Our purpose is two-fold; to inspire and motivate entrepreneurship among students, and to turn academic knowledge into viable high-growth businesses.

We focus on entrepreneurship as a practical discipline and we expose our participants to a great network of experienced entrepreneurs and business people, who provide valuable advice on a volunteer basis because they share our interest in finding and supporting Denmark's leading start-ups. 

Venture Cup is supported by the Danish universities, and we partner with a broad range of companies; among them some of Denmark's most successful, such as Novo, Grundfos. Ernst & Young and Awapatent.

Venture Cup was originally started by McKinsey & Company, and exists today as non-profit entities in Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden. It is the largest business plan competition in the world.

Venture Cup’s competitions are our most well known product. We run both an idea competition and a startup competition, and they are split into five industry specific categories:

• Applied Technology
• Cleantech
• Life Science & Medtech
• Services
• Software

The idea competition runs in autumn, when teams hand in executive summaries. The startup competition runs in spring and teams hand in full business plans.

All ideas submitted in the competitions are evaluated and given feedback by our really cool jury of investors, business executives and serial entrepreneurs.

Because even the best of entrepreneurs need advice, we have a team of advisors who assist the participating teams in turning their ideas into strong business cases. Serial entrepreneurs, who want to help the new generation, make up our advisor team. They all volunteer their time to help the participating teams in further developing their business ideas.

NETWORKING EVENTS

We are strongly connected with the business community and we are good at facilitating the contact between participants and our network. We organise different events during the year, where students can meet our network and viceversa.

ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAINING

We believe that practice makes perfect and therefore, during the year we organise practical trainings in all universities where students can get practical entrepreneurial skills and complement what they learn in school.

VENTURECUP.TV

Yes, we also run an online TV channel, where we make TV from entrepreneurs to entrepreneurs! We interview successful role models, and make entrepreneurial training videos.

Partaking in Venture Cup will give you a chance to improve your entrepreneurial skills set, mind set and your business idea.

From September to June we offer a large entrepreneurial training programme which is free to attend for all budding entrepreneurs.

The training programme includes more than 50 free workshops, inspirational keynotes, events and networking sessions. This programme is designed to build your skills as an entrepreneur, and cover business skills such as market analysis, investor pitching, finance, marketing, team as well as exposing you to a valuable entrepreneurial network with successful entrepreneurs and other likeminded people, often in the same position as yourself.

You can see upcoming training events here.

Our purpose is to complement what you learn at university, therefore we have a purely practical focus which gives you a chance to work actively on you idea.

In addition, we offer feedback in line with market conditions, so you will receive feedback and be trained by likeminded entrepreneurs and by investors and business people who work in the relevant industries everyday.

We offer a first prize of 250.000 kr. for the best idea of the year, and an additional 400.000 kr. worth of prizes. But whether you win or not, you will get:

• Feedback on your ideas, in person and in writing, from business people, entrepreneurs and investors.
• Training workshops, where you will learn the do's and don't of business plans and starting up.
• Fun social events, across the country, where you will mingle with fellow entrepreneurs.
• A valuable network of experienced individuals who can help you succeed, now and in the future