Entrepreneurship Award

Competition Awards
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Hello,

I hope everyone is having a great season so far! For those who have gone to comps, did you have any advice or tips for the entrepreneurship award? How can we appeal to judges and what should we create and bring to our comps? Thanks!

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You have a business plan written, right? That’s step one, and you’re not eligible without one. Beyond that, our awards rep students went through the biz plan and made some bulleted talking points to share with everyone in the pit so everyone would know the key points to make when judges came around. They’re looking for an understanding of what it takes to keep a team running year after year, beyond the four years of any particular student.

I’d suggest that the students talking to judges be comfortable discussing:

  • Who are your key sponsors and how did you connect with them/keep in touch with them

  • High level understanding of the team income/expenses and the major categories of each

  • SWOT - what are the top couple of team strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats and how do you plan to mitigate/improve threats and weaknesses

I’m personally never in the pits when judges come around so I don’t hear the questions asked, but can see if any of our students remember some from our event last weekend.

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Thank you so much! This is really helpful

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In our experiences for this award, interviews are almost always done in the pits on the first day of events. Start by having your students explicitly ask if they are here to interview for it, the robot, or your overall program.
Our team has always prepared for this and has 2 pull-up banners as visuals, and a business plan binder.
We outline every cent of our funding and describe how it is integrated in our program to be sustainable for years to come.

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You’re welcome to ask, though some judges will prefer not to tell you about the specifics of how judging is organized at that event. A lot of this has to do with teams feeling they have consistent interviews compared to other teams at the same event. Additionally, some events will break out certain awards like entrepreneurship while others will include it with other team attribute judging…so it’s not always a clear cut answer.

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Thank you everyone for the responses! Does anyone have any insight into what kind of questions the judges ask at the pits?

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