• New Venture Competition brings young entrepreneurs to Baylor from across the country

    Baylor's New Venture Competition

    This weekend, aspiring entrepreneurs from across the nation will converge on the Baylor campus. They’ll come to put their business plans to the test, pitching their vision to some of the country’s top business minds, in hopes of winning tens of thousands of dollars to make their dream venture a reality. That may sound like ABC’s hit show Shark Tank, but it’s actually a competition that’s uniquely Baylor.

    The New Venture Competition, put on by Baylor’s Hankamer School of Business, is back for its fifth year this Friday and Saturday in the Paul L. Foster Campus for Business and Innovation. Almost 150 applications from 80+ schools nationwide have been narrowed to 12 finalists representing a dozen schools; those students will be vying for more than $138,000 in award money (and thousands of dollars more in support services from sponsoring companies).

    The New Venture Competition has grown exponentially since Baylor’s John F. Baugh Center for Entrepreneurship and Free Enterprise hosted the first event in 2012. It started as a Baylor-only competition, awarding $25,000 in prizes. The combination of excitement for the event and respect for Baylor’s business programs allowed it to expand quickly — and companies like this year’s title sponsor, Dell, quickly came on board to partner with Baylor to grow the event into a competitive national event.

    The competition features two stages: an “elevator pitch” competition (think of it as being able to make a credible pitch for your ideas in the amount of time it takes to ride an elevator) and a business plan competition. The winner of the elevator pitch competition takes home $1,000, but the big prize comes from having the best business plan; the team determined to have the best business plan will take home $50,000 (plus an assortment of prizes from sponsors worth many more thousands). Second and third places aren’t too shabby either — $25,000 for the runner-up, and $10,000 for the bronze medal winner.

    Sic ’em, New Venture competitors!

    [3/4/16 update: Congratulations to this year’s winners!]