Judging Criteria

Judging Procedure

Judges feedback will be made available for all teams at the conclusion of each round of the competition. This feedback is to provide an educational opportunity for the teams and is not utilized in the competition ranking process, although it may influence the judge’s ranking decisions.

 

• Written Business Plan Judging Criteria

  Each judge will provide a numeric score for each of the criteria sections below for each business plan submission that they review. After scoring, each judge’s raw scores will be used to rank each business plan in comparison to all of the plans that the judge reviewed. For that judge, the company with the highest raw score will receive the rank of one, then proceed numerically through all of the other business plans reviewed. The individual team with the lowest cumulative ranking score across all of the judges that reviewed that business plan will be considered first, the next lowest cumulative rank will be second, proceeding to the 15th-place team. Ties between teams with the same cumulative scores will be decided based on the most number ones or progressive rankings until the tie is decided. Further ties will be broken based on raw scores.

• Presentation Judging Criteria 

  For each presentation, judges will fill out a scorecard sheet for each team. Each judge will then rank each team based on the individual judge’s judgment. The top four teams for each judge will then be listed on the board. The judges will then discuss the results to decide on the winning teams.

• Funding idea (20%)
  • Is the source of income uniquely identified?
  • Is the product, service or cause clear and important to your customer/donor?
  • Does the funding model make sense?
• Social impact (20%)
  • Is their target beneficiary clearly identified and in need?
  • Does the team know how to reach the social beneficiaries efficiently? 
  • Will the social impact be significant to the individual?
  • Will this affect a significant number of individuals?
• Operations (20%)
  • Is their management team qualified?
  • Is their execution plan adequately explained at the appropriate level of detail? 
  • Do you have a timeline clearly defined?
  • Is the timeline appropriate?
• Finance (20%)
  • Do they know how much money they need to launch?
  • If bootstrapping, can they successfully grow their company through internal funding?
  • Do they know how long until they generate revenue and get to monthly positive cash flow?
  • Are their financial statements reasonable?
• Overall (20%)
  • After reviewing the business plan were you interested?
  • Do the sections work well together? 
  • Does the plan reflect the real potential of the idea?
  • If you knew a potential investor, would you forward the plan?
  • Anything else (grammar, pictures, tone…)

• Idea (20%)
  • Is a unique opportunity or problem identified?
  • Is the product or service offered distinct?
  • Does the business model make sense?
• Market (20%)
  • Is the market size large enough to support this business?
  • Is the competition identified and threat understood?
  • Is the target market appropriate?
  • Does the sales approach seem reasonable?
• Operations (20%)
  • Is their management team qualified?
  • Are their execution methodologies adequate? 
  • Do they have a timeline clearly defined?
  • Is the timeline appropriate?
• Finance (20%)
  • Do they know how much money they need to launch?
  • If bootstrapping, can they successfully grow their company through internal funding?
  • Do they know how long until they generate revenue and get to monthly positive cash flow?
  • Are their financial statements reasonable?
• Overall (20%)
  • After reviewing the business plan were you interested?
  • Do the sections work well together? 
  • Does the plan reflect the real potential of the idea?
  • If you knew a potential investor, would you forward the plan?
  • Anything else (grammar, pictures, tone…)