Competition Criteria & Rules

Here you will find all the information about which criteria your submissions should meet to participate in Venture Cup. Choose the competition you are partaking in to see all the info.

STARTUP COMPETITION (Criteria)

IDEA COMPETITION (Criteria)

RULES (Who can participate?)

STARTUP COMPETITION

THEBASICS		EVALUATIONCRITERIA

Your business plan should be up to 10-20 pages, and it should be only one PDF file of up to 10MB It may be written either in English or Danish. It should be uploaded through our website by May 3rd, 2010 at midnight. You need to have a student, first year graduate or an employee of a danish university on the team. You don't have to be incorporated. Most people just send in ideas. Please note that your submission will not be considered if it doesn't comply with these requirements.		Does the idea involve a product or service innovation? Does the product or service relieve a specific customer pain? Have the market and competitors been researched? Have suitable forms of idea protection, trademarks or patents have been considered? Does the team consist of people with different and complementary skills? Has a suitable business model been chosen? Does the plan include a convincing budget? Has a sound implementation plan been created? Does the project have potential for profitable growth? Overall, would this idea be actually started as a company? These are the questions the jury will be asked to evaluate your business idea. For further explanation of the criteria, please refer to the table below. Feel free to ask your local representative if you need advice on any of the criteria.

Criteria Description

The table below is just a guideline of what information your business plan should include. You are of course free to structure your document as you please, you do not need to use the category headings or the criteria questions as sections.

Category	Criteria	Low score (1)	High score (5)
Product/Service	Does the idea involve a product or service innovation?	No, it is not new to the industry, but competitive in other ways.	Yes, it is a radical innovation on what already exists.
Product/Service	Have suitable forms of idea protection, trademarks or patents have been investigated?	No, the idea is easy to copy, hard to protect and no action has been taken.	Yes, suitable forms of protection apply and/or have been sought.
Market & Customers	Does the product or service relieve a specific customer "pain"?	No, the customer and pain is poorly described.	Yes, the customer and pain is clearly identified.
Market & Customers	Has the market size and potential been adequately investigated, and is it attractive?	No, just an unfounded estimate and/or is not attractive.	Yes, a thorough market analysis has lead to a convincing and attractive estimate.
Industry & Competition	Has key competitors been identified and sufficiently compared?	No, competition is only vaguely mentioned.	Yes, competition and differentiation is convincingly described.
Industry & Competition	Has potential strategic partners been identified?	No, issue not addressed.	Yes, potential partners are already in contact with the team.
People & Organisation	Does the team consist of people with different and complementary skills?	No, all team members have equal backgrounds or lack skills, and this has not been adressed.	Yes, team consists of complementary skills and appears to use them well.
People & Organisation	Is the company structure and organisation adequately described?	No, neither structure nor organisation is adequately described.	Yes, issues such as company type, founder roles, board, advisors, shareholders are well addressed.
Money & Feasibility	Has a suitable business model been chosen?	No, team has not described well how the idea will make money.	Yes, several models have been considered and the best one chosen.
	Does the plan include a convincing budget?	No, financials are only vaguely mentioned.	Yes, budget provides sufficient details and is convincing to an investor.
	Are relevant risks described and assessed?	No, risks have not been mentioned.	Yes, a convincing risk and mitigation plan has been presented.
Implementation	Is the implementation plan realistic and convincing?	No implementation or start-up plan has been made.	Yesm plan convincingly addresses all relevant areas and includes key milestones.
	Does the plan include a convincing sales and marketing plan?	No information about sales or marketing included.	Yes, the plan convincingly describes how to sell and market the product or service
	Has financing options been investigated and described (if necessary)?	No, financing has not been addressed.	Yes, financing options have been discussed, and a suitable strategy has been chosen.
Overall Evaluation	Is the material presented clean and appleaing?	No, plan is unorganised, unappealing and poorly written.	Yes, the idea is well presented by the plan.
	Overall, does the project have potential for profitable growth?

[*] By "customer pain" we refer to something that annoys somebody sufficiently to make them pay you to solve the problem. It is not necessarily a physical pain, but the pain terminology is good when you try to identify why the customer would buy your product or service.

Questions about the criteria or the jury process? Contact

IDEA COMPETITION

THEBASICS		EVALUATIONCRITERIA

Submit an executive summary of your idea in max 2-3 pages. It should be only one PDF file of up to 5MB Your summary may be written either in English or Danish. It should be uploaded through our website before the deadline, which is usually around late November. Please note that your submission will not be considered if it doesn't comply with these requirements.		Does the idea involve a product or service innovation? Does the product or service relieve a specific customer pain* and is the market size and potential attractive? Does the team consist of people with different and complementary skills? Have suitable forms of idea protection, trademarks or patents have been investigated? Overall, does the project have potential for profitable growth? These are the questions the jury will be asked to evaluate your business idea. For further explanation of the criteria, please refer to the table below. Feel free to ask your local representative if you need advice on any of the criteria.

Criteria Description

Area	Criteria (1 to 5 scale)	Explanation	Example
Product/ Service	Does the idea involve a product or service innovation? 1: No, it is not new to the industry, but competitive in other ways. 5: Yes, it is a radical innovation on what already exists.	Is your idea radically different from what already exists, or are you simply doing something just a bit better/cheaper/faster than others?	Email is a radical innovation to a physical letter in an envelope, whereas faster planes to speed airmail delivery is only an incremental innovation in the postal world.
	Have suitable forms of idea protection, trademarks or patents have been investigated? 1: No, the idea is easy to copy, hard to protect and no action has been taken. 5: Yes, suitable forms of protection apply and/or have been sought.	Can you protect your idea? Can you apply for a patent to cover your invention, and will it help you? Can a trademark or design protection help? Even if it is not necessary to protect your idea, patents often raise the value of your business and can make scaling up less risky.	Coca-Cola has a trademark and design protection, Viagra is covered by a patent preventing others from producing it. McKinsey & Company has no notable IP protection and is doing well anyway.

Market & Customers	*Does the product or service relieve a specific customer pain and is the market potential attractive?** 1: No, the customer and pain is poorly described and the market potential is not attractive and/or unrealistic. 5: Yes, the customer and pain is clearly identified and the market potential is convincing and attractive.	Have you demonstrated how exactly your customer is sufficiently annoyed with the current situation to pay money for your solution? An invention or idea can be absolutely brilliant, but may be worthless if no one is willing to pay you out of their own pocket to have that particular problem solved. Rule of thumb: Market potential is the amount of customers with your customer pain multiplied by the amount they are currently spending on solving that problem.	Idea: A flying car, Customer pain: Drivers in traffic jams, would be great to skip ahead, and they would love to pay extra for a car that could do that. Idea: Low fare airline based in Copenhagen, serving 10 European destinations. Market potential: The amount of economy class customers at current airlines on those 10 routes, multiplied by their average economy class ticket price. Possibly also some train and bus users?

Team	Does the team consist of people with different and complementary skills? 1: No, all team members have equal backgrounds or lack skills, and this has not been adressed. 5: Yes, team consists of complementary skills and appears to use them well.	A bad team can make a great idea fail. A great team can make even a bad idea a success. Show the investors that you have a diverse team with different skills and as much relevant knowledge or experience as possible.	iMotions (the techie and the business man), Meyer's (the chef and the business man)

Overall evaluation	Overall, does the project have potential for profitable growth?	This is a subjective evaluation by the investor or advisor. Does he or she like the idea and the team, and would they invest?	Last year's top ten

Questions about the criteria or the jury process? Contact

Rules - Can I participate?

Venture Cup is a university business plan competition, thus some rules apply to who can and cannot participate in the competition. Please observe the following eligibilty rules for participants:

1. For Students, Staff and Graduates. All teams must have at least one person who is a student, staff member or first-year graduate from any higher education institution in Denmark at the time of submission. Note that this does not include HHX, HTX and Gymnasium-level students, please refer to our sister organisation, Young Enterprise.

2. Residency in Denmark. All teams must have at least one person who is a permanent resident of Denmark. This includes residents on temporary student visas.

3. Danish bank account. Prizes can only be paid out to a Danish bank account, for bank fee and tax reasons.

4. Established companies must not have prior funding. If you enter the competition with an already established company, you must not have been funded with more than DKK 250,000 in order to qualify. However, we encourage participants to set up companies and start looking for funding during the course of the competition, i.e. if you have participated in the regional phase and recieve funding after the deadline, you may of course still parcipate in the remainder of the competition.

5. It is your own idea. Participants should possess the intellectual rights to their idea and the business idea must not be considered "stolen". Scientists from public institutions, such as universities, must pay attention to Law 347 (regarding royalty when dealing with inventions from public institutions). If your university owns the patent or research your idea is based on, you need to explain in your plan how you will handle this situation, i.e. has the university agreed to let you exploit their patent in this way, are they willing to sell you the patent, etc.

6. You cannot submit last year's idea. You may participate in Venture Cup with a similar idea more than once, as long as the business concept or model has been subject to major change. As entrepreneurs evolve their ideas by nature, this is rarely a problem.

7. The decision is final. Members of the Jury appoint the winners and their decision is final, i.e. you cannot appeal their decision.

8. Venture Cup decides when in doubt. In case of doubt, the Director of Venture Cup Denmark makes the final decision on any of the above rules.

Questions? See our FAQ or ask your local Venture Cup representative.

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