Guest Speaker: Amy Sallin

We had the pleasure of hearing from Amy Sallin. Amy works in the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship, where she manages Business plan competitions.  She came to talk to the class about the 2016 UW Business Plan Competition. The competition is a tournament style competition where groups put together a business plan and try to secure funding for their idea. There are $70,000 worth of prizes awarded to the top teams in the competition. The competition is set up to help students of the university create a business plan for the intent of starting their business. The competition is basically three tiered. First, the teams send in executive summaries, where they are screened for eligibility into the contest. Then, the teams that pass the screening round go to the investment round. In the investment round, the teams set up booths akin to how a trade show is set up, then the judges walk around the booths and have an allotted amount of virtual money to invest in the teams. Of the 36 teams that make it to the investment round, the top 16 move on to the sweet 16 and final round of the competition. The final 16 then present to a new set of judges, and the top four teams are selected. The final four then present to a new set of judges and the other teams, and then the awards are given out to the top teams. The whole focus of the competition is to get people excited about their business ideas and expose them to the people that could help them actually launch their business ideas.