences Category Second Place Winner

"Participating in the Wisconsin Governor's Business Plan Contest was a pivotal point of growth for our company. It challenged us to think outside the box, honing our ideas into compelling value propositions. The Governor's BPC is an absolute must for every entrepreneur truly serious about growing their business."

Christian Timm, SmartWell, 2021 Advanced Manufacturing Category Winner

"As a woman over 50, I was always curious about how far I could go in the competition. I became a finalist, in the top 3, in the services category. Whatever stage or age you're at, I encourage you to show up and do the work. The rewards are there for those who dare!"

Laura Gallagher, Mathetria, 2021 Business Services Category 3rd Place Winner

"The Wisconsin Business Plan Contest is an excellent way for a founder to get top-notch feedback from highly experienced investors, entrepreneurs, and startup company managers. The process forces you to answer key questions about your business with a timeline to keep your business moving forward. The BPC was invaluable for Pivotal Health to help us identify holes in our plan as we were launching our business and to also get exposure to potential investors. I highly recommend the BPC for any entrepreneur."

Sal Braico, Pivotal Health, 2021 2nd Place Information Technology Category Winner

"MyGenomeRx had a fantastic experience with the BPC with benefits that still impact us today. The initial application process helped us organize our corporate branding materials and develop our business plan and pitch deck. Then we got tremendous exposure to investors and strategic partners during the live pitch competition, propelling us forward not just locally but nationwide. Finally, through write-ups the Tech Council team has helped highlight MyGenomeRx as an emerging player in the field of pharmacogenomics. "

Annette Gilchrist, My GenomeRx, 2020 Information Technology Category Winner

"I enjoyed sharing our story with the Wisconsin entrepreneurial and investment community. The response was quite enthusiastic. It was also great to see the awesome work of other entrepreneurs and to catch up with people that I had not seen in a few years."

Chad Mason, Advanced Ionics, 2020 Advanced Manufacturing Category Winner

"The Wisconsin Governor's Business Plan Contest is something every startup business in Wisconsin, no matter the phase they are in, should be encouraged to enter. The Wisconsin Technology Council creates an incredible environment that allows entrepreneurs, of all levels, to learn about various aspects of growing and making their organizations and products appealing to investors. The participants and peers attending Tech Council and BPC events are approachable and willing to share personal experiences. The open dialogue provides a conduit to networking, valuable information, and diverse perspectives. As a 2020 Diligent Dozen finalist and winner of the first BPC People’s Choice Award, AGent Plus Solutions gained a better understanding of who we are as an organization and as individuals."

Jeffrey Lord, AGent Plus Solutions, 2020 Advanced Manufacturing Category 2nd Place Winner

"The Governor’s Business Plan Contest really helped us hone our message. The Tech Council staff worked with us to focus on what was important to investors. We came away with much sharper communication that has proven to be successful in the marketplace."

Mark Schweiger, Simply Solutions, 2019 Advanced Manufacturing Category Winner

"The Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Competition (BPC) is an impressive and well-organized event that brings the best that Wisconsin has to offer in a single forum. It provides a state-wide platform for emerging startups to refine and showcase their company. The contest has helped DataChat think about the next big steps that we must take. It has also provide valuable feedback and support during the most formative stage of our company (the first year), which I think will be crucial to the company."

Jignesh Patel, DataChat, 2018 Information Technology Category Winner

"The Wisconsin Governor's Business Plan Competition is one of the greatest resources available for growing the entrepreneurial ecosystem and fostering economic growth in this state! The feedback, resources, networking, and prizes made available to entrepreneurs throughout the competition are unrivaled and helped shape the company we are today. A company we plan to grow right here in Wisconsin, adding fuel to local job growth and economic development!"

Lorne Forsythe, Shockray™ Self-Defense, 2018 Advanced Manufacturing Category Winner

“Participating in The Governor’s Business Plan Contest meant that we had the certification theme from the Governor endorsing the competition and our winning, which gave us the credibility that was needed to go forward to these prominent organizations, the cities, the counties and be a trusted tool that they can use.”

Nick Mastronardi, Polco, 2016 Information Technology Category Winner

"I think the Governor’s Business Plan Contest really launched us. The win in that competition was a result of assistance and mentorship from people across Wisconsin… the accumulation of a lot of help. Since then, we have gotten incredible attention. That win sent us on a course to succeed."

Katie Brenner, bluDiagnostics, 2015 Grand Prize and Life Sciences Winner

“Moving through all four rounds of the 2012 Governor’s Business Plan Contest, we built a winning business plan and started a new company in Madison – Rowheels, Inc. The well-orchestrated BPC process facilitated by Wisconsin Technology Council kept us on track to conduct research, uncover obstacles and gain confidence moving forward through our engineering prototype design and financial modeling phases. By Nov. 2012, Rowheels is creating jobs, is certified as a Qualified New Business Venture under Wisconsin’s Act 255 Early Stage Business Investment Program and is raising working capital for manufacturing.”

Rimas Buinevicius and Jan Moen, co-founders, 2012 Grand Prize and Advanced Manufacturing Winner

“As an absolute newcomer to business it gave me an opportunity to meet a few people who are now working with me. I might even get some startup funds from them and got great PR from the event.”

The late Hans W. Sollinger, Insulete, 2011 Life Sciences Category Winner

“The Governor’s Business Plan Competition award has given WiRover a great boost in terms of both visibility and performance. Since winning this competition, WiRover has significantly increased its revenue, is forming alliances with new partners, and has also received a SBIR grant… The exercise of going through the competition alone was quite instrumental in streamlining WiRover’s emerging business strategy and planning.”

Suman Banerjee, WiRover, 2011 Grand Prize and Information Technology Category Winner

“The business plan contest process provided us the opportunity to really focus our vision and strategy and concisely articulate the message. The examples provided and direct assistance from mentors was a huge benefit to making a successful presentation.”

Don Noskowiak, LIVEyearbook, 2010 Grand Prize and Information Technology Category Winner

“I can strongly endorse the Governor’s Business Plan Contest. Not only was it a great exercise, it was fun and insightful as well. In addition, the publicity that we received from the contest resulted in us adding several new key customers.”

Jim Martin, Green 3, 2009 Business Services Category Winner

“Participating in the BPC and conference was fun and very educational for our team. We all feel strongly that it has helped move our company many steps forward and hope to encourage every entrepreneur in Wisconsin to do so as part of their strategy.”

Ophir Ben-Yitschak, Scopia, 2009 Information Technology Category Winner

“The Governor’s Business Plan Contest is an outstanding opportunity for early stage organizations to showcase their innovative ideas in a highly competitive environment. Becoming a finalist is an attention-grabber enterprise for the new organizations in the eyes of potential investors, potentially resulting in a lucrative and positive partnership.”

Bonnie Reinke, Eso-Technologies Inc., 2009 Grand Prize Winner and Life Sciences Category Winner

“The GPC was an exceptional opportunity to gain invaluable visibility. We were contacted by groups outside of the state because of the press associated with the contest.”

Jeff Williams, Platypus Technologies, 2008 Life Sciences Category Winner

"The [GBPC] took us through a process of increasingly detailed planning, and the comments we received helped us focus even more. Our presentations sparked interest from venture capital, further refining the business plan. ….Participation in the GBPC will help a young company raise capital in challenging times, and the advice, though free of charge, was priceless.”

Daniel van der Weide, Optametra, 2008 Information Technology Category Winner

“The best part of the Business Plan Contest experience was also the most difficult part and that was writing the business plan. It was a rigorous process. It forced me to think about the most important component parts of Extract Systems’ business plan and weed out all the other stuff.”

David Rasmussen, Extract Systems – 2007 Information Technology Category Winner

“I entered the Governor’s Business Plan Contest for the networking opportunities and exposure to expert advice on starting a business. ….. a number of investors have approached Vector Surgical and demonstrated an interest in investing in the company.”

Janet Phillips, Vector Surgical – 2007 Grand Prize and Life Sciences Category Winner

What are your chances of acceptance?

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15 Business Competitions for High School Students

What’s covered:, why should you enter an investing competition, how do business competitions affect my admissions chances.

Whether you dream of being a billionaire businessman like Mark Cuban, an investment icon like Warren Buffet, or a founder who’s focused on giving back like Hamdi Ulukaya, the creator and CEO of Chobani, entering a business competition for high schoolers is often a great first step toward a successful enterprise.

Business competitions are a great opportunity to show off your entrepreneurial spirit while gaining a deeper understanding of the challenges of starting and running a business. Business competitions allow you to highlight in-demand skills like idea generation, creative thinking, leadership, and communication. They also give you a chance to learn about building a business and to test your ideas in a relatively risk-free environment—after all, there is no capital or investment to lose. 

Many business competitions will also connect you with real-life professionals and college business school faculty. This creates both the chance for mentorship and the foundation of a business network that can serve you both inside and outside of the classroom—it can help with everything from gaining college admission to getting a business off the ground. 

Business competitions for high schoolers also often provide winners with monetary awards or scholarships which are beneficial for keeping the cost of college down—something every aspiring business person can appreciate. 

1. Conrad Challenge

Date(s): 2023 dates announced in August Type: Global 

This business challenge tasks students between ages 13 and 18 to apply science and technology to solve global issues, create a pitch, and build a business plan. Participants work in teams of two to five students to compete in four traditional categories and one special category that changes annually. The four traditional categories are:

• Aerospace and aviation 
• Cyber technology and security 
• Energy and environment 
• Health and Nutrition 

The 2021/2022 special category was “re-purposed farmlands and alternative uses of tobacco (and its by-products)”. 

2. Blue Ocean High School Entrepreneur Pitch Competition

Date(s): 2/18/22 Type: Global 

The Blue Ocean High School Entrepreneur Pitch Competition is one of the world’s most prestigious business competitions for high school students. Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five to generate an innovative product or service that the world needs and pitch it in a maximum five-minute-long video. 

3. Youth Citizen Entrepreneurship Competition

Date(s): 4/1/22-9/15/22

Type: Global

Individuals between the ages of 13 and 29 are invited to participate in this business competition focused on using entrepreneurship to solve global issues. Participants are challenged to create or implement an idea, project, concept, solution, or initiative with a societal impact that addresses one of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals . 

4. Wharton Global High School Investment Competition

Dates: 9/22-4/23

The Wharton Global High School Investment Competition is a highly regarded business competition for high schoolers and is open to students in grades nine through 12. Participants are required to examine a case study of a potential client and create a portfolio that meets their long-term goals using $100,000 in hypothetical funds. Unlike investment competitions that select winners based on the performance of their portfolio, Wharton Global High School Investment Competition winners are chosen based on the strength and articulation of their investment strategy. 

5. Global Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge (GYEC)

Date(s): 5/28/21

The GYEC is a 12-hour, online, worldwide business competition for high school students ages 14 through 19. Participants work in teams of up to eight students—each ideally possessing broad and complementary skill sets—to solve a significant global problem using an innovative and sustainable enterprise idea. Winning teams will receive a trophy along with an award certificate.

6. GENIUS Olympiad Business 

Date(s): 4/18/22-6/18/22

Participants in the GENIUS Olympiad compete in numerous categories (including business) focused on environmental issues. Students can compete in one of two business tracks: entrepreneurship or social responsibility. Both tracks require the participant to deliver a presentation as if they were making a real pitch for funding—dressing in formal business attire and including an accompanying PowerPoint presentation.

7. Diamond Challenge   

Date(s): 1/7/21-4/23/22

Type: National 

This well-known high school business competition is an initiative of Horn Entrepreneurship

at the University of Delaware. The challenge features two tracks for participants to compete, business innovation and social innovation. Both tracks require participants to work in teams of two to four students, to submit a concept narrative, and provide a pitch deck. Diamond Challenge offers substantial awards to its winners—first place takes home $11,000, second place $7,500, and third place $3,750. 

8. Pirates Pitch Competition for High School Students  

Date(s): 9/22-11/22

This Pirates Pitch Competition for High School Students is provided by Seton Hall University and is aimed at teaching high schoolers the basics of entrepreneurship and idea generation. To enter the competition, participants must submit a business idea in 350 words or less. Finalists will need to pitch their idea to judges in a live virtual event. Competition winners receive both a cash prize and a generous scholarship to Seton Hall.

9. Yale DHSRI High School Investment Competition

Dates: 2/22-4/22

The Yale DHSRI High School Investment Competition is hosted by the Dwight Hall Socially Responsible Investment Fund at Yale University, the nation’s oldest undergraduate-run socially responsible investment fund. Competing in teams of two or four students, high schoolers (students in grades nine through 12 are eligible to participate) build a portfolio using $100,000 in virtual funds and ultimately submit a final investment report that outlines their strategy, learning process, and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) themes. 

10. DECA Challenges

Dates: Varies 

For three-quarters of a century, DECA has been helping to prepare future entrepreneurs and leaders in marketing, finance, and hospitality. DECA has more than 3,000 high school chapters and 175,000 members. Throughout the year, DECA issues many challenges to its members, many of which are business focused and require participants to demonstrate specific skills and knowledge.  

11. tecBRIDGE High School Business Plan Competition 

Dates: 3/18/22-4/21/22 

STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math)-based business is at the heart of the tecBridge High School Business Plan Competition. Participants are expected to create sustainable and scalable concepts, answer a series of questions, and deliver a ten-minute-long presentation. Students are also expected to demonstrate creativity, critical thinking, and top-notch presentation skills.

12. The Big Idea Competition 

Date(s): 10/31/22-12/7/22

Young entrepreneurs are challenged to think of ways to make the world a better place to live by using business to implement change in this high school business competition. The competition is open to all high school students and requires them to submit a 1,075-word description of their business idea. Nearly $35,000 in prizes are awarded annually, including a $1,000 first prize. 

13. High School Utah Entrepreneur Challenge (HSUEC)

Date(s): 2/21/21-3/26/22

Type: State

Utah high school students ages 14 to 18 can show off their entrepreneurial spirit and innovative ideas in this business competition. Students are encouraged to form teams of up to five students to compete in the HSUEC and are required to submit a business proposal that details:

• the opportunity or problem the business/product addresses
• the solution or improvement the business/product provides
• the market the business/product competes in, its target customer, and what sets it apart from the competition 

Participants must also submit a prototype in any medium of what their idea, product, or service will look like. 

14. West Virginia High School Business Plan Competition 

Date(s): 11/12/22-4/6/22 

The West Virginia High School Business Plan Competition is open to West Virginia students in grades nine through 12. The competition is aimed at helping high schoolers learn how to move a business idea from conception to action. Participants can compete either as an individual or in teams of up to four people. Submissions to the contest are in the form of a maximum 90-second YouTube video that addresses three key points:

• the business product or service
• the problem or opportunity and why is it a problem or opportunity 
• the customer and how the product/service solves their problem

15. Wisconsin High School Business Model Competition

Date(s): 4/20/22 – 5/21/22 

This awesome business competition—open to high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors—is presented by the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh’s Alta Resources Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Students can compete alone or in teams of up to three and are asked to present an idea or solution to a problem that could lead to a business. Finalists will need to deliver a four-minute-long pitch to a panel of judges. Prizes include cash awards as well as scholarships to UW Oshkosh.  

Business competitions can have varying levels of influence on your odds of getting accepted into college. Everything from the prestige of the competition to where you are placed to the value a college places on extracurricular activities like business competitions can impact the weight they’re given by an admissions office.

The four tiers of extracurricular activities are useful for better understanding how colleges consider your activities outside of the classroom. Top-tier activities (those in tiers one and two) include participation in the most well-thought-of and distinguished competitions. Winning or placing highly in a top-tier competition can significantly improve your admissions odds. Less prominent and lesser-known competitions fall into tiers three and four. Lower-tiered activities don’t hold the same sway over admissions offices and have less effect on admissions chances. 

Interested in learning how your participation in a business competition influences your odds of getting into your dream school? CollegeVine can help! Our free chancing calculator considers factors such as grades, test scores, and extracurriculars to estimate your odds of getting into hundreds of colleges and universities while also providing insight into how to improve your profile.

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20 Entrepreneur Competitions To Pitch Your Startup Idea

Pitching competitions can be a great way to open the door to the investment world and make connections that can aid your business endeavors far into the future.

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Expert Contributor

Entrepreneurs often have to tap unorthodox sources of money to get their new business idea from the conceptual stage to actualization. In fact, launching a startup may feel like entering a distinct subculture with its own rules and logic. Within that subculture, there are a number of different ways to get your foot in the door for financing.

One popular way for innovative startups to gain visibility and funding is to enter an entrepreneurship pitch competition.

Table of Contents

What Is A Pitch Competition?

20 best pitching competitions to enter, 6 tips to improve your chances of winning, pitch your way to a successful startup, pitch competition faqs.

A pitch competition is a contest where entrepreneurs present their business concept to a panel in the hope of winning a cash prize or investment capital.

Pitch competitions all have specific parameters and rules, but no matter what, business owners will be up against any number of other entrepreneurs with their own business ideas. Even if you don’t win, the pitch competition can be a way to introduce yourself to the elite world of venture capital and angel investment. You will, of course, want to make the best impression that you can.

Business pitch competitions happen frequently throughout the year, with most taking place annually. Under different circumstances, these entrepreneur competitions require you to show up and participate in person, but COVID-19 has made almost all these pitch competitions move online/virtual. Ironically, this may put some pitch competitions that were geographically out of reach back on the table, at least in the short term. Nevertheless, it’s rarely a bad idea to start building relationships where you have the most presence — in your local and regional community.

AATCC 2022 Wanderlust Student Design Competition

• Location:  Research Triangle Park, NC
• Submission Info:  Submit by April 5, 2022 (you’ll also need a membership by April 1)
• Entry Requirements:  Be an undergraduate or graduate; be a member of AATCC
• Website: https://www.aatcc.org/students/competitions/c2cdesign/

Student entrepreneurs are challenged to create sustainable travel wear that incorporates recycled materials, sustainable manufacturing, and antibacterial and/or odor control properties.

Arch Grants Global Startup Competition

• Location:  St. Louis, MO
• Submission Info:  Applications open April 15, 2022
• Entry Requirements:  Must be a for-profit startup with a plan to scale to national or international impact
• Website: https://www.heysuccess.com/opportunity/The-Arch-Grants-Global-Startup-Competition-7006

This equity-free $50,000 grant competition is open to startups from around the world. Special consideration is given to companies that plan to start in St. Louis.

Baylor New Venture Competition

• Location: Waco, TX
• Submission Info:  Check the website; entry periods usually open in September
• Entry Requirements:  Be an undergraduate, graduate, or recently graduated alumnus from an accredited not-for-profit university
• Website: https://www.baylor.edu/business/newventurecompetition/index.php?id=93663

Student entrepreneurs from across the globe are offered expert feedback, coaching, and a prize package of cash and crucial in-kind business support services to launch and grow their ventures.

Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards

• Location:  Deauville, France
• Submission Info:  Check the website
• Entry Requirements: The business is generating revenue but has raised less than $2 million, one to five years in registered operation, and must be woman-owned
• Website:  https://www.cartierwomensinitiative.com/regional-awards

Worldwide competition for women entrepreneurs who have been in business for over a year. Competition is broken down into seven regions. The prize is a $100,000 grant for the winner from each region. Finalists receive $30,000.

Citizen Entrepreneurship Competition

• Location:  Germany
• Entry Requirements:  Age brackets separate youth and adult (30+) competitions
• Website:  https://www.entrepreneurship-campus.org/about-the-competitions/

International competition for businesses pitching ideas that target social, environmental, health, and governmental challenges.

• Location:  Varies (Houston, TX for first 2022 event)
• Submission Info:  Check the website (January 14, 2022, for the Houston, TX event)
• Entry Requirements: The startup must be dependent on software development expertise
• Website: https://www.codelaunch.com/

CodeLaunch provides seed services to early-stage startups. Several events are held throughout the year in different locations.

TechCrunch Disrupt

• Location:  San Francisco, CA
• Entry Requirements:  Early-stage startup; must have some tech component to the business idea
• Website:  https://techcrunch.com/events/

TechCrunch Disrupt brings together investors, entrepreneurs, and developers from around the world.

Draper Competition For Collegiate Women Entrepreneurs

• Location: Northampton, MA
• Submission Info: The application deadline is February 4, 2022
• Entry Requirements:  Be an undergraduate or graduate and a woman
• Website: https://www.smith.edu/academics/conway-center/entrepreneurship/draper-competition

Smith College’s multi-round competition showcases women entrepreneurs. The Grand prize is $25,000 and a scholarship to Draper University.

Founders Live NYC

• Location: New York, NY
• Entry Requirements:  Join the Founders Live group
• Website:  https://www.founderslive.com/

Periodic happy hour pitch nights. The organization is also active in Seattle, Chicago, Dallas, Lagos (Nigeria), and Harare (Zimbabwe).

Hatch Pitch

• Location: Austin, TX
• Entry Requirements: The product must have launched in the last two years or will be launched six months after the Hatch Pitch event; your company must have received less than $5 million in funding from third-party investors
• Website: https://www.hatchpitch.com/

Contest for companies with an innovative technology-based product or service that are seeking active coaching and mentoring.

Hello Tomorrow Global Summit

• Location:  Silicon Valley, CA
• Entry Requirements:  Can’t have raised more than 250,000 euros (around $304,000)
• Website:  https://hello-tomorrow.org/summit/

A worldwide competition, with startup categories in energy, agriculture, healthcare, AI, new materials, and more.

Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition

• Location:  Philadelphia, PA
• Entry Requirements:  Your business idea must be education-oriented
• Website: https://www.educationcompetition.org/

A competition dedicated to addressing problems and trends within education around the world.

New Venture Championship

• Location: Portland, OR
• Submission Info:  The application deadline is February 7, 2022
• Entry Requirements:  Must be a graduate or undergraduate
• Website:  https://business.uoregon.edu/nvc/

An annual, six-round competition for students from around the world and is now in its 31st year.

Rice Business Plan Competition

• Location: Houston, TX
• Submission Info:  Apply by January 31, 2022
• Entry Requirements: The project is student-created or managed and has not raised more than $250,000 in equity prior to July 1, 2021, or generated more than $100,000 in revenue by that date
• Website: https://rbpc.rice.edu/

Rice University’s internationally-recognized graduate entrepreneurship competition.

TCU Neeley School Of Business Values & Venture Competition

• Location: Fort Worth, TX
• Entry Requirements:  Undergraduates only; no nonprofits
• Website:  https://neeley.tcu.edu//vandv/

TCU’s undergraduate contest for business ideas that contribute to innovations in health, life, or energy.

Seedstars Summit

• Location: Varies
• Entry Requirements:  Received less than $500,000 in funding to date and must be scalable
• Website:  https://www.seedstarsworld.com/summit/

A worldwide contest and networking event that’s for tech businesses.

SPIE Startup Challenge

• Location: San Francisco, CA
• Submission Info:  Apply by October 31, 2021
• Entry Requirements:  Must have an optics or photonics technology or application to present
• Website:  https://spie.org/industry-resources/industry-events/spie-startup-challenge

This contest is for startups that are involved in light-based technology. Applicants choose from one of three tracks based on their development stage.

• Entry Requirements: The product must be recent (see guidelines) and have raised no more than $10 million in funding; each company may enter no more than one product
• Website: https://www.sxsw.com/awards/sxsw-pitch/

This contest includes eight different categories. Some of those categories open to the pitch competition are artificial intelligence, gaming content, future of work, smart cities, and more. The deadline to register for 2022 has passed, but keep your eye on SXSW’s site for next year’s submissions.

• Location:  Chicago, IL
• Submission Info:  Applications open in Fall 2022, but you can join a waiting list now; you must be an enrolled student or have graduated in the last six months; the project must have raised less than $1 million, cannot be cannabis-related, and must be US-based
• Entry Requirements:  U.PITCH is industry agnostic
• Website:  https://www.futurefounders.com/u-pitch/

Annual student pitch contest. Open to any industry.

Y Combinator Demo Day

• Submission Info: Check the website; events are held at the end of March and the end of August each year
• Entry Requirements:  Be part of a  Y Combinator batch; apply for an invitation
• Website: https://www.ycombinator.com/demoday/

Y Combinator is one of the premier startup incubators. Companies that have made it through the program can apply to demo their business concept on Demo Day, which occurs twice a year over the course of three days (yes, it’s not really a “day.”) The third day, called Investor Day, lets entrepreneurs sit down with investors and pitch their ideas.

Regardless of whether or not you win, entrepreneurship pitch competitions can be a positive experience for you and your company. Nevertheless, you enter these competitions to win them.

So how can you increase your chances of prevailing against some of the toughest competition around? Here are Merchant Maverick’s tips for improving your pitch competition presence.

1) Be Concise

In any pitch competition, you’re going to be sharing the spotlight with many other entrepreneurs and their businesses. Attention will be at a premium, so you want to make the most of whatever time the judges/investors will have their attention focused on you. Refine your elevator pitches: short, snappy, and to the point. Make sure the basic concept of your business is easy for someone outside your area of specialty to grasp. Focus on what you want the person to take away from your conversation or presentation.

2) Know Your Audience

Jargon is a bugbear plaguing any number of highly specialized fields. While you are around people in your field, it may allow you to communicate ideas more precisely and signal your belonging to the tribe. However, your specialized lingo may sound like completely alienating gibberish to someone outside of your field. Know when to sound like a specialist and when to sound like a human being.

3) Make Contacts

You may have the best idea in the world, but that doesn’t mean much if you can’t get access to the resources you need to realize your vision. Building a good rapport with other contestants, judges, and even the audience can make an enormous difference in how your business concept is received.

4) Apply Early

You may think you have everything you need ready to go for your application, but maybe you missed some small little clause hidden deep within the website or documentation. Some people do well under intense pressure, but you’d generally be better off spending time refining your application pitch than scrambling at the last minute to make sure you submit a high-quality application.

5) Be Ready To Answer Questions

Assume you’ll get a lot of questions about your business idea. Have some snappy, easy-to-understand answers ready. Be familiar with the types of questions you’ll be asked, so you won’t be caught completely off-guard.

6) Ignore Online Advice & Be A Maverick

The problem with lists like these is that you’re not the only person reading them. In fact, I can guarantee the other contestants have read the exact same advice that you have. That means that sometimes it’s better to be memorable than to appear competent but predictable. If you’re a person of exceptional charisma or quirky enough that people can’t stop talking about you, use that to your advantage and make an impact.

Pitching and startup competitions can be a great way to get your foot into the door to the investment world. You’ll have a captive audience and the opportunity to make connections that can aid your business endeavors far into the future. And with most of the world locked down in the pandemic, you might even be able to do it from the comfort of your own home or office.

For more information about various avenues of funding to get your business idea off the ground, check out these articles:

• 10 Minority Grant Opportunities For Small Business
• 8 Grants For Women-Owned Small Businesses You Could Get
• A Guide to Using Personal Credit Cards For Business Expenses

How do you prepare for a pitch competition?

You can prepare for pitch competitions by researching the event well in advance, networking, and practicing your pitching skills.

Where can I find pitch competitions?

Pitch competitions generally maintain websites, so you can find them online. For smaller, local competitions, check with your library or trade groups.

What is a pitch event?

A pitch event allows individuals or groups with a business idea to present their concept to an audience.

What is an idea pitching competition?

An idea pitching competition is a contest where entrepreneurs present their business concept to a panel in the hope of winning a cash prize or investment capital.

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very business needs a business plan,” says Jon Bittner, executive director of the Alaska Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at UAA. “Do you need a sixty-page, high-gloss plan? Probably not; not at first, anyway. But it’s a really crucial first step for any business.”

That first step is more than a blueprint for the final form of a business, according to Ashley Snookes, program director at Spruce Root. “Business plans can be seen as a final destination, [but] when we look at a plan that way, it breaks. It doesn’t last for the many things that happen to a business,” she says.

Spruce Root is a nonprofit community development financial institution (CDFI) serving Southeast. In addition to its lending, networking, and philanthropic functions, Spruce Root’s Path to Prosperity program includes one-on-one business coaching, online training, and multi-day workshops.

The flagship feature, though, is its business plan competition. Twice each year, the nine-week “Business and Balance” course leads a cohort through compiling a plan. At the end, judges award the best three up to $20,000 apiece.

Bittner notes that many Alaska brands owe their success to a solid plan—and to the financial boost from a competition prize. “That’s where they got their start, most of the ones that seem to have the best marketing presence. And I don’t think that’s a coincidence, honestly,” he says. “I think that there is definitely a direct tie to entrepreneurs that understand the opportunity that these competitions represent and their ability to leverage that later on.” “Participants are learning core elements of running a business… The ‘lightbulb’ moments had by our participants—from startups to seasoned entrepreneurs—tells us that these trainings make a difference in how they run their businesses.” Ashley Snookes, Program Director, Spruce Root Company Description Most businesses never submit plans for competition. Bittner says SBDC works with up to 2,000 clients per year, but competitions might be limited to a dozen entrants at a time. Organized contests certainly aren’t a requirement.

But they can help. Most lenders require a well-vetted business plan, Bittner says, so participating in a contest looks good on a loan application.

Cash prizes are another common incentive. “Some of them have money involved,” Bittner says. “Sometimes you get access to free resources, marketing, things like that. Some of them, it’s the exposure: you get a lot of promotion, not even if you win but if you’re in the top three. You also get access to the network of judges, sponsors, and other participants.”

More than once, Bittner has seen competitors become collaborators by cross-pollinating their ideas. They also sharpen each other, motivating greater effort. “Sometimes people need that competitive edge to do the homework,” Bittner says. “This gives you a structure, a timeline, and maybe some upside on the back end.”

Snookes sees competitions the same way. “They’re a structured methodology for fleshing out your ideas or bringing them into action,” she says. “A lot of folks really like entering into something that gives them a hard deadline and a goal that they’re going to accomplish—and that extra carrot at the end, sometimes, of an award or something that they’re reaching for.”

Furthermore, contests bring new talent into contact with experts. “Participants are learning core elements of running a business,” Snookes says. “The ‘lightbulb’ moments had by our participants—from startups to seasoned entrepreneurs—tells us that these trainings make a difference in how they run their businesses.” The 2022 Path to Prosperity cohort takes a field trip to Barnacle Foods in Juneau.

Business Plan Competition

The Prize is in the Process

THE PRIZE IS IN THE PROCESS

Turn your business idea into a reality with help from the Library and you may win $20,000 in start up capital. Entrepreneurs throughout Brooklyn are eligible to participate in Brooklyn Public Library's PowerUP Business Plan Competition. All contestants have access to free resources and services to help them write a business plan.  Everyone wins because the  Prize is in the Process!

Participants attend online classes on creating business plans, marketing, financial projections, and doing business research with Library resources. They are also referred to business counselors in the community.

Over the past twenty years the competition has fostered the development of a host of new businesses. Join the competition, and you may be on the list next year!

Who Can Enter?

If you are 18 years of age or older, live in Brooklyn and want to start a business in Brooklyn, you are eligible. "PowerUP" is a competition to help applicants start a business. Additional details, including the competition rules and the application process will be supplied during the orientation session.

What Are the Prizes?

First Place - $20,000 Second Place - $10,000 Third Place - $5,000 Five Merit Awards - $1,000 Audience Choice Award - $1,000

How Can I Apply?

Applicants must attend a virtual or in-person orientation to apply. PowerUP Orientation registration is online at: https://www.bklynlibrary.org/business/powerup           

Acknowledgments

PowerUP is brought to you by Brooklyn Public Library's Business & Career Center. Lead support for PowerUP is made possible by Dime Community Bank. Additional funding is provided by Ridgewood Savings Bank, and Data Axle Reference Solutions.

How to Write a Competitive Analysis for Your Business Plan

11 min. read

Updated January 3, 2024

Do you know who your competitors are? If you do, have you taken the time to conduct a thorough competitor analysis?

Knowing your competitors, how they operate, and the necessary benchmarks you need to hit are crucial to positioning your business for success. Investors will also want to see an analysis of the competition in your business plan.

In this guide, we’ll explore the significance of competitive analysis and guide you through the essential steps to conduct and write your own. 

You’ll learn how to identify and evaluate competitors to better understand the opportunities and threats to your business. And you’ll be given a four-step process to describe and visualize how your business fits within the competitive landscape.

• What is a competitive analysis?

A competitive analysis is the process of gathering information about your competitors and using it to identify their strengths and weaknesses. This information can then be used to develop strategies to improve your own business and gain a competitive advantage.

• How to conduct a competitive analysis

Before you start writing about the competition, you need to conduct your analysis. Here are the steps you need to take:

1. Identify your competitors

The first step in conducting a comprehensive competitive analysis is to identify your competitors. 

Start by creating a list of both direct and indirect competitors within your industry or market segment. Direct competitors offer similar products or services, while indirect competitors solve the same problems your company does, but with different products or services.

Keep in mind that this list may change over time. It’s crucial to revisit it regularly to keep track of any new entrants or changes to your current competitors. For instance, a new competitor may enter the market, or an existing competitor may change their product offerings.

2. Analyze the market

Once you’ve identified your competitors, you need to study the overall market. 

This includes the market size , growth rate, trends, and customer preferences. Be sure that you understand the key drivers of demand, demographic and psychographic profiles of your target audience , and any potential market gaps or opportunities.

Conducting a market analysis can require a significant amount of research and data collection. Luckily, if you’re writing a business plan you’ll follow this process to complete the market analysis section . So, doing this research has value for multiple parts of your plan.

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3. Create a competitive framework

You’ll need to establish criteria for comparing your business with competitors. You want the metrics and information you choose to provide answers to specific questions. (“Do we have the same customers?” “What features are offered?” “How many customers are being served?”)

Here are some common factors to consider including: 

• Market share
• Product/service offerings or features
• Distribution channels
• Target markets
• Marketing strategies
• Customer service

4. Research your competitors

You can now begin gathering information about your competitors. Because you spent the time to explore the market and set up a comparison framework—your research will be far more focused and easier to complete.

There’s no perfect research process, so start by exploring sources such as competitor websites, social media, customer reviews, industry reports, press releases, and public financial statements. You may also want to conduct primary research by interviewing customers, suppliers, or industry experts.

You can check out our full guide on conducting market research for more specific steps.

5. Assess their strengths and weaknesses

Evaluate each competitor based on the criteria you’ve established in the competitive framework. Identify their key strengths (competitive advantages) and weaknesses (areas where they underperform).

6. Identify opportunities and threats

Based on the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, identify opportunities (areas where you can outperform them) and threats (areas where they may outperform you) for your business. 

You can check out our full guide to conducting a SWOT analysis for more specific questions that you should ask as part of each step. 

• How to write your competitive analysis

Once you’ve done your research, it’s time to present your findings in your business plan. Here are the steps you need to take:

1. Determine who your audience is

Who you are writing a business plan for (investors, partners, employees, etc.) may require you to format your competitive analysis differently. 

For an internal business plan you’ll use with your team, the competition section should help them better understand the competition. You and your team will use it to look at comparative strengths and weaknesses to help you develop strategies to gain a competitive advantage.

For fundraising, your plan will be shared with potential investors or as part of a bank loan. In this case, you’re describing the competition to reassure your target reader. You are showing awareness and a firm understanding of the competition, and are positioned to take advantage of opportunities while avoiding the pitfalls.

2. Describe your competitive position

You need to know how your business stacks up, based on the values it offers to your chosen target market. To run this comparison, you’ll be using the same criteria from the competitive framework you completed earlier. You need to identify your competitive advantages and weaknesses, and any areas where you can improve.

The goal is positioning (setting your business up against the background of other offerings), and making that position clear to the target market. Here are a few questions to ask yourself in order to define your competitive position:

• How are you going to take advantage of your distinctive differences, in your customers’ eyes? 
• What are you doing better? 
• How do you work toward strengths and away from weaknesses?
• What do you want the world to think and say about you and how you compare to others?

3. Visualize your competitive position

There are a few different ways to present your competitive framework in your business plan. The first is a “positioning map” and the second is a “competitive matrix”. Depending on your needs, you can use one or both of these to communicate the information that you gathered during your competitive analysis:

Positioning map

The positioning map plots two product or business benefits across a horizontal and vertical axis. The furthest points of each represent opposite extremes (Hot and cold for example) that intersect in the middle. With this simple chart, you can drop your own business and the competition into the zone that best represents the combination of both factors.

I often refer to marketing expert Philip Kohler’s simple strategic positioning map of breakfast, shown here. You can easily draw your own map with any two factors of competition to see how a market stacks up.

It’s quite common to see the price on one axis and some important qualitative factor on the other, with the assumption that there should be a rough relationship between price and quality.

Competitive matrix

It’s pretty common for most business plans to also include a competitive matrix. It shows how different competitors stack up according to the factors identified in your competitive framework. 

How do you stack up against the others? Here’s what a typical competitive matrix looks like:

For the record, I’ve seen dozens of competitive matrices in plans and pitches. I’ve never seen a single one that didn’t show that this company does more of what the market wants than all others. So maybe that tells you something about credibility and how to increase it. Still, the ones I see are all in the context of seeking investment, so maybe that’s the nature of the game.

4. Explain your strategies for gaining a competitive edge

Your business plan should also explain the strategies your business will use to capitalize on the opportunities you’ve identified while mitigating any threats from competition. This may involve improving your product/service offerings, targeting underserved market segments, offering more attractive price points, focusing on better customer service, or developing innovative marketing strategies.

While you should cover these strategies in the competition section, this information should be expanded on further in other areas of your business plan. 

For example, based on your competitive analysis you show that most competitors have the same feature set. As part of your strategy, you see a few obvious ways to better serve your target market with additional product features. This information should be referenced within your products and services section to back up your problem and solution statement. 

• Why competition is a good thing

Business owners often wish that they had no competition. They think that with no competition, the entire market for their product or service will be theirs. That is simply not the case—especially for new startups that have truly innovative products and services. Here’s why:

Competition validates your idea

You know you have a good idea when other people are coming up with similar products or services. Competition validates the market and the fact that there are most likely customers for your new product. This also means that the costs of marketing and educating your market go down (see my next point).

Competition helps educate your target market

Being first-to-market can be a huge advantage. It also means that you will have to spend way more than the next player to educate customers about your new widget, your new solution to a problem, and your new approach to services. 

This is especially true for businesses that are extremely innovative. These first-to-market businesses will be facing customers that didn’t know that there was a solution to their problem . These potential customers might not even know that they have a problem that can be solved in a better way. 

If you’re a first-to-market company, you will have an uphill battle to educate consumers—an often expensive and time-consuming process. The 2nd-to-market will enjoy all the benefits of an educated marketplace without the large marketing expense.

Competition pushes you

Businesses that have little or no competition become stagnant. Customers have few alternatives to choose from, so there is no incentive to innovate. Constant competition ensures that your marketplace continues to evolve and that your product offering continues to evolve with it.

Competition forces focus & differentiation

Without competition, it’s easy to lose focus on your core business and your core customers and start expanding into areas that don’t serve your best customers. Competition forces you and your business to figure out how to be different than your competition while focusing on your customers. In the long term, competition will help you build a better business.

• What if there is no competition?

One mistake many new businesses make is thinking that just because nobody else is doing exactly what they’re doing, their business is a sure thing. If you’re struggling to find competitors, ask yourself these questions.

Is there a good reason why no one else is doing it?

The smart thing to do is ask yourself,  “Why isn’t anyone else doing it?”

It’s possible that nobody’s selling cod-liver frozen yogurt in your area because there’s simply no market for it. Ask around, talk to people, and do your market research. If you determine that you’ve got customers out there, you’re in good shape.

But that still doesn’t mean there’s no competition.

How are customers getting their needs met?

There may not be another cod-liver frozen yogurt shop within 500 miles. But maybe an online distributor sells cod-liver oil to do-it-yourselfers who make their own fro-yo at home. Or maybe your potential customers are eating frozen salmon pops right now. 

Are there any businesses that are indirect competitors?

Don’t think of competition as only other businesses that do exactly what you do. Think about what currently exists on the market that your product would displace.

It’s the difference between direct competition and indirect competition. When Henry Ford started successfully mass-producing automobiles in the U.S., he didn’t have other automakers to compete with. His competition was horse-and-buggy makers, bicycles, and railroads.

Do a competitive analysis, but don’t let it derail your planning

While it’s important that you know the competition, don’t get too caught up in the research. 

If all you do is track your competition and do endless competitive analyses, you won’t be able to come up with original ideas. You will end up looking and acting just like your competition. Instead, make a habit of NOT visiting your competition’s website, NOT going into their store, and NOT calling their sales office. 

Focus instead on how you can provide the best service possible and spend your time talking to your customers. Figure out how you can better serve the next person that walks in the door so that they become a lifetime customer, a reference, or a referral source.

If you focus too much on the competition, you will become a copycat. When that happens, it won’t matter to a customer if they walk into your store or the competition’s because you will both be the same.

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.

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The Wharton Business Plan Competition: Can You Pick the Winner?

May 26, 2016 • 23 min read.

At this year’s Wharton Business Plan Competition, one team took home more prizes than any predecessor. Check out the field of finalists – and make your guess for the winner.

Each year, the Venture Finals of the Wharton Business Plan Competition pits eight tried-and-tested teams of students from throughout the University of Pennsylvania against each other. Winnowed from a much larger field of applicants, the “Great Eight” vie for the votes of a panel of judges for $125,000 in combined cash prizes and services.

Finalists this year presented products and services including, among others plans, “smart-ranch” analytics provided by automated drones; the “Uber of personal training”; a company offering genetically modified bacteria that can break down plastic waste either completely or to a point where the byproduct can be sold to textiles manufacturers; and a curated platform for investment in Africa’s growing middle-class real estate market.

This was the competition’s 18 th year, and it won’t soon be forgotten — one team took home more prizes than any predecessor. The finals also were streamed live online, as were the two-minute elevator pitches for the Michelson People’s Choice Award, for which the digital audience was allowed to vote.

The six-month competition featured 150 venture concepts, with more than 350 individual participants from six schools at Penn. Judges cut the field to 25 semifinalists, each of which chose one of three industry tracks: health care, technology and other.

Each finalist had 10 minutes to pitch to the judges — who represented Karlin Asset Management, Golden Seeds, Jet.com, ExamWorks Group, the University City Science Center, and Gilt and Hudson’s Bay Company — followed by 10 minutes of follow-up questions.

Here, in alphabetical order, are descriptions of the eight finalists’ business plans. Which would you choose? At the end of the article, learn how your pick compares with the BPC panel’s choices.

Barn Owl Systems: More than 40% of the United States is rangeland used for livestock, and the top concern of the ranchers who tend to them is ensuring an adequate supply of water. So says Josh Phifer, a Wharton MBA student who was raised on a Wyoming ranch and knows first-hand of the profession’s most time- and capital-consuming tasks.

The average ranch spans 30 square miles and has about 1,500 livestock. Every day, the rancher checks the water levels of his or her 20 to 30 water tanks.

“They drive around or get on their horse and check it,” said Vincent Kuchar, also a Wharton MBA student. “Every day.”

Such infrastructure monitoring is costly and inefficient, which is where Barn Owl Systems comes in.

Phifer also is an experienced Air Force instructor and test pilot with a background in leading aerospace test programs. Kuchar has operated dozens of small drones and has experience integrating sensors and drones into wireless networks.

Along with their Penn-educated engineering team, they provide the software that drives the system’s value. The drones are autonomous, collecting imagery of livestock and natural resources. Persistent sensor monitoring tracks water levels. GPS-enabled ear tags provide real-time locations of livestock. Altogether, Barn Owl offers custom analytics for management of rangeland and livestock.

The United States’ roughly 77,000 ranches account for a $92.5 billion livestock industry, and it’s growing annually by 8.7%. Barn Owl’s addressable market, Kuchar said, is $3.7 billion, comprising water monitoring ($117 million), ranch monitoring ($600 million) and agriculture analytics ($3 billion). Barn Owl’s revenue model includes hardware sales, an annual fee for hardware maintenance and an annual subscription for software and data.

They intend to establish a foothold by distributing water tank sensors and a corresponding smartphone application to all ranches at no cost to ranchers. With that, Barn Owl will have a network of clients who can tap one another, for example, during droughts, shifting livestock to regional ranches with abundant resources.

BioCellection: It began as a high-school science fair project for Miranda Wang and Jeanny Yao, best friends from Vancouver. They entered a biotechnology competition with a proposal about the biodegradation of plastics, won a national prize and were invited in 2013 to speak at a TED conference.

With two provisional patents for genetically engineered bacteria that eat waste plastics, the co-founders of BioCellection say they’ve found a $42 billion opportunity.

Wang, a Penn undergraduate student, framed plastics pollution as a global crisis — exposure to chemicals such as Bisphenol A (BPA), she noted, is highly correlated with diseases such as prostate and breast cancer. And despite efforts to keep plastics from spending an eternity in landfills, more than 90% of post-consumer plastics are not being recycled.

BioCellection’s bacteria consume polystyrene waste 80 times faster than naturally occurring bacteria. “Using this technology,” Wang said, “we can either break down plastic pollution completely, or we can actually turn plastic pollution into a higher value material.”

That, she said, is the core of what can make BioCellection a $100 million business in four years. The proprietary bacterium can convert, say, a Styrofoam cup into non-toxic carbon dioxide and water. By altering the process by which the bacteria are grown, they can produce a high-value compound called rhamnolipid.

“That means the same bacterium, this one technology, yields two revenue streams: one for a highly valued product, and another for a bioremediation service,” Wang said.

BioCellection’s rhamnolipid byproducts are cheaper and of lower purity than what the textiles industry currently uses to process fabrics. Conventional rhamnolipids are priced at $5,000 per kilogram; BioCellection’s version is $300 per kilogram. That’s a potential boon for the textiles industry, which doesn’t require the high-purity versions used in the saturated markets of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and foods.

For the complete breakdown of plastics, BioCellection will park an onsite mobile processor on beaches, in malls, in recycling centers and waste stations.

“This technology right now is non-existent,” Wang said. “We are inventing this, and this is the first one in the world. The opportunity for breaking down plastic pollution around the world is worth hundreds of billions of dollars and is completely untapped.”

“This technology right now is non-existent. We are inventing this, and this is the first one in the world.” –Miranda Wang

The company is focusing at first on China — once BioCellection has demonstrated prototype feasibility, it can qualify for funding by the Chinese government to the tune of $20 million toward the completion of product trials. Competitors for the funding tend to produce “green plastics,” which doesn’t solve the existing pollution problem.

At pilot scale, Wang said, BioCellection can generate $240,000 a week in rhamnolipid production alone. That’s possible, in part, because sourcing ocean plastics for use in clothing, Yao said, is increasingly popular.

“The implication of this technology succeeding,” Wang said, “is tremendous.” (To read an additional interview with Wang, see our Knowledge at Wharton High School article, “ Biotech Innovation That Breaks Down Plastic and Feeds the Fish .”)

brEDcrumb: Scott Elfenbein went to a large public high school in Miami where more than 50% of his class was Hispanic and more than 30% was black. Most of the students qualified for free lunches. And despite the fact that he and his best friend, Juan Gomez, shared similar academic attributes — they ranked 16 th and 15 th , respectively, in their class; carried GPAs of 3.97 and 3.98; and scored 2250 and 2220 on the SAT — Elfenbein, whose family’s annual income was about $100,000, went to Harvard, whereas Gomez, whose family’s annual income was about $25,000, went to a community college.

His friend, a first-generation college student who worked after school to support his family, had no home computer and didn’t apply to top schools due to cost. Both of Elfenbein’s parents had master’s degrees, and he was able to take an SAT preparatory class. The schools to which they applied saw none of those facts.

Every year, Elfenbein said, 1.5 million of the 3.3 million college-ready high school students will undermatch — they either won’t go to the college best suited for them, or they won’t attend any college.

“When you are underrepresented and underserved,” said Elfenbein, a Wharton graduate student, “you don’t actually have steps to follow; you have obstacles. Finding a fee waiver is incredibly hard. If you’re in a community where no one has ever gone to college, it’s incredibly stressful to find a way to actually go through the application process.”

Academic institutions, meanwhile, have related problems — they’re spending $6 billion a year inefficiently recruiting high schoolers at $2,300 per enrollee, and still they miss 40% of the market. Despite intentions to find underserved students, Elfenbein said, universities aren’t meeting their goals for diversity.

He and his Penn-educated team created a platform called brEDcrumb to connect college hopefuls with volunteer undergraduates, young professionals or graduate students who have shared backgrounds. The technology provides deadline reminders, cloud storage for application materials, simplified financial aid forms, access to prep resources and automated fee waiver claims. The volunteer, which the company calls a role model, provides the applicant guidance in essay-writing, scholarships and navigating college.

More than 400 people already have joined brEDcrumb’s ranks of volunteers, which Elfenbein said is a result of “tapping into their identity” — if a potential mentor feels geographically, ethnically or socio-economically underrepresented, that person might feel inclined to lend a hand to a hopeful student who shares a similar background.

The platform streamlines the work of admissions officers, who he said typically get only an email address and a mailing address for a prospective student who has met certain criteria. To ensure that brEDcrumb is building a viable product, the company has consulted with admissions officers in Philadelphia and Boston.

“We’ve built a product for admissions officers by admissions officers,” Elfenbein said. Funding has followed, from Penn, the University of Chicago, Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This summer, brEDcrumb through its pilot program intends to send 100 students to college. Next year, the goal is 400 to 500. At scale, the company expects that total to reach 250,000 students per year. Universities are willing to spend $2,300 to land each student, and brEDcrumb’s costs will be $800 for each. That’s a 65% gross margin, and at scale it would yield a $375-million-per-year gross profit.

After his friend finished community college, Elfenbein helped him daily in applying to four-year schools. Gomez earned a full ride to Georgetown University and, last fall, he was admitted to Wharton.

Daylight OB, LLC: Every year, there are 300,000 emergency second-stage Cesarean section deliveries in the United States alone. The procedure is necessary when the baby is in distress, when the mother is so tired she no longer can push, or when the baby becomes impacted in the birth canal. An arrest of descent often renders the surgeon unable to deliver the baby through the uterine incision because the baby already has progressed far down the birth canal.

Christina Wray, a Wharton graduate student also in line for an M.D., encountered such a predicament during a labor-and-delivery rotation.

“At this point,” she said, “I had to actually get down on my hands and knees, crawl under the sterile drapes, and then use my hands to push the baby back up through the birth canal into the uterus so that it could be delivered.”

Such is the standard of care, Wray said, despite associations with serious outcomes for all parties. The baby faces an increased risk of skull fracture, intracranial hemorrhage, asphyxia and death. The mother is six times more likely to sustain trauma of the lower uterine segment and has a 50% increased risk of extension of the uterine incision. She’s also nine times more likely to experience a procedure that lasts longer than 90 minutes. All of these factors, due to increased blood loss and infection rates, can extend the patient’s length of stay.

Wray and four colleagues launched the medical-device company Daylight OB, LLC, to improve conditions in labor and delivery units. Its first product is a disposable obstetrics device, called Daylight, used to reposition a baby for an urgent cesarean delivery. It’s a simple, injection-molded device that has a curved handle on one end and a disk-shaped silicone cushion on the other. To use it, an assistant gently applies pressure to the baby’s head and steadily pushes the baby back into the uterus, where it can be delivered through the incision.

As they interviewed more than 50 physicians about their first product to validate the market need and to gather ideas about design improvements, the Penn-educated team, led by Wharton graduate student Neil Bansal, often was asked if it would consider developing other obstetrics devices. The team realized it could leverage what it had learned about the regulatory, intellectual property, manufacturing and commercialization processes for additional devices.

At $150 each, the Daylight would enjoy a shortened hospital approval process, would remain under the reimbursement umbrella of a cesarean procedure and would face no negotiations with payers. The company’s first targets are obstetricians at the nation’s 10 highest-volume hospitals.

Our Frontier Crowd: Wharton graduate student Greg Hagin is bullish on African real estate. He and four colleagues — three of whom, like Hagin, are candidates for an Executive MBA — are building an investment platform that taps into the flow of capital.

“As we know,” Hagin said, “Africa represents the growth story of our time. It’s where investment is moving in terms of infrastructure, development, roads, power, water — it is the economic buildout of our generation.”

Our Frontier Crowd is focusing on the middle-class housing markets of select countries, particularly Nigeria, South Africa and Cameroon, where middle-class incomes have been growing significantly during the past five years.

Major American investors are interested in such opportunities, Hagin said, but “there’s an overhang of unused capital in the system, over $4 billion alone in private equity monies that have been raised have not been invested on the continent at this time.”

The issue, he said, comes down to trust and confidence with local operating partners.

Our Frontier Crowd has consulted with the United Nations; the Canadian government; the Overseas Private Investment Corporation; Brian Trelstad, the former chief investment officer of the Acumen Fund; and Dick Henriques, the former CFO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“There’s a striking common theme related to a lack of trust, confidence and the need for local operating partnerships,” Hagin said.

That’s where the purveyors of Our Frontier Crowd see its opportunity — they want to provide a residential real estate platform dedicated to investment opportunities in Africa. They want to connect African real-estate developers and potential home-buyers with foreign investors.

Part of that equation is team member Aristide Toundzi, originally from Cameroon. He has an extensive local network and a family of builders and developers. He is a bridge to local trust.

Part of the equation is mobile technology — desktop computers aren’t necessary when 4G wireless is available. Local users of Our Frontier Crowd can validate, reject or co-invest in the carefully vetted projects on the platform.

“It’s an added layer of due diligence for our properties,” Hagin said, and it sends a strong signal to potential foreign investors regarding quality and risk.

He cited a scalable market opportunity of $181 billion and anticipated revenue of more than $75 million by 2020, with earnings approaching $30 million.

“Africa represents the growth story of our time. It’s where investment is moving in terms of infrastructure, development, roads, power, water — it is the economic buildout of our generation.” –Greg Hagin

“A lot of people are salivating about the opportunity in Africa,” Toundzi, a Wharton executive MBA student, said. “A lot of people will lose a lot of money. We will leverage our networks. It’s really through those connections that we can understand who, between Developer A and B, is a good person to work with.”

Qorum: While working in technology and nightlife with his last venture, Andrew Pietra, a Wharton graduate student raised in Southern California, grew frustrated with liquor companies’ “Drink Responsibly” ad campaigns. He found them to be poorly targeted, squandering hundreds of millions of dollars as they glamorized partying and placed the burden of responsibility on the consumer.

On-demand ride services, meanwhile, had taken the nation by storm. Pietra, who said he lost several friends to drinking and driving, thought there might be a way to have alcohol brands sponsor rides home from bars. With Qorum, he believes he has a solution.

Alcohol brands want to target millennials. They also spend mandated “Drink Responsibly” dollars. Qorum helps alcohol brands sponsor up to 10,000 free Uber rides home from bars per month. In exchange for guaranteed product placement and distribution throughout a network of bars, participating brands will pick up the fare. Qorum gets 10% of the value of each ride.

A suite of mobile apps, along with point-of-sale integration, also can be a boon to bars. When a participating bar wants to increase traffic, it can increase a discount to, say, 20%. Qorum’s platform automatically starts delivering thousands of customized social media ads to non-Qorum users nearby. As new customers arrive, the bar can view relevant information — how often they visit, how long they stay, how much they spend and how they rate competing bars.

“The data that they have now is so terrible,” Pietra said. “When I was in college, I used to go to [a market research company], and they’d pay me $25, and there’d be six other kids. We’re 21 — the liquor companies want to know what we’re doing. They’d ask us survey questions — what’s your favorite spirit, what brand — and everyone’s lying. Everyone says, ‘Oh, I like Grey Goose.’ No you don’t. That’s not what you drink. And so this actually gives them real data that can tell them, what does this 26-year-old male drink when he’s in Los Angeles versus when he’s on vacation in Miami?”

The data help Qorum identify a bar’s customers with the highest lifetime value and “retarget them daily on social media to keep them coming back.” Aggregated user data and customer feedback are displayed on a dashboard within the app. A bar’s owner can explore his or her best customers based on factors such as age, gender and location. The software learns which customers are most likely to become loyal patrons, and it delivers the appropriate ads. Qorum has 26 bar partners, Pietra said, in its launch market of Southern California.

QTEK: Have you ever wondered, Wharton graduate student Mengya Li asked, if the toilet seat you just sat on was clean? How about that sticky handle on the subway car? Or the visibly worn baby-changing station?

Bacteria and fungi can grow anywhere, and where they thrive, infections can spread from person to person. Plastics companies use three types of antimicrobial additives — organic compounds, ionic silver or other metals — to counter this. Those options, Li said, are inadequate.

Organic compounds, which account for 67% of market share, contain toxic chemicals that consumers have been avoiding for many years. Over the past couple of years, she said, the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies have banned the use of most organic compounds in human-interaction applications.

Ionic silver and other metals, she said, are expensive, ineffective and bad for the environment.

Li and her company, QTEK, have a solution. Their first product is Surfion, an ionic copper-based antimicrobial powder additive that is mixed into the plastic — one application, with no required maintenance. The material and process are patented. And they’re working on new applications.

“In fresh produce packaging,” Li said, “it can keep delicious strawberries and mushrooms fresh for much longer. It can prevent mold growth in your own bathroom. Used on school desks or toys, it can prevent infections spreading from one child to the next.”

QTEK will supply the raw material to chemical and plastics companies, which in turn serve consumer, industrial and medical needs.

Surfion, Li said, protects against bacteria and fungi; organic compounds and ionic silver cover only bacteria. Surfion’s patented technology allows its active ingredient to be released over 13 years; organic compounds and ionic silver aren’t durable for even a year. Surfion’s price, $50 per kilogram, is less than half the $120 of ionic silver.

“This is an existing market valued at $4 billion today and growing at a rate of 10% every year,” she said.

QTEK, Li said, has received more than 60 requests for samples of Surfion and is in production trials with several Fortune 500 companies. Stricter regulations, she said, make North American plastics companies QTEK’s first target.

WeTrain: Jonathan Sockol and Zach Hertzel bounded into the auditorium of Huntsman Hall, trailed by a dozen people who clapped in syncopation and flanked the aisles. All were fit, and all wore the t-shirt of the pair’s venture, a company that bills itself as the “Uber of personal training.”

“In fresh produce packaging, [Surfion] can keep delicious strawberries and mushrooms fresh for much longer. It can prevent mold growth in your own bathroom. Used on school desks or toys, it can prevent infections spreading from one child to the next.” –Mengya Li

Sockol, a Wharton graduate student, spoke of losing 60 pounds and feeling energized, then lamented the cost of hiring a personal trainer — nationally, gyms charge an average of $60 per session. Hertzel, a master trainer and a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, where he was a medic in the U.S. Army, spoke of frustrations from the trainer’s perspective — of that $60 average session, the trainer typically sees no more than $15. That, he said, contributes to a high burnout rate among trainers.

Personal training is a $40 billion market, with 700,000 daily sessions in the United States, and the founders of WeTrain say they’ve created an opportunity that will benefit both trainers and their clients.

The service, which charges $49.95 monthly for access to reduced rates and $99.95 for even more perks, offers its members training sessions for as low as $15 per half-hour. The company keeps the membership fees; the trainers keep the member client’s entire session fee. WeTrain also offers single-serving sessions ($29.95 for 30 minutes, $49.95 for 60), of which trainers keep $15 and $25, respectively.

WeTrain says its personal trainers and yoga, pilates and cycling instructors can train clients anywhere, anytime, with or without gym equipment. They can visit in-person or virtually, via live video chat in which they offer guidance as the client practices.

To request an immediate session or to schedule one (80%-85% of sessions thus far, Sockol said, have been scheduled in advance), a user of the mobile app chooses a start time, selects either a 30- or 60-minute session and focal area (i.e. core, cardio, strength, flexibility), and confirms his or her location.

All instructors are certified, insured, have background checks and interview with the training team. A ratings system adds a layer of popular vetting.

“We are really redistributing the power from the gym to the trainers,” Sockol said.

Within three months of WeTrain’s first push of mainstream marketing, its more than 100 trainers had led more than 1,000 sessions within the Center City launch’s three-mile radius. It recently signed a $30,000 contract with a residential community.

And the Winner is …

BioCellection won the Perlman Grand Prize, which includes $30,000 and opportunities to represent The Wharton School/University of Pennsylvania at other business plan competitions. It was the first undergraduate team to win the Grand Prize.

It also was the first team in BPC history to win five total awards. BioCellection took the Wharton Social Impact Prize ($10,000), the Gloeckner Undergraduate Award ($10,000), the Michelson People’s Choice Award ($3,000) and the Committee Award for Most “Wow Factor” ($1,000).

Wang and her team, which officially launched BioCellection last May, secured another $60,000 in investments during the two weeks immediately following the competition. She said the company is “well on our way to closing our $400,000 Series 1 Bridge Round because of the exposure we’ve received” through the competition. Plastics manufacturers in China and the United States have contacted BioCellection for opportunities to collaborate.

Luke Chow, for example, owns a Maryland-based plastic-injection company, Prime Manufacturing Technologies. He attended the finals with BioCellection in mind; this summer, Wang said, Chow will produce, on a small scale, different types of plastics for laboratory use. He also will connect the BioCellection team with U.S.-based experts in plastic polymer science.

Michael Chea, meanwhile, expressed interest from a fashion perspective — he spoke with the team about building a textiles manufacturing center in Philadelphia, and those discussions will continue.

For now, BioCellection is moving to its own lab at the San Jose BioCube. There, Wang and her team will work with two companies to develop BioCellection’s tech and business. Wang will visit China to form early partnerships with outsource manufacturers, to make early contacts with government agencies, to gather scientific data from contaminated beaches and to find a market entry point for bioremediation. Within six months, she said, they will hire a full-time genetic engineer and file their first non-provisional patent.

Second prize ($15,000) went to brEDcrumb. Third prize ($10,000) went to WeTrain, which at 2015’s Venture Finals won the Committee Choice award.

Each of the top three prize winners also will receive up to $10,000 of in-kind legal services and $5,000 of in-kind accounting services.

Qorum won the Committee Award for Best Pitch ($1,000), and Barn Owl won the Committee Award for Best Use of Technology ($1,000).

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Concordia Business Plan Competition

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On April 6th, 2024, Concordia University Irvine will host the 9th Annual Concordia Business Plan Competition (CBPC). It will facilitate two divisions: an undergraduate division composed of Concordia undergraduate students and a high school division comprised of high school teams from the Orange County area.

The Competition will consist of two parts: The written business plan and the oral presentation. The written business plan document is based on professional business plans that any startup would require and follows a provided outline. Next, the oral presentation is an 8-12 minute oral presentation of this idea to our judges in a Shark-Tank style setting.

Workshops will be included throughout the semester before the competition to help students develop their plan, and mentors will be available as well to help guide students throughout the process. We are excited to hold our competition this year!

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From this experience you will gain:

• Mentorship from local business professionals
• Knowledge of how to develop a business plan
• College experience in the business field

Fast Pitch Information

Day 1 (fast pitch).

There will be two days for the competition. Day 1 is the Fast Pitch 
Competition, and Day 2 is the main competition with the oral presentation 
held in a Shark-Tank setting.

The Fast Pitch Competition is a quick 90-second elevator pitch of the competitors’ business plan. Competitors will pitch their ideas in front of business professionals, and first-place winners of both the Undergraduate and High School Divisions will win a small Prize.

Teams will be awarded for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in the Undergraduate Division and High School Division, as well as have other opportunities to be recognized for their achievements.

Become a Mentor

The role for a mentor in the Concordia Business Plan Competition is to help and encourage participating teams in their endeavors to win the competition. This is a great opportunity to give back and get connected with hard working and aspiring students!

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Its so good for networking. The amount of business cards and different people that I got to connect with that have successful backgrounds is incredible. People are so willing to give their feedback of areas that we can improve or what they even see as possibilities. People seemed interested in investing in something that I believe in.

Jason St. Pierre, 1st Place Undergraduate

It was nice going through the business plan Competition and figuring out what factors go into running a business. It was really nice getting to present because I personally do not do very well with that. It was nice getting a chance to feel more comfortable with it.

Catherine Fischer, 1st Place High School

This event gives an opportunity for young entrepreneurs to come out here and get experience in front of a crowd. It’s amazing to see what the young people of our county can come up with. It gives you a lot of hope for the future of our community.

Bryan Ruef, 2022 Competition Judge

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Money blog: Rival to Netflix - Tubi - launching in UK from Fox

Welcome to the Money blog, your place for personal finance and consumer news and tips. Leave a comment on any of the stories we're covering below.

Tuesday 2 July 2024 19:04, UK

• Popular electric car 'has potential fault that could pull it onto wrong side of road'
• Morrisons and Heinz team up to offer free meals
• Rival to Netflix launching in UK from Fox - and it's free
• NatWest and Lloyds hike fees for some current accounts
• Thinking about switching energy supplier? These are the cheapest tariffs available right now

Essential reads

• Women in Business : 'We don't get invited to golf' - The women who coordinated pregnancies to start virtual cancer care business and raised £5m
• What are your rights if your holiday is disrupted by wildfires?
• Basically... What is income tax?
• Money Problem : 'I hired a car via EasyJet but they are directing my complaint to someone else - what can I do?'
• How to split housework fairly with your partner
• Best of the Money blog - an archive

Ask a question or make a comment

A free streaming service to rival the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ is being launched in the UK by Rupert Murdoch's Fox Corporation.

The service called Tubi will be funded by advertising and provide personalised streaming.

It already operates in North America where Fox said it has attracted 80 million active users.

More than 20,000 films and TV episodes will be on offer, Fox said, "one of the largest and most diverse content libraries in the UK".

While no specific titles were listed Fox said users can expect blockbusters, original stories and hidden gems.

Is it any good?

It depends who you ask. 

It has a pretty bad 2.3 score on Trustpilot - but it's a relatively small sample at 66 reviews.

A PC Mag review was way more positive - rating it "excellent" with four stars out of five.

They said: "Tubi is a free, ad-supported video streaming service that features a delightfully large and frequently updated library of movies and shows. There's no reason not to give it a try."

Drawbacks were said to include no ad-free options and the 720p streaming resolution cap.

Why is it coming to UK?

Business presenter Ian King has been looking at this today.

He says: "Tubi's entry to the UK market has got some scratching their heads.

"Not only is the market seemingly saturated but production costs are rising, obliging the streamers to either raise subscription fees or rely on an increasingly smaller pool of advertisers.

"But rivals would do well to take the new competitor seriously and not least because Tubi has already, in the US, shown a clean pair of heels to many of the businesses it will be competing with here."

Read King's full analysis here ...

The average UK house price ticked up in June, leaving first-time buyers spending almost £2 out of every £5 on their mortgages.

Typical house prices rose by 0.2% to £266,064, meaning there has been a 1.5% increase on the same time last year, a report by Nationwide found.

June saw prices rise at half the pace they did in May, but housing affordability is "still stretched", said Robert Gardner, Nationwide's chief economist.

And Amy Reynolds, head of sales at estate agency Antony Roberts, observed more people were looking to downsize to release capital to live on and pay bills in a "hugely concerning" trend.

A bank with millions of customers in the UK will soon start charging people to use their debit cards abroad .

Metro Bank emailed customers last week to tell them it will introduce a 2.99% charge on all transactions outside the UK, including Europe, as of 29 August.

Anyone wanting to withdraw cash from their account will also pay the fee plus a £1.50 ATM charge.

The bank currently does not charge for debit card use and cash withdrawals in Europe.

Walkers have confirmed one of its  snacks has been discontinued . 

The Walkers Stax, which were similar to Pringles, are no longer available in the UK. 

Writing on X, a customer said he had been able to find the product abroad and asked if he could buy them over here. 

"We used to make Walkers Stax here in the UK, but sadly they're no more," the crisp brand replied. 

It also said there were no plans to bring them back to market.

However, it seems like the crisps might not have been around for some time...

In 2021, Walkers replied to another online post saying it was sorry that they were no longer available. 

Savers transferred £4.2bn extra into cash ISAs in May, according to new figures from the Bank of England - a record for the month.

It built on the previous record £12.3bn poured into the accounts in April, as people made the most of their annual tax-free savings.

Investment platform AJ Bell said figures show the 2024-25 tax year has "started with a big bang" for cash ISA savers.

Laith Khalaf, head of investment analysis, said: "Early bird ISA savers are no doubt out in force because they know taxes are rising as a result of frozen income tax thresholds."

He added: "At the same time tax thresholds have been frozen, interest rates have risen, making it more likely that savers will breach their tax-free savings allowance," he said.

"That means more people pushed up into the higher rate income tax band, where the personal savings allowance (the amount of interest you can earn each year before paying tax) falls from £1,000 to £500, or indeed to £0 for those in the additional rate tax bracket."

ISA savers can earn tax-free interest on their ISA savings, which are limited to £20,000 each year.

The Mortgage Works has announced it will reduce its rates by up to 0.3% across a range of its buy to let products tomorrow.

The new rates, which will be available to new and existing customers, will start at 3.69%. 

Here are some of the deals: 

• Buy-to-let - two-year fixed rate (purchase and remortgage) at 3.69% with a 3% fee, available up to 65% LTV
• Buy-to-let - five-year fixed rate (purchase and remortgage) at 4.04% with a 3% fee, available up to 65% LTV
• Buy-to-let - five-year fixed switcher rate at 4.14% with a 3% fee, available up to 75% LTV
• Buy-to-let - two-year fixed rate (purchase and remortgage) at 5.69% with a £3,995 fee, available up to 75% LTV

"Our products are some of the most competitive in the sector and, with rates now starting from 3.69%, these new deals will improve affordability and help widen market access for buy to let investors," said the company's Joe Avarne.

It comes after The Telegraph reported three major lenders had already cut rates this week. 

Halifax and NatWest slashed rates by up to 0.23% - Clydesdale Bank by 0.38% 

The cuts come as economists hope interest rates will fall in August, which will increase buyer activity. 

Wimbledon is in full swing (sorry!) and the world's best tennis players are battling it out on the famous grass courts in the hopes of being presented with the trophy in under two weeks' time.

But it's not just pride that comes with winning - there's a fairly decent prize fund as well.

This year, the prize for winning the singles is a huge £2.7m - up by an inflation-busting 15% compared with £2.35m in 2023. The prize money is the same for both sexes and has been since the rules changed in 2007.

Players don't have to win the championship to get their hands on some cash though, as there's also a prize fund for getting through each stage of the competition.

Here's a breakdown for the singles championship:

• First round - £60,000
• Second round - £93,000
• Third round - £143,000
• Fourth round - £226,000
• Quarter-finalists - £375,000
• Semi-finalists - £715,000
• Runner-up - £1.4m

Meanwhile, the prize for winning the doubles is £650,000, with runners up getting £330,000. For mixed doubles, it's £130,000 and £65,000 respectively.

Players taking part in wheelchair singles have the chance to nab £65,000 for winning.

Overall, the total prize money on offer across all championships is a whopping £50m - up 12% from last year.

Food inflation has fallen to its lowest level since 2021, new figures show.

New data from the British Retail Consortium (BRC)-NielsenIQ Shop Price Index reveals that food prices in June were 2.5% higher than a year ago.

This was down from 3.2% in May, and marked the fourteenth consecutive slowing of food inflation.

It means the rate is now lower than at any point since December 2021, with the drop fuelled by tumbling prices for staple products such as butter and coffee.

Inflation on fresh food slowed to 1.5%, down from 2% in May, while overall shop price inflation fell to 0.2% - the lowest level since October 2021.

BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson said the winner of Thursday's general election "will benefit from the work of retailers to cut their costs and prices, easing the cost of living for millions of households".

In the eastern Aegean, the islands of Chios and Kos experienced dangerous fires yesterday - with blazes raging on Kos for a second day today amid tinderbox conditions and unusually strong winds.

The Greek prime minister has warned his country faces another dangerous summer for wildfires.

Beyond the human tragedy these blazes can cause, there's a knock-on effect on tourism in the country.

So what are your rights if your holiday is disrupted by the fires? We've got a quick explainer here…

What if I have a package holiday and face cancellation or disruption?

The Foreign Office is not currently advising against travel to Greece, and with the majority of the country and its surrounding islands unaffected, holidays are still going ahead.

But holiday operators do have the right to cancel holidays for situations out of their control.

If the company you booked your package holiday with cancels your trip, the Competition and Markets Authority says customers are entitled to a refund within 14 days of the cancellation date.

Alternatively, they should be offered a replacement holiday of the same or better quality, or a lower-grade holiday with a partial refund.

If something goes wrong while you're away on a package holiday, Citizens Advice recommends getting in touch with the company or travel agent you booked with as soon as possible.

The Association of British Insurers (ABI) advised package holiday customers during last year's wildfires they may be entitled to a partial refund for a trip cut short due to wildfires, depending on several factors including what services were included and how much of the holiday had already been taken.

Will my insurance cover any issues?

This depends on a few things - including when you took out the policy, who you took it out with and what the exact terms and conditions are.

If your policy includes trip disruption or natural disaster cover, you should be covered if you have to cut short or cancel your holiday due to wildfires, according to the ABI.

Natural disaster cover isn't included in every policy, so read the T&Cs carefully.

You're unlikely to be covered if you took out the policy or booked the trip to a specific area affected by wildfires after they were known about. You also won't be covered if you travel against Foreign Office advice.

If you have booked a package holiday with an operator and it comes with an Atol certificate, you'll have extra protections, although you'll still need insurance for health and accident cover.

If you've booked the separate parts of your trip yourself, you're more reliant on insurance and will need to make sure you've got a policy in place that would cover you for wildfires and other natural disasters such as floods and storms.

What are my rights if my flight is cancelled?

Your flight is covered by UK law if it departs from a UK airport, arrives at a UK airport on a UK or EU airline, or arrives at an EU airport on a UK airline.

Under UK law, if your flight is cancelled the airline must either give you a refund or book you on an alternative flight - either with them or a rival airline.

Each airline will have its own cancellation policy for customers.

If your flight is cancelled within 14 days of travel - and you can prove it was the airline's fault - you are entitled to compensation. However, extreme weather and other "extraordinary circumstances" mean the airline can get out of paying.

And if I cancel the holiday myself?

If the Foreign Office doesn't advise against travel to a wildfire-affected country or area then under normal booking conditions, you'd be ineligible for a refund.

However, you could speak to your travel agent or holiday company if you're particularly concerned. They may offer a change of dates or destination - but there's no guarantee.

Some holiday accommodation will allow refunds until a certain date - so just check the details of your booking first.

By Sarah Taaffe-Maguire , business reporter

The rate of price rises is slowing but consumers are still shopping "more cautiously" at J Sainsbury plc, the company that owns Argos and the Sainsbury's chain of supermarkets announced today. 

"Unseasonal" wet weather in recent weeks dampened some sales.

Argos sales were down a worse-than-expected 6.2%, particularly purchases of consumer electronics, most notably gaming sales. 

As a result, J Sainsbury plc was the biggest share price faller on the FTSE 100 index of most valuable companies with a 4.34% tumble. Overall the index was down 0.38% on Tuesday morning while the larger FTSE 250 list was 0.15% down.

The strength of the euro still means the pound buys less than for the majority of the last month - £1 = €1.1778. Sterling is also down against the dollar, around levels seen six weeks ago. One pound buys $1.2630. 

Bad news for motorists as the oil price is at a two-month high - a barrel of Brent crude oil costs $89.90. It's still below last year's September high point of $98.36. 

A popular electric car sold in the UK has a "potentially significant" issue that could veer the driver into oncoming traffic, research has found.

Consumer group Which? says it discovered issues with the MG4's lane-assist technology while testing it on public roads.

It said the system, which is designed to keep the car in lane, twice pulled the car onto the wrong side of the road, with the tester having to use a "significant amount of force" to steer it back.

In another incident on a narrow country road, the lane-assist tech steered the car towards an oncoming vehicle, again forcing the tester to manually intervene.

According to Which?, visibility was good in all cases and the wider road had a "clearly defined centre line, while the country road had a clearly defined edge line".

It said the incidents were noticed during testing outside of controlled lab conditions, and couldn't be repeated in subsequent tests.

The issues come despite MG4 boasting a five-star Euro NCAP score, which takes into account safety features such as lane assist.

A spokesperson for the assessment programme told Which? that manufacturers "have a responsibility to ensure that the vehicle performance seen on a test track is also reflected in on-road driving".

Meanwhile, MG told the consumer watchdog it was "aware of some inconsistencies relating to the lane-departure warning system", making it "oversensitive" in certain conditions.

"We have been working on a continuous improvement programme with the supplier and the relevant regulatory authorities," the company said.

"This has resulted in an improved calibration of the ADAS systems, which we are close to having approved. Once this has been completed, we will implement it as a full software upgrade at no expense to the customer."

MG added that customers can turn off the lane-assist function via the car's touchscreen menu - but it insisted it had received no safety-related reports.

Just 18% of companies in the UK are led by women, and while data suggests female entrepreneurs are on the rise, men still receive more funding and are entrusted with higher average loans to get them started.

In an eight-part series every Tuesday, Money blog reporter  Jess Sharp  speaks to women who are bossing it in their respective fields - hearing their stories, struggles and advice for those who want to follow in their footsteps by starting a business.

This week, she has spoken to Kelly McCabe, the co-founder of the UK's first virtual cancer care clinic Perci Health...

When Kelly and her co-founder Morgan Fitzsimons set up their business, they made an unusual decision - they sat down and planned when they'd both have children. 

It's a topic many men will never feel the need to discuss with their business partners, but as two women, it was something they realistically needed to think about. 

"We had a long conversation and made a decision that we would have children at different times so that one person would stay in the business to allow the other to take the time out they needed," Kelly said.

"Of course, you can't plan this thing perfectly, but we were fortunate enough that it kind of happened that way." 

Morgan was the first to have her baby and returned to work after a couple of months off, and Kelly gave birth six months later. 

A month after having her now nearly two-year-old son, Kelly returned to work and Perci Health has continued to grow ever since.

'Whether it was NHS or private care -  I saw the same problem'

Despite Perci Health being a virtual care clinic, Kelly's career background had nothing to do with app development - she started out in the NHS. 

One of the roles she had was helping people with cancer eat and drink while receiving treatment.

Working mostly with people with head and neck cancer, she supported them with tube feeding and their rehabilitation back to solid foods. 

After working in a similar area in private healthcare, she realised all cancer patients were experiencing the same problem.

"There was a universal experience at the end of treatment where you would have your final review with your cancer nurse or oncologist, and they would say 'see you again in six months or 12 months time'," Kelly said. 

"Patients would come back into our follow-up clinics with all sorts of problems they had been living with for six months or 12 months and no one was really managing them.

"They had just be grinning and bearing it, thinking it was just par for the course after having cancer." 

She decided to come up with an idea that would connect people living with cancer with professionals who could provide long-term support and optimise their wellbeing. 

Male investors in a male-bias sector 

With a plan in mind, she reached out to her friend Morgan, who had a background in digital marketing, and the pair got started working weekends and evenings to build their company.

When COVID hit, they made the decision to "just go for it", quit their jobs and put all their focus on the business. 

Their first round of funding came from family and friends, raising £500,000, which gave them enough to pay themselves a reduced salary and hire a small team. 

But more funding was needed, and they started reaching out to investors. 

With Kelly's clinical experience, the issue she was trying to solve in the health care sector seemed "obvious", but the first hurdle she faced was convincing others that it was "important enough to solve". 

"The challenges seemed very obvious to us, but they might not necessarily be obvious to investors, and I think that is particularly true if you're solving a problem that affects women," she said. 

"The majority of investors are still male... and when you are trying to describe yourself as a technology company, then sadly there is still a male bias in that sector."

"I'm really sad to say that it's kind of the old-fashioned things you think of, like a lot of them sell on the golf course or over lunch or going shooting, and we don't get invited to golf or to shoot. 

"You don't get many female-owned technology businesses, so that was a barrier." 

Pregnant, pitching and spotting red flags 

While meeting potential investors, Kelly was heavily pregnant and was "nervous" to explain her situation out of fear it would put them off investing. 

"When I had my first conversation with our now lead investor, I was 38 weeks pregnant, so we just did all the conversations on Zoom," she said. 

"She called and said 'we'd like to invite you in to meet the team and do a formal pitch. Can you do it next week?' and obviously I had to tell her I was heavily pregnant. 

"She could tell I was nervous about telling her... but she said she was sorry that I had to explain myself, and we could just delay the pitch. 

"We pushed it back about six weeks, but not all investors are that understanding, which is why I was so nervous to explain it." 

Unfortunately, Kelly said she was "definitely asked" in the early fundraising rounds if she was planning to have children. 

"The feedback from male investments clubs was that women don't know how they feel and may not return to work after having a baby or their motivation to run a business may change," she said.

"Early on, we were just looking for investment and we would have taken any partner, but now these are the red flags that we look for.

"There is some definite progress to be made."

In total, Kelly has raised £5m and still owns 40% of Perci Health. 

All the challenges

Away from the challenge of fundraising, Kelly also had to deal with life as a new mum, which brought its own challenges as a business owner. 

She explained how having children early in the company's life meant it was still "relatively fragile" and there wasn't the chance to take maternity leave knowing her job would be safe when she returned. 

"There was a bit of a juggle with that and needing to go back to work very quickly after the baby was born, and then the other challenge is childcare," she said. 

"You don't want to be taking too much money out of your business and you're rewarded with equity rather than a salary - but of course, equity doesn't pay for childcare." 

Kelly also found there was an "underestimation" of her abilities from male investors, and it was something she noticed in the choice of language used to describe her. 

"I believe women business owners are underestimated and that is evidenced by the fact that less investment goes to us, but there's research that shows women-owned companies are more profitable," she said. 

"The language they use is interesting. For example, I'm often described as a conservative CEO within the portfolio because I'm focused on financial preservation... but would my male counterpart be seen as such or would he be seen as having optimal control?" 

Kelly's advice

Kelly's top tip is to find a business partner, possibly even two, that can help your business grow. 

"Building a business alone would be significantly harder," she said. 

"Co-founders just help ease the burden when one of you needs to take time out, so find yourself a good business partner." 

She also recommended taking "a lot of time" to build a "strong network", which she said would help "protect you as your business grows". 

"There are a lot of female entrepreneurs or female business networks that are great. Morgan and I are members of lots of them," she added. 

"It's amazing how the amount of advice and support that we have been given for free from other women just wanting to help." 

She said it was important to have a "really thick skin and to be very persistent". 

"Even in the very best businesses, you get those 100 no's before you get that one yes," she added. 

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Closings ahead in Walgreens’ 3-year plan

June 28, 2024 at 3:33 a.m.

by COMPILED BY DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE STAFF FROM WIRE REPORTS

Walgreens is finalizing a plan to fix its U.S. business that includes closing stores over the next three years to deal with rising business expenses and competition from Walmart, Amazon and other discount retailers.

Chief Executive Officer Tim Wentworth told analysts Thursday morning that "changes are imminent" for about 25% of the company's stores, which he said were underperforming. The drugstore chain currently runs more than 8,600 stores in the United States.

"We are at a point where the current pharmacy model is not sustainable and the challenges in our operating environment require we approach the market differently," Wentworth said Thursday during the company's quarterly earnings call. "We do not expect an improvement in the U.S. retail environment."

Wentworth said the company's plan could include the closing of a "significant portion" of those roughly 2,100 underperforming stores if they don't improve.

Company leaders said they've already closed 2,000 locations over the past 10 years. Overall, the company operates about 12,500 drugstores worldwide. A listing on the Walgreens website Thursday indicated the company has at least 40 stores in Arkansas.

Walgreens and major competitors such as CVS and Rite Aid -- which is going through a bankruptcy reorganization -- have been closing stores as they adjust to an array of challenges to their businesses. They include include years of tight reimbursement for their prescriptions and rising costs for running their locations.

Plus, analysts say they've also been hit by growing competition over sales of goods sold outside their store pharmacies. Consumers also tend to grow more price conscious when inflation rises, and drugstores generally have higher prices than retail discounters such as Walmart.

"Our customers have become increasingly selective and price sensitive in their purchases," said Wentworth, who joined the company last fall and has been conducting a review of its business.

Retail sales for Walgreens fell 4% in the most recent quarter compared with the same period last year. Overall revenue, including from its United Kingdom pharmacy chain Boots, increased 2.6%. While it's a modest increase, it represents a loss of market share to competitors who grew faster, said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData.

"Walgreens has been losing front-of-store customers for a while now, and this long-established trend has been exacerbated by the cost-of-living crisis, which has seen customers curtailing the volume of products they buy and shopping around more for the best deals and bargains," Saunders said.

Walgreens also has been closing VillageMD primary care clinics it had been installing next to its stores in order to grow its presence as a health care provider. The company started an aggressive expansion of those clinics under previous CEO Rosalind Brewer. But Walgreens said in March that it was reversing course and closing around 160 of the clinics.

Primary care clinics like the ones VillageMD operate tend to lose money their first couple years as they build a patient base. Jefferies analyst Brian Tanquilut has said the new clinics were burning a lot of cash and racking up losses.

Wentworth said Thursday, however, that those clinics were now on a "clearer path to profitability."

The CEO also said his company is talking to pharmacy benefit managers to "ensure that we are paid fairly" and working to grow other parts of its business such as specialty pharmacy. That helps people with complex or chronic medical conditions.

Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. also reported that it missed earnings expectations and cut its annual forecast.

The company earned $344 million in its fiscal third quarter, with adjusted results totaling 63 cents per share. Revenue rose nearly 3% to $36.35 billion.

Analysts were looking for earnings of 68 cents per share on $35.9 billion in revenue, according to FactSet.

Walgreens now expects adjusted earnings to range from $2.80 to $2.95 for its fiscal year, which ends in August. That's down from a forecast of $3.20 to $3.35 per share that it had narrowed in March.

Analysts expect $3.20 per share.

That guidance cut was not "overly shocking to us as the company now begins the next leg of its turnaround," Leerink Partners analyst Michael Cherny said in a research note.

But the overall results surprised investors. Shares of the Deerfield, Ill., company plunged $3.47, or 22% to close Thursday at $12.19 while the S&P 500 index rose slightly. Walgreens shares have already shed more than half their value so far this year.

Retrenchment has been a long time coming in national pharmacy chains, retail analysts say. A comedown from pandemic-era sales of coronavirus vaccines, at-home test kits and other products hurt profits. The industry also has suffered from increased competition, changing consumer behaviors, retail crime, staffing shortages and underinvestment in stores.

At the same time, chains are seeing dwindling margins on medications resulting in large part from pharmacy benefit managers, which negotiate with insurers, pharmacies and drugmakers over coverage of certain prescriptions, the price of prescriptions and pharmacies' reimbursement rates.

Improvements in the pharmacy chain is another priority for the company, Wentworth said. Pharmacists at the nation's largest chains have been outspoken about the working conditions behind the counter. Hundreds have walked off the job over the past year, alleging that company mandates are putting employees and patients at risk.

Information for this article was contributed by Tom Murphy of The Associated Press and Jaclyn Peiser of The Washington Post.

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