First Round - Venture Summary
In the first round of the competition, teams create a 3-5 page Venture Summary. A venture summary contains a snapshot of the information that would be in the full business plan. It shows the reader that the conditions exist for this to be a successful venture: a market opportunity and a management team that can carry out the plan. When crafting a venture summary, there are many questions the team should attempt to answer, as seen in the Venture Summary Guideline found in the appendices.
During this round, the team should use their advisor as a way to get feedback on what they’ve written. The team should share their summary with their advisor and give them enough time to read it and offer the team feedback. The team should take their advisor’s feedback into consideration, and make the changes to their summary accordingly.
All registered teams and their advisors are invited to attend the Venture Summary Networking Event for an opportunity to meet other teams, advisors and competition judges.
Once completed, the team submits their venture summary via e-mail. The summaries are sent to judges for evaluation. Each summary is evaluated by three judges, who each evaluate three venture summaries. Judges are given an evaluation form (see below). When judges are evaluating venture summaries, they do not expect the team to answer every question about the venture. They do strongly consider the following:
- How well does the team understand the venture, its products/services, and market?
- Is the idea is presented succinctly, with brevity and clarity?
- How successful is the team at increasing curiosity about the venture. After reading the venture summary, do you want to see a full business plan?
Once the evaluations are in and tabulated, teams are informed if they are advancing to the next round, in which they will complete a full business plan. All teams are given copies of all the evaluations received from judges, and are encouraged to use this feedback to move forward their ventures.
Timeline for First Round - Venture Summary
Networking Event with Teams, Advisors,Judges
Wednesday, January 23 2008, 5:00pm - 7:00pm - CANCELLED
Submission Deadline
Thursday, January 31, 2008, 5:00pm
Semifinalist Notification
Tuesday, February 12, 2008