Eligibility
Anyone over 18 is eligible to enter the Y50K Competition. However, each team must include at least one principal contestant who qualifies in one of the three following categories:
- A full-time or part-time Yale College Student
- A student from one of Yale?s graduate or professional programs
- A faculty member or employee of Yale
- Teams which have procured over $50,000 in revenues or which have received over $50,000 in funding from ?Outside Investors? as of February 10, 2006 are not eligible. ?Outside Investors? are third-party investors other than founders and team members. Previous winners of the Y50K also may not enter.
Judging Criteria
The winners of the Y50K will be the teams that present the most compelling business opportunities. Following are the main criteria that the judges will consider in each category.
For Profit: feasibility, defensibility, quality of management team, potential upside, written quality of the plan, scalability, and the market size. This list is not exhaustive and some judges may consider additional factors.
Social Entrepreneurship: judging will focus on sustainability along with effects on target audience.
Biotechnology: entries will be considered with a particular eye towards practicality; unlike in a research grant proposal, competing teams will be expected to have a good sense of the financial feasibility of their venture, the realistic time and path to market of their products, and the associated risks for potential investors.
The following questions will also be used as general guidelines for judges in all categories:
- Is the opportunity as presented both highly attractive and clearly realistic?
- Is the business defensible from competitors?
- What is the business model?
- What comparisons are there to past success stories that indicate this venture will succeed?
- What is the amount of up-front capital investment required?
- Do the market and financial projections demonstrate that the team understands its business?
- How long will it take from the current stage of development to bring this to market?
- Can this venture achieve a leadership position in its market?
- Has the team gone out to the market already to test its ideas?
- Who will be the first customer(s)?
- Is the team of sufficient breadth, balance and quality to make its ideas happen?
- Will the ego of the founder(s) get in the way of success?
- Is the team focused on its target market?
- What is the expected time and amount of pay-off to investors? For Social Entrepreneurship entriess, what is the expected time and amount of pay-off to the targeted community?
- Is the plan clear and well-written?
- Does the team have the necessary communications skills to present a compelling story?
- What roles will the team members play in the venture?
- Are the team members dedicated to the venture and their roles in the group?
- Does the team have a clear plan for spending the investment money it receives?
- Why is this business going to be around and a real world winner in 5 years?
- Most crucially, when comparing plans: Which business in 10 years will make Yale, YES, and the Biotech SIG most proud?
Judging
The judges are a panel of professionals who fall into three general categories: venture capitalists and angel investors; successful entrepreneurs; and professional services providers working in the venture community. Judges in the Social Entrepreneurship and Biotechnology categories have experience and expertise in their respective fields.
One panel of judges is responsible for reviewing the entries from the First Round (Executive Summary) and Second Round (Full Business Plan). In this process, entries are broken into groups. Each group is read and rated by (typically) four judges individually. The scores provided by these judges are then tallied to determine which plans advance to the next round
Those teams that make it to the Final Round will present to a separate panel of judges, who have reviewed all the plans in advance. The presentations provide teams with the opportunity to pitch their business to the judges in the way they would pitch to a potential investor. Upon listening to the presentations, the judges will confer and select the winners. There will be a different panel of judges for each category of the competition.
Confidentiality
All entries submitted to the Y50K are treated as confidential by the Y50K organizational team. We do not give out copies of the entries, and judges also agree to treat the contents of entries as confidential. The only information that will be published about a plan is the public summary written by the team. The participants in the competition agree to act ethically towards other participants.
Distribution of Prizes
All prizes must be claimed by December 19, 2006. In order to claim a prize, a team?s business must be incorporated. The name of the corporation need not be identical to the name of the Y50K entry, but the corporation must be engaged in or planning to engage in the activities described in the team?s Y50K entry, and the team?s contact person, as listed on the Y50K entry form, must be a director or officer of the corporation. Y50K teams that fail to incorporate by December 19, 2006 may claim a reduced cash prize of 5% of the original cash prize. This reduced prize must be claimed by December 19, 2006 and will be awarded directly to the team?s Y50K contact person.
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