Now is the time to consider whether you want to participate
in one of the two premier business plan competitions
sponsored each year by the Lester Center. Both competitions
follow the academic calendar, with their launch events
scheduled for September. Winners will be chosen next
spring.
The UC Berkeley
Business Plan Competition, founded by Haas
MBA students in 1999, is open to any team that includes
at least one active member with a UC Berkeley or UC
San Francisco affiliation. Affiliation is defined as
including students, staff, faculty, and alumni. Entrant's
plans are reviewed by venture capitalists during three
elimination rounds of judging: the executive summary,
semi-finals, and finals. To compete, the teams must
submit their executive summaries no later than Wednesday,
January 31, 2007.
The Global Social
Venture Competition, founded by Haas MBA students
as the Haas Social Venture Competition in 2000, was
created to actively support and promote the creation
and growth of successful social ventures around the
world. A social venture is an enterprise that has both
financial and social goals integral to it’s purpose.
The major vehicle for this promotion is the annual competition
that rewards a number of social ventures that are most
likely to succeed in accomplishing their financial and
social missions. Eligible teams may be from anywhere
in the world but must include an active member who is
a graduate student at a business school or who has graduated
from a business school graduate program within the past
two years. Executive summaries for GSVC are due Wednesday,
January 17, 2007.
To help contestants develop their ideas and create
winning business plans, the Lester Center and the UC
Berkeley Business Plan competition sponsor a series
of Best Practices
workshops that are timed to match the competitions and
that team members are encouraged to attend. However
the general public is invited to attend these no-cost
events, even if they have no plans to enter either one
of the competitions. The first workshop - on Opportunity
Recognition will be held in the Wells Fargo Room on
October 24, beginning at 6 PM.
Do you want to try out that idea you've been sitting
on? Now’s the time to get started!
