WRITING AN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Is my idea good enough? 

Yes, all ideas are good enough. Venture Cup is not just about finding the best idea, it is also about giving you feedback that you can use in your study, or to develop the idea further.

By submitting your 2-3 pages idea description by November 30th you can use Venture Cup's top notch jury to get feedback. The jury includes people who've started companies in your field, executives from the leading companies in your industry, investors, serial entrepreneurs etc. See the full list of jurors here. Every idea submitted receives written feedback from at least three jurors, not just if you win.

Do I need to have all the answers?  

No, in the idea competitions we do not expect you to have all the answers, we just want to help you explore if the idea could have potential. In the spring we run a competition where people submit full business plans, there you need to have more answers.

What does the jury look at?

Our jury looks for market potential. More specifically, they break it down into these five questions:

1. Does the idea involve a product or service innovation? 
2. Does the product or service relieve a specific customer pain* and is the market size and potential attractive? 
3. Does the team consist of people with different and complementary skills?
4. Have suitable forms of idea protection, trademarks or patents been investigated?   
5. Overall, does the project have potential for profitable growth?

 

We have chosen these five areas because they give the best identity of whether you idea has marked potential. Read more about the criteria and download a useful template.

How should I structure my summary?

When you submit your idea to Venture Cup we recommend you split the summary into sections that reflect the above. This makes it easy for the jury to understand, and give you good feedback. In effect this means you could use this structure:

1. Introduction
2. Innovation - What is new about your idea
3. Team - Who are you and what can you each do? Note, multiskilled teams have most success in real life and in Venture Cup. Therefore a combination of technical and commercial people are big plus. But you are allowed to enter by yourself.
4. Market - What customer pain does your idea solve? How much money can it make?
5. IPR - Note that it is ok if your idea cannot be protected, not all companies need this, just explain how else you compete if you dont have patents or trademarks.
6. Summary: What is the overall potential for the idea if realised

Tips for the contents of the summary:

Below are tips for topics that are relevant to cover in the summary, if you have the information. You are not expected to cover all of them, it is a long list so think of it as inspiration and have a look to see what you can include in yours.

The points below are in particular handy because they give more information about what to include in the points mentioned in the structure section above. 

1. Start by grabbing the reader's attention

You should lead with the most compelling statement of why your idea has big potential. This sentence sets the tone for the rest of the executive summary. Usually, this is a concise statement of the unique solution you have developed to a big problem. It should be direct and specific, not abstract and conceptual. If you can drop some impressive names in the first paragraph you should-world-class advisors, companies you are already working with, a brand name founding investor, that is really good. 

2. The Problem

You need to make it clear that there is a big, important problem (current or emerging) that you are going to solve, or opportunity you are going to exploit. Here you identify how you solve this problem by, for example increase revenues, reduce costs, increase speed, expand reach, eliminate inefficiency, increase effectiveness.

3. The Solution

What specifically are you offering to whom? Software, hardware, service, combination? Use commonly used terms to state concretely what you have, or what you do, that solves the problem you've identified. Avoid acronyms. If you have customers and revenues, make it clear.

4. The Opportunity

Spend a few more sentences providing the basis for the opportunity. This could be the basic market segmentation, size, growth and dynamics, and what is driving the segment. Advice: you will be better off targeting a meaningful percentage of a smaller, well-defined, growing market than claiming a microscopic percentage of a huge, heterogeneous, mature market.

5. Your Competitive Advantage

No matter what you might think, you have competition. At a minimum, you compete with the current way of doing business. So, understand what your real, sustainable competitive advantage is, and state it clearly. Maybe you are doing it in a new, or faster, or easier way.

6. The Model

The "business model" simply means how you are going to make money. How you do that can be described in basic language, and you do not have to name the business model. So basically; how specifically are you going to generate income, and from whom?

7. Financial and scientific data

Try to keep technical information and budgets to a minimum at this stage. Explain in simple phrases, and use a couple of key figures and a simple budget. We do not expect the budget to be more than an informed estimate.

8. The Team

Here you need to tell us who is in your team, and why. What do they each know that is helpful in the deevelopment of the idea? Note, multiskilled teams have most success in real life and in Venture Cup. Therefore a combination of technical and commercial people are big plus. But you are allowed to enter by yourself.

Please be specific if you can. Explain why the background, or hobbies, of each team member fits. Don't tell us you have 48 combined years of expertise in widget development; tell us your CTO was the leading widget developer for Intel, and she was on the original IEEE standards committee for arc-widgets. you can state the names of brand companies your team has worked for. Don't drop a name if you aren't happy to give the contact as a reference at a later date.

Some other general points:

• Use simple sentences
• Do not lead with broad, sweeping statements about the market opportunity. What matters is not market size, but rather compelling pain. Investors would rather invest in a company solving a desperate problem for a small growing market, than a company providing an incremental improvement for a large established market.  
• Don't acronym your own name. Sun Microsystems did not build its brand by calling itself "SMI."
• Drop names, if they are real; don't drop names if they are smoke. If you are in positive negotiations with a big companies you should mention them by name. But if you consulted for Cisco's HR department one week, don't say you worked for Cisco.
• Avoid adjectives that sound impressive but carry no substance. "Next generation" and "dynamic" probably don't mean anything to your readers and tend to be irritating.
• State your value proposition and competitive advantage in positive terms, not negative terms. It is what you can do that is important, not what others can not do. With the one or two most obvious competitors, however, you may need to be very explicit: "Unlike Cisco's firewall solution, our software can operate
• Don't lie.  
• Go back and re-read each sentence when you think you're done: Is each sentence clear, concise and compelling?

Courtesy of Garage Technology Ventures.