Entrepreneurship Competitions

1. Entrepreneurship Competitions Skevos Evripidou Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus {skevos@cs.ucy.ac.cy}

2. Entrepreneurship Competitions • Simulate the process of Start-up Creation. • Competitors have to create a full-ledge Business Plan (BP) • Mentoring and education is usually offered. • An evaluation committee (Jury) Judges the BPs and award the prizes. • Monetary award are usually offered • The big Prize: Getting the necessary to experience, connections and motivation to create a successful venture • Valuable feedback form the Jury. • Connections to Local and International VC. • Continuous mentoring and assistance form the Competition and its associates.

3. MIT $100K competition • The MIT $100k was born in 1990 as a $10K Competition, when the MIT Entrepreneurs Club and the Sloan New Ventures Association teamed up to create a competition that would take advantage of the winning combination of engineers and business students. • The MIT Global Startup Workshop is the world's premier conference on how to foster entrepreneurship by creating supportive infrastructure and catalytic events. • Since 1998 the non-profit, student run organization has held 12 international workshops, spanning 6 continents and attracted participants from 60 nations. • A 2009 survey by the Kauffman Foundation reported that the aggregate value of all the companies founded by MIT graduates and faculty would make MIT the 11th largest economy in the world.

4. European Innovation… • The World Wide Web was invented in Europe at the CERN research Lab around 1990. • USA based companies are dominating all commercial aspects of WWW/Internet. • USA leads the world in Knowledge-based (High-tech) Startup companies. • Many of them from Europeans that go to the USA for studies • The Educational system of the USA has played a pivotal role. • Silicon Valley was created when the Dean of Engineering of Stanford loaned money to two of his students Hewlett & Packard to start a company. • MIT initiated an Entrepreneurship competition in 1990

5. Entrepreneurship: Europe vs USA • Europe and the USAWhen one compares European and American start-ups, figures are striking. The biggest American successes have tens of thousands of employees and their market values are in the tens of billions of dollars. European success stories generate thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in market capitalization. Another interesting difference is the time to IPO: in the USA, start-ups often go public on the NASDAQ, 5 years after their foundation; in Europe, the time span is more around 8 to 10 years. Also, European founders are very seldom less than 30 years old. Start-Up: What We May Still Learn From Silicon Valley Herve Lebret http://www.startup-book.com/content-and-summary/

6. EUROPE • Chapter 8: few success stories in Europe. The chapter shows the start-up world has not succeeded in Europe. The most famous examples are analyzed and the slowness of the development is shown. Some features are compared with those of Silicon Valley: the age of founders, the smaller size of companies for example. • Chapter 9: venture capital in Europe. As a logical consequence, VC has not been very successful in Europe. Its history is described and some reasons of these failures are analyzed. • Chapter 10: the start-up infrastructure in Europe. Because of the failures, Europe has tried to compensate with multiple tools and initiatives. But the system does not work, does not “live”. We are far from an eco-system. I analyze again the reasons which are, I think, mainly cultural. Start-Up: What We May Still Learn From Silicon Valley Herve Lebret http://www.startup-book.com/content-and-summary

7. Cyprus Entrepreneurship Competition Challenge DARE To Believe that your Ideas and concepts for High Tech Products and Services Can Be Transformed Into a High Tech Company of Tomorrow • In the First 6 years over 120 teams with more than 400 team members took our challenge. • At least Twelve companies have been created by CyEC alumni.

8. UNICA Entrepreneurship Competition • The UNICA Entrepreneurship Competition for 2009 and 2011 is Sponsored by the CyprusResearch Promotion Foundation. • The competition will run every two years, starting in 2009 • The awards will be accompanied by a commemorative plaque and a monetary prize as follows • First Prize €20,000 • Second Prize €10,000 • Third Prize €5,000 • 16 Universities participated in the first competition

9. Participating Universities and Teams • Universidade de Lisboa: Drugs2Brain • Freie Universität Berlin: parelectrics - device for the diagnostic of skin cancer • Stockholm University: Xbrane Bioscience • University of Amsterdam: Emovision • University Roma TRE of Roma: Power save and design with the LED lighting • Tallinn University of Technology: e-Fitting Room • University College Dublin: HeyStaks • University Ss. Cyril and Methodius: Educational Counseling Centre • Lomonosov Moscow State University: Fiber optic system to monitor technical

10. Vrije Universiteit Brussel: Ycc Surf Europe - Customized surfboards at standardized prices • University of Ljubljana: UNIKI systems • Université Paris-Dauphine : SOM Systems • Universidade Nova de Lisboa: Ion Jelly • Complutense University of Madrid : WATER FOR ALL. Design of Novel Membrane for Desalination by Membrane Distillation (MD) • Université pierre et Marie Curie: AGORABOX • University of Cyprus: VI Scientific: Mobile vision products for the blind and visually impaired

11. Organizing Committee • Prof. A. Carcaterran, University of La Sapienza • Prof. J.M. Dalle, University Pierre et Marie Curie • Prof. Ivana Murkovic Steinberg, University of Zagreb • Prof. Skevos Evripidou, University of Cyprus • Andreas Moleskis, Chairman of the Cyprus Research Foundation • Prof. Dr. Rosette S’Jegers, Vrije Universiteit Brussel • Prof. Dag Noréus, Stockholm University • Frederik Rijk de Pont, JADE • Margaret Rudzkior, Eurochambers • Prof. Dr. Benjamin Van Camp, Vrije Universiteit Brussel • Kris Dejonckheere, UNICA

12. Judges • Igor Prodan, University of Ljubljana • Marc Goldchstein. Vrije Universiteit Brussel • José María Gómez, Complutense University of Madrid • Dag Noréus, Stockholm University • Ivana Murkovic Steinberg, University of Zagreb • Paulo Soares de Pinho,Universidade Nova de Lisboa • Roberto Pujia, Roma Tre University • Catherine Léger-Jarniou, Université Paris-Dauphine • Georges Kalousis, Université Paris-Dauphine • Dan Maher, University College Dublin; Nua Venture • Jean-Michel Dalle, Université Pierre et Marie Curie • Martin Gersch, Freie Universität Berlin • Rogério Gaspar, Universidade de Lisboa • Velimir J. Stojkovski, Ss Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje • Gadi Rothenberg, University of Amsterdam • Elena Semenova, Lomonosov Moscow State University • Ulf Eriksson, SU Innovation AB, Stockholm University/

13. Judging process First Round Judging • Jury divided in two groups with Eight Business Plans per group. • The assignment of BPs to each group ensure that they will be no conflict of interests. • Teleconferencing Meeting for each group, after the completion of the evaluations, for discussing and ranking the Business plans of the Group. • Each group selects three BPs for the “semi-final” stage. Second Round • All judges that had no-conflict of interest, were invited to evaluated the BPs that they have already seen and participate in the second round. • The three Finalist were selected during a Teleconference meeting. Finals • Teams presented in front of the Jury