Marking its 35th anniversary, the University of Michigan’s business plan competition called Michigan Business Challenge is offering a record $100K in cash prizes to its student entrepreneur teams. The multi-round business plan competition kicking off will be held over three plus months with over100 participating students. The Challenge is hosted by the Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies.
Student entrepreneurs are taken through new venture creation via a multi-phase business development and planning process. Current undergraduate and graduate students from across the University are eligible and their proposed businesses may be for-profit or non-profit, as well as offer products or services to either consumer or industrial markets.
“There’s no shortage of entrepreneurial talent at the University of Michigan, which makes each year’s competition more exciting than the last,” said Stewart Thornhill, executive director of the Zell Lurie Institute.
An important goal of the competition is having the students put classroom lessons into practice. While the prize money will be very helpful to the winners, access to the judges and peers who give insight to them based on experience is seen as equally critical to the entrepreneurs progressing their ventures.
The competition has spawned a number startups who have achieved further success and recognition. SAHI Cosmetics recently earned a $100,000 investment from AOL founder Steve Case at the Rise of the Rest pitch competition; PreDxion Bio, recently graduated from the YCombinator summer 2017 program; and Neurable received more than $2 million in investments following a second-place finish at the Rice Business Plan Competition; and Companion was on the first episode of Apple’s reality TV series “Planet Of The Apps.”
Approximately 20 of the competing 60 teams will participate in January’s second round, where they’ll give a seven-minute presentation, followed by 10 minutes of questions from the judges. The culmination of the Michigan Business Challenge will be the semi-final and final rounds, set for February 16.
