Competition Rules

The Spirit of the Competition

The Stuart Clark Venture Challenge along with other prestigious competitions purport to stimulate and nourish the Entrepreneurial Spirit in MBAs and other graduate students around the world. In particular, these competitions seek to encourage entrepreneurially oriented graduate students to develop and grow new ventures based either on their own ideas and technologies or those developed by others, including faculty members at their respective colleges and universities. These competitions also seek to provide the participating graduate students with forums in which they develop skill in pitching their ventures to investors and receive constructive feedback for increasing the probability of successfully launching their ventures.

To provide a relatively level “playing field” for student teams from around the world, directors of the major competitions have developed the following set of rules that all participating teams are expected to satisfy. At the same time, the directors recognize that no set of rules, no matter how thorough or carefully developed can ever cover all circumstances. Accordingly, all teams and the universities that they represent are expected to abide by the specific rules enumerated below as well as the overall spirit of these competitions. The Stuart Clark Venture Challenge director reserves the right to disqualify, at any time, any team that violates the rules, regulations or the spirit of the competitions. The 2010 Stuart Clark Venture Challenge competition will be by invitation only; we will not accept unsolicited applications.

Prize Pool: approx. $60,000

Overall Winner: $15,000

Runner-Up: $10,000

All teams are guaranteed a price, however in order to be awarded any price, at least one member of the competing team, excluding the team’s advisor, must be present at the closing award ceremony. No exception will be made.

Venture & Team Eligibility Rules

Student Involvement. The competition is for student created, managed, and owned ventures. In other words, students must have played a major role in conceiving the venture, have key management roles in the venture, and own significant equity in the venture.

In general, a member of the student team should be CEO, COO, or President of the venture, or members of the student team should occupy 50% or more of the functional area management positions that report directly to the CEO, COO, or President. Members of the student team should also own 50% or more of the equity allocated to the management team and key advisors. An equity position of less than 50% of the equity allocated to the management team and key advisers, and/or less than 20% of the total equity of the venture will be suspect and require the students to show evidence that they were a major cause in the venture creation. One objective of this rule is to exclude ventures formed and managed by non-students who have given token equity to MBAs for writing their business plan.

Team Composition: This is a competition for graduate students, and at least one graduate student must be a member of the venture’s startup management team. However, a team with a few undergraduates will be allowed to compete, and the undergraduates may participate fully. All graduate students, not just MBA candidates, are eligible to participate in the competition. This includes executive MBAs. Non-students may be members of the venture’s management team and may participate in planning the venture. However, only students may participate in the competition. In other words, only students may present the plan and answer questions from the competition judges. The maximum number of students on a competition team is five (5), although there is no restriction on the total size of the venture’s founding team.
Student Enrollment. The competition is for students enrolled in the current academic year, i.e., from August/September 2009 through July/August 2010. Students who graduated in the preceding academic year are not eligible to participate. However, an exception will be made for students who both wrote their business plans for academic credit and graduated during the preceding summer, i.e., the summer of 2009. An exception will also be made for students from universities south of the equator that have a different academic year.

Nature of Ventures: The competition is for new, independent ventures in the seed, start-up, or early growth stages. Generally excluded are the following: buy-outs, expansions of existing companies, real estate syndications, tax shelters, franchises, licensing agreements for distribution in a different geographical area, and spin-outs from existing corporations. Licensing technologies from universities or research labs is not excluded and is encouraged assuming they have not been commercialized previously. All ventures must be seeking outside equity capital.

Prior Activity: As a MOOT CORP qualifying competition, the Stuart Clark Venture Challenge has adopted the Prior Activity provisions under the Moot Corp Competition rules and guidelines. Ventures may compete only once in the MOOT CORP Competition or in any of the qualifying competitions. Also, ventures may not compete in any Moot Corp qualifying competitions after they have competed in the MOOT CORP Competition. However, ventures may compete in different MOOT Corp qualifying competitions in different academic years, provided that they meet all other Prior Activity and Moot Corp Qualification Rules.

Ventures with revenues in prior academic years, i.e., before August 1, 2009, are excluded. Ventures that have raised equity capital from sources other than the members of the student team or their friends and family before the current academic year, i.e., before August 1, 2009, are excluded. Ventures that have legally set up a venture identity or have undertaken any other formal startup activities prior to the current academic year, i.e., before August 1, 2009, are excluded. However, both student and other team members may have worked on an idea or new technology in previous academic years or in the case of the student team members even prior to entering graduate school, provided that their venture had no revenues, raised no outside equity capital.

University Sponsored: The business plan must be prepared under faculty supervision. Ideally, the business plan will be prepared for credit in a regularly scheduled course or as an independent study. The business plan must represent the original work of members of the team. All universities with participating teams are strongly encouraged to send faculty or other university advisors to the team to most, if not all, all of the competitions in which their teams compete.
 

Submission Requirements

Confidentiality and Intellectual Property Guidelines

• The authors of the business plan will retain all rights to the plan regarding its use at all times prior to and following the competition except as stated below. Due to the nature of the competition, we will not ask judges, reviewers, staff or the audience to agree to or sign non-disclosure statements for any participant.

• All public sessions of the competition, including but not limited to oral presentations and question/answer sessions, are open to the public at large. Any and all of these public sessions may be broadcast to interested persons through media which may include radio, television and the Internet. Any data or information discussed or divulged in public sessions by entrants should be considered information that will likely enter the public realm, and entrants should not assume any right of confidentiality in any data or information discussed, divulged or presented in these sessions.

• The University of Manitoba, the Asper School of Business, the Stu Clark Centre for Entrepreneurship and the organizer of the Stuart Clark Venture Challenge, may make photocopies, photographs, videotapes and/or audiotapes of the presentations including the business plan and other documents, charts or material prepared for use in presentation at the Stuart Clark Venture Challenge. Students retain all proprietary rights. The University may use the materials in any book or other printed materials and any videotape or other medium that it may produce, provided that any profits earned from the sale of such items is used by The University solely to defray the costs of future Stuart Clark Venture Challenges. The University has non-exclusive world rights in all languages, and in all media, to use or to publish the materials in any book, other printed materials, videotapes or other medium, and to use the materials in future editions thereof and derivative products.

Executive Summary Guidelines

• Must be uploaded in the Registration Section of the Stuart Clark Venture Challenge website no later than Noon, March 12, 2010.
• Must be submitted as a single document in “printable” PDF format.
• Must be no more than 1 page maximum.
• Must be formatted in single spacing with 1” top, bottom, left and right margins.
• Must clearly identify the name of the venture.
• May be the “Executive Summary” of your business plan if it meets requirements.
• Graphical summary of critical financial information is highly encouraged.

Business Plan Requirements

• Must be uploaded in the Registration Section of the Stuart Clark Venture Challenge website no later than Noon, March 12, 2010.
• Must be submitted  as a single document in “printable” PDF format.
• Must be no more than 16 pages maximum not including cover page or table of contents. A maximum of ten pages of text and 6 pages of appendices.
• Must be formatted in 1-½ line spacing with 1” top, bottom, left and right margins. This line spacing and font requirement applies to the textual content of the document and not to titles and descriptions accompanying pictures, graphs, tables, worksheets or graphical. 
• All pages must be numbered excluding cover page.
• Cover Page must include venture name and university affiliation.
• Business plan must include/address the following:

• Table of contents.
• Executive summary.
• Description of venture (company), explaining the concept clearly and persuasively. 
• Opportunity or problem in the market you wish to exploit.
• How does your product/service address the problem or opportunity?
• Who cares, and why do/should they care? How will they benefit from your product/service?
• Current and potential competitors and venture’s competitive advantage. 
• Target market(s) demographics and accessible size (# & $).
• Marketing strategy to reach target market(s) and projected % penetration.
• Business model (supply/production/distribution strategy, pricing, projected revenue streams, and margins).
• Management team composition and relevant experience.  
• Current state of the venture (e.g. product development stage, patents, contracts, current annual revenue (when first revenue was achieved), current sales, profit level, equity/debt raised so far, etc.).
• Development timeline, and key milestones.
• Equity ownership of each team member - total equity distribution (founders as well as other investors) along with dates raised.
• Explanation of the offering to investors indicating how much money is required, how it will be used, and the proposed structure of the deal, i.e., stock, debentures, etc. The team is not required to reveal its desired deal, although judges are entitled to ask questions about it. Also, delineate the possible exit strategies.
• Integration of graphical summary financial information is highly encouraged.

Business Plan Appendices

• Sufficient pro forma financial data including P&L, BS and CF to validate your venture launch and growth strategies.  A baseline requirement for financial information includes Income Statements and Cash Flow Projections (By quarter for year 1, annually for years 2 & 3) and Balance Sheet (Launch date, Year 1, 2 and 3).

• Additional technical support information plus other pertinent information supporting the viability and credibility of the business plan.

Presentation Guidelines

• Each member of the team must participate in the formal presentation of the plan.

• Teams may not observe other teams’ question and answer sessions in their division until after they have presented their own plan. A team, once it has finished its presentation, may observe both the presentation and Q&A session of the teams that follow it.

• Equipment needs: each presentation room will be set up with a LCD projector and a screen. Each team will need to bring its own laptop computer.