The Rice Business Plan Competition is the world’s richest and largest graduate-level student startup competition. It is 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 the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. This is the 19th year for the competition. In that time, 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 $1.5 million in cash and prizes.
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For the 2018 competition, roughly 400 applications were submitted. More than 180 corporate and private sponsors support the business plan competition. Angel investors, venture capitalists and other investors from around the country volunteer their time to judge the competition, with the majority of the 275+ judges coming from the investment sector. Since 2017, 205 past competitors have gone on to successfully launch their businesses and are still in business today, 28 of those have had successful exits. All RBPC past competitors have raised in excess of $1.9 billion in funding.
The competition is designed to give collegiate entrepreneurs a real-world experience to fine tune their business plans and elevator pitches to generate funding to successfully commercialize their product. Judges will evaluate the teams as real-world entrepreneurs soliciting start-up funds from early stage investors and venture capital firms. The judges are asked to rank the presentations based on which company they would most likely invest. 87% of judges surveyed considered investing in a team that presented at the 2018 RBPC or referred a team to a third-party investor. The goal of the RBPC is to provide the best overall educational and entrepreneurial experience of any business plan/new venture competition.
Set in the heart of Houston, Texas, the nation’s fourth-largest city, Rice is a comprehensive research university that fosters diversity and an intellectual environment that produces the next generation of leaders and advances tomorrow’s thinking
Benefits
- Real-world opportunities to learn what’s required to successfully launch a new business.
- Chance to receive mentoring from investors and experienced entrepreneurs.
- High caliber of judges, all senior level investors, entrepreneurs and industry leaders.
- Opportunities to receive individual feedback during three separate sessions.
- RBPC provides an intense, immersive experience over the course three days for student start-up founders to pitch to investors, receive multiple rounds of feedback and advance their start-up.
- There will be over $1.5 million in prizes, and all 42 teams who compete at Rice University in Houston are guaranteed to win cash prizes.
- Currently, the minimum cash prize is $500 and the grand prize winner receives a $300,000 investment.
Eligibilities
In general, any student startup team, in a broad range of industries, from any university, in any degree program can apply to the RBPC. Specifically:
- There must be at least one graduate-level student on the team, and the team cannot have passed certain milestones.
- Typically, the teams have a technology component in one of three sectors: Energy/Clean Technology, Life Science/Biotechnology, Information Technology, other Innovation (for those startups which don’t fit neatly in another category).
- They encourage teams from multiple universities and across degree programs, but do not accept students in post-doc or certificate programs.
For details please visit RBPC’s official website.
Eligible Regions: Open for AllApplication Process
Apply online through the link below
- Answer a survey about the team
- Upload a 2-5 page Executive Summary in PDF format
- Optionally submit a 60-second video pitch (judges really like to see/hear about the startup!)
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Application Deadline: February 10, 2019
Application ClosedOfficial link
