Keith Block Entrepreneurship Fund

Overview

Keith Block, a former executive vice president at Oracle and proud alum of the Heinz College, has generously donated funds to promote entrepreneurial activity among Heinz College students. In this spirit, we are holding a competition this semester to foster new business ideas in the IT space.

The Contest

Proposals are expected to be entrepreneurial ventures that solve a problem in the marketplace and have a significant IT component. A proposal should have the potential of being a viable and possibly transformative growth-oriented startup company. We expect you to form teams of two or more students (no solos) to present your business concept. Each team will deliver a fifteen minute presentation followed by questions from the review panel. The presentation and accompanying PPT deck should address the following questions:

• What is the problem in the marketplace?
• What is your proposed solution?
• Who is the target market?
• What is the business model for the proposed venture (how will it make money)?
• What is the competitive landscape?

Deadlines

Project proposals must be submitted to the registration portal by Wednesday, March 20th, 2013. The competition will be held on Saturday, March 23rd, 2013.
 

Capstone Project Potential

Fall 2013 graduating ISM students can present their business proposal as a capstone (95-720) project submission. The deadline for these submissions is May 31st. These project proposals may or may not come from this contest.