HBS’ Rock Center for Entrepreneurship and Alumni Relations announce the 2010 Alumni New Venture Contest (NVC). With over half of HBS alumni classifying themselves as entrepreneurs at some point in their lives, this Contest is designed to shine a spotlight on alumni ventures, give Clubs a keystone event to wrap some educational programming around, support promising new ventures and award a $25,000 cash prize to the winning team.
For 2010, this contest will be conducted in 8 regions (with 11 HBS alumni clubs: Boston, NY, Chicago, Northern CA - SF and Tech Alumni, Southern CA - Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, London, Brazil and India). With guidelines established and monitored by the HBS Rock Center, these clubs will conduct first round contests to select one team to send to HBS in April 2010. On April 26, 2010, the final 8 teams (1 from each region) will present their plans to a panel of judges at HBS who will select the 2010 Alumni NVC winner. That evening, HBS will host a dinner for all contestants, celebrating alumni entrepreneurship. The winner will be invited to present a brief summary of their plan at a School-wide awards ceremony (in conjunction with the student business and social venture contests) the following day.
Proposed Timeframe:
The key objective is to have a winner by sometime in March so that they can plan on coming to Campus in April for the finals judging and awards ceremony.
• On October 1, participating clubs and HBS will announce the NVC.
• From October through December 15, clubs will continue to promote the contest, form their judging panel and potentially develop programming around the NVC (see below).
• By December 15, clubs should require entrants to “register” so that clubs will know the number of plans they need to judge.
• In February - March, clubs should conduct the judging process and by March 31, 2010, each club must notify HBS of their winning team.
• International clubs may consider accelerating this timeframe to accommodate more time for visas, travel arrangements, etc.
• April 26 – April 27, local teams travel to HBS for final presentations and awards ceremony (possibly the night of April 25 if the ½ day seminar is the morning of April 26)
Club Requirements:
• Each participating club must designate an NVC chair and committee of at least two additional members to run the contest. The chair will be responsible for being the primary liaison to HBS.
• The club must adhere to all timelines, guidelines and informational requests from HBS.
• The club understands that all expenses associated with the contest and travel by the winning team to HBS must be covered by the club. Clubs should specify that they will pay the lesser of actual travel costs from outside the region to Boston OR the travel cost as if the team had left from the “home region” for any winning team that is outside the club's region.
o All clubs should charge a $100 U.S. (or foreign equivalent) entry fee per team PLUS the cost of club membership if the alumnus/a is not a member of the club.
o Clubs/regions can solicit local sponsorship/partnership to underwrite the LOCAL contest – be it the travel expenses, event costs or a local prize $ pool. We realize the importance of giving you the flexibility to manage this locally as long as the sponsorships are for the local club’s contest (not HBS) and adhere to the Partnership Guidelines http://www.officerslounge.hbs.org/article.html?aid=449.
o Clubs may also have multiple awardees (i.e., a runner-up, gold / silver / bronze, etc.) However, they may send only 1 team to the HBS contest.
• The winner from each club will be required to be on campus in time to make a presentation to judges on the afternoon of Monday, April 26. (TBD – timing for the mentor/educational session may warrant travel to Boston on by Monday morning.) In addition, teams should plan to stay over that evening for an awards dinner, where the winning team will be announced. It is not necessary that the entire “team” show up and present but the HBS alumnus/a must be among the two presenters and must be present.
Entry Requirements:
In order to ensure a “level playing field” (or at least as close as possible) we need to be sure the teams are genuinely comprised of HBS alumni and are truly “new ventures” as opposed to on-going operations.
• Each team must have at least 1 HBS alumnus/a from the club’s region. The HBS alumnus/a needs to be a substantive member of the founding team, with a senior management and operating position and participation in the company’s equity pool in a manner consistent with that role and position.
• Participating teams may not have raised / utilized more than $250,000 in total debt and equity capital, and must have less than $250,000 in revenues. It is not necessary that the teams actually be seeking funding. i.e., they may already have raised the small amount (less than $250,000) of capital they need to reach an initial milestone, or they may have a very cash flow positive business model that essentially requires no outside capital.
Local clubs will determine the required deadlines and timing of submission, but all business plans submitted should, at a minimum, clearly articulate:
• The team members and their roles and backgrounds
• The product or service, the customer needs it meets, and the market it will serve
• The “Business Model” i.e., how the company makes money
• Incomes statement, balance sheet and cash flow forecasts for at least 3 years, including a clear articulation of funding needs, the anticipated timing of funding events, and how these relate to accomplishment milestones i.e., what exactly will you accomplish with each round of financing. Note that financing terms need NOT be articulated.
Judges and Judging Guidelines:
It is critical to get a pool of solid judges. This means: a) people who have some industry expertise in the industries in which the plans are being presented. This is why the advance registration is key – it lets you know which industries you need to cover; b) People with experience investing in businesses at this stage of development. Even though VCs often invest in somewhat larger enterprises, they tend to have broad industry experience and the ability to make the complex trade-offs among the various ingredients that ultimately contribute to success.
Each club should form a panel of judges. Clubs should build their roster of judges from the local venture capital / angel investing / entrepreneur community. A panel of 10 or so judges would be ideal. This panel should be able to judge up to 15 or even 20 submissions, by looking at paper plans for this larger group, and then picking 4 or 6 or even 8 plans that this panel will hear a 20-30 minute pitch from. Clubs could get more judges and review more “live” plans, and the exact format is up to you.
• All clubs should utilize the same criteria. The basic criterion is “fundamental investment attractiveness”. While the paper plan and presentation are elements of the soundness and quality of the group’s preparation, it is ultimately the team’s ability to execute, the likelihood of success, and the potential magnitude of that success, if indeed it is achieved, that is the final criteria. See attachment 1 for an example of a judging template used to evaluate each plan, and attachment 2 for an example of a judges scoring form. We will develop a final version of this for all the Clubs to utilize.
• Clubs may develop whatever judging process they like consistent with these guidelines and with the number of plans they are processing. For instance, if a club had 100 entrants, it might make sense to do a first screen strictly of the paper plans, and then have 8 or 10 or 12 “finalists” actually present live to the judges. Clubs should organize a registration process that requires competing teams to inform them of their participation 8 to 10 weeks in advance of the actually judging, so that clubs can organize a pool of judges commensurate with the task.
• Clubs may choose more than one awardee (i.e., a runner-up, gold / silver / bronze, etc.) However, they may send only 1 team to the HBS contest.
Marketing and Promotion: Clubs should advertise / market broadly to all HBS alumni in their region, with no discrimination against non-members. The contest will be introduced on the September 25 VLS call with Bill Sahlman and Mike Roberts. Additionally, contest information will be on the Rock website and email/branding templates to be used by the clubs for the contest will be provided by the School.
Programming: Clubs are encouraged to develop a suite of programming around the event e.g., open sessions (open to participants and non-participants alike). We will explore the possibility of hosting a VLS around:
o Developing a winning business plan
o Pitching your plan to investors
HBS has some resources available in the Rock Center web site including a number of resources on business plans http://www.hbs.edu/entrepreneurship/resources/businessplan.html that can be used for the teams.
Clubs may also consider developing an event around the judging and announcement of the winner. As they think about such events and through the process in general, Clubs should be sensitive to the confidentiality issues that teams may face. I.e., at HBS, the actual judging sessions are “closed” and the public presentations that finalists give are much shorter and typically don’t contain the “secret sauce”.
The main website for the contest can be found here. Please let us know when your contest information is on your website so that we can link to it from the Rock Center site.
To obtain the above branding for your communications, contact alumni_clubs@hbs.edu.
