H-BRS Entrepreneurship Centre
Start-up-Cup @ H-BRS: Ideenwettbewerb 2024
Do you have a business idea that you would like to turn into reality? Or have you already founded your own start-up? We would like to reward your creativity and innovation and are proud to be organising our internal university ideas competition for the fourth time this year. We look forward to honouring great ideas and promising start-up teams again!
The Start-up Cup is a competition organised by the Start-up-Manufaktur, H-BRS's start-up centre, and aims to further promote the start-up culture at the university by discovering new, innovative start-up ideas and awarding prizes to successful start-up projects.
The application phase starts on 10 June 2024 and ends on 19 August 2024, 11.59 pm.
Prizes:
1st place: 2,500 euros (sponsored by Hochschulgesellschaft Bonn-Rhein-Sieg)
2nd place: 1,500 euros (sponsored by CENTIM)
3rd place: 1,000 euros (sponsored by CENTIM)
Special prize DIGITALHUB.DE: Inclusion in the accelerator programme "HubGrade" or "HubGrade Cyber" with benefits worth 30,000 euros for the best digital idea or the best idea in the field of cyber security.
Special Innovation Prize: Up to now, a full scholarship for our MBA Start-up Development programme has always been awarded as a special prize. We are endeavouring to offer this special prize again this year. More information will follow. If you have any questions, please contact the MBA team at startup-info@h-brs.de.
Benefit for all final teams: individual pitch training with a professional coach.
Information on the special prices
The awarding of the special prizes is optional and subject to the respective entry requirements.
► Special prize DIGITALHUB.DE: More information will follow.
► Special Innovation Prize: More information will follow.
How to participate:
To participate, you must submit your start-up idea in a fully formulated pitch deck with a maximum of 14 slides. In addition, you may add a maximum of 150 words of notes per slide (with PowerPoint this works with the note function). These serve to provide the jury with additional information that would normally be mentioned in an oral presentation.
It is important that the finished presentation with the notes is saved as a PDF so that the notes can be found under the corresponding slides [File - Print - Print to PDF - Select "Notes pages" as print layout].
You can submit your pitch deck in German or English.
Contents of the pitch deck
The following aspects should be addressed in your pitch deck. Depending on the stage of development of your idea, it may not yet be possible to describe the individual points in detail. Nevertheless, try to be as specific as possible (without exaggerating).
- Problem: What challenge are customers and users currently facing?
- Solution: How can the challenge be overcome
- Product/service: What is being sold? What is the customer benefit?
- Target group: Who is the target group and what are their characteristics?
- Market and competition: What is the market like for the product/service? Who are the competitors? What are the barriers to entry?
- USP: Why is the idea unique? What is your biggest advantage over your competitors?
- Business model and financing: How and when will revenue be generated? What is the ratio between costs and turnover? When will the project be profitable?
- Marketing and sales: What is the pricing model? What communication measures should be used? How will the product be brought to the customer group?
- Team: Who is part of the team and what skills and experience does the team have?
- Sustainability: How is the topic of sustainability taken into account in the business model? What sustainability goals are being pursued? (Take a look at the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG))
- Milestones and outlook: What is the current status and what are the next steps? Which goals should be achieved in the short and medium term?
- Contact details: Name, e-mail address, telephone number
Judging and award decision
Judging and award decision
All submissions will be evaluated by an internal Start-up-Manufaktur jury and an external jury, which is yet to be announced, based on predefined evaluation criteria. The start-up teams that qualify for the final will be contacted in advance by email and agree to present their start-up project at the final event on 10 October 2024.
Evaluation criteria
Pitch deck (1st selection stage)
- Feasibility: Can the idea also be realised in practice? Are there real chances of founding the company?
- Customer benefit: Who is the customer group? What needs/problems does the customer group have? What benefits does the start-up project offer the customer group?
- Market potential: Is there a real market and target group for the idea? Are there potential competitors? Does the idea have a unique selling point?
- Viable and sustainable business model: Can money be earned with the business model? What does the revenue model look like? Has reference been made to the sustainability strategy?
- Competences of the founding team: What are the strengths of the team? What knowledge and qualifications does the team have?
- Innovation and originality of the project: To what extent is the idea unique and innovative? What problem can the idea solve?
- Overall impression: Is the pitch deck logically and comprehensibly structured and attractively designed? Were the specifications adhered to?
Evaluation of the presentation (2nd selection stage)
as part of the final on 10 October 2024 in Sankt Augustin:
- Overall impression of presentation: adherence to time limit, presentation skills, creativity and ability to work in a team
- Answering the questions/discussion
Terms and conditions of participation
to follow
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