Welcome to the official website of the Mason Wells BizStarts Collegiate Business Plan Competition!

The Mason Wells BizStarts Collegiate Business Plan Competition (MWBCBPC) was started in the fall of 2009 by a small group of dedicated members of the Milwaukee BizStarts College Consortium. The BizStarts Milwaukee College Consortium is a collaboration of post-secondary institutions in the seven counties comprising the Milwaukee 7 Region. The members of this collaboration have agreed to cooperate to assist students, faculty and staff at Milwaukee 7 institutions to increase the number of innovative start-ups in the region. The MWBCBPC was started with the idea of helping student entrepreneurs to realize their goals while helping the M7 region grow and prosper economically. The MWBCBPC is a “contest of winners” in the sense that entrants to this contest are selected by their institutions as their best plans for the 2009-2010 academic year. The critical events of the MWBCBPC will take place between the end of March and the end of May, and will proceed in five stages described below.

Stage One –Due Date for Entries – March 31, 2010

Each institution who wishes to compete in the 2010 contest must declare its intention to compete by completing an institution registration form (available at the following webpage: Institution Registration Form . This registration form will solicit the identity of a designated institutional representative who will submit the institution’s entries during Stage Two of the contest, and who will act as the official institutional contact during the contest. The institutional registration form should be completed, attached to an electronic mail message and sent to bizstartscontest@live.com the official email site of the contest. From that time forward, the designated representative of an institution will be deemed to be the official contact point at the institution for the purposes of the contest. An alternative representative may be designated in case the official representative is unable to participate for some reason.

Stage Two –Due Date for Entries – May 12, 2010

At the beginning of this stage, the designated representative of each participating post-secondary institution in the M7 region (the official institutional representative identified in Stage One) will register the names of up to two teams who are the designated entries for that institution for the 2010 contest. Each registration must include the name of the team, the name(s), address(es) and email address(es) of all team members and a computerized file (pdf, MSWord, Open Text) containing a business plan created by the team during the 2009-2010 academic year. A copy of the Stage Two registration form is available at the following location Team Registration Form. The registration form and business plan file for each team should be attached to an email message and emailed separately by the institution representative to bizstartscontest@live.com which is the official email site of the contest. Each team member must also complete and sign a Participation Waiver. A team may contain one or more members.

The received plans will then be assigned to individuals invited by officials of the MWBCBPC to judge the contest. These individuals will evaluate the quality of each plan using a rubric included on this webpage Stage Two Rubric.

From all Stage One entries, the FIVE entries with the highest total scores will be invited to participate as Finalists in Stage Three of the contest. Notification of institutional representatives and Team Leaders of finalist teams will occur on May 19, 2010. Notification will be made to the designated institutional representatives, and those representatives are expected to notify members of the finalist teams at that time.

Stage Three – Due Date for Entries – May 22, 2010 at 8am.

At the beginning of this stage, the Team Leader for each of the five identified Finalist teams must submit a business plan by 8 am on May 22,2010 for consideration by the final round of judges. The plan may be a modification of the previous plan, or it may be the previous plan submitted by the team. This plan should be submitted as a computerized file (pdf, MSWord, Open Text) attached to an email message to the contest email address bizstartscontest@live.com The email message must also contain the name of the submitting team. The submitted plans will be forwarded to the individuals who will judge the final round of the contest.

Stage Four – Date of Final Competition Round – May 26, 2010

In this stage, the five Finalist teams will travel to the campus of the Milwaukee School of Engineering to make an oral presentation to the group of individuals to which the plans from Stage Three have been forwarded. This presentation should be modeled on a presentation that an entrepreneur would make to potential capital providers for the purposes of solicitation of resources for the business plan proposed by the team. (Representative examples of such presentations can be found at the following website:

(http://wan.mediasite.com/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=961ad80135ca4001861ad4c9af467c1c ).

These presentations should be no longer than 15 minutes in length. Participants will be required to answer questions from judges after their formal 15 minute presentation. Plans will be judged using a rubric included on the following webpage. Stage Three Rubric.

Winners of this Stage Four will be announced at an event held at the Todd Wehr Center on the Campus of the Milwaukee School of Engineering. All winners will be asked to give an elevator pitch of about 2 minutes. These presentations will occur in reverse order of their placement in the contest. Prizes will be awarded at that time.

Stage Five – Poster Board and Networking Session – May 26, 2010

During this stage, any team participating in the contest will be invited to participate at an open Poster and Networking session to be held in the Todd Wehr Center on the campus of the Milwaukee School of Engineering from 4:30pm-5:30pm. Teams will be allocated space on tables (about 3X4 feet) in the Todd Wehr Center. Participants may create supporting posters, displays, flyers, etc. to be used for the purposes of informing attendees at the event about participant business plans and persuading attendees to vote for the teams in the People’s Choice Award. A drawing will be held and one of the teams participating in the poster session (not one of the five finalist teams) will win a $500 cash prize.

Eligibility

The team leader must be an enrolled student at the institution that advances the plan during at least some portion the 2009-2010 academic year The academic year consists of classes held between August 15, 2009 and May 26, 2010. Team members, including the team leader, may be part-time students, graduate students, PhD students, Masters Degree Students, undergraduate students, or students in professional degree programs. Non-students may be members of a team and may participate creating the venture plan; however, the Team Leader of each team must be a student that meets the requirements expressed above.

The Mason Wells BizStarts Collegiate Business Plan Competition is a means to support early stage ventures. Therefore, ventures that have already received external equity funding in excess of one hundred thousand dollars are ineligible. Teams that have received this level of external funding may still be able to compete if the plan submitted focuses on a clearly defined new line of business for the venture that has not yet passed the seed funding stage. Similarly, existing businesses are not eligible to compete, unless the scope of the entry covers expansion into a significantly different industry or customer base, or a major geographic expansion (such as franchising or expanding a local business on a national scale). Please contact contest officials to discuss eligibility regarding whether a business idea is an expansion of an existing business at bizstartscontest@live.com

All plans should pertain to for-profit businesses.

Sponsors

“This product was partially funded by a grant awarded under the Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) Initiative as implemented by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment & Training Administration.  The information contained in this product was created by a grantee organization and does not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of Labor. All references to non-governmental companies or organizations, their services, products, or resources are offered for informational purposes and should not be construed as an endorsement by the Department of Labor.  This product is copyrighted by the institution that created it and is intended for individual organizational, non-commercial use only.”

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