Moot Corp > Official Rules and Submission Requirements
Venture Labs Investment Competition
Official Rules and Submission Requirements
Eligibility Rules
Submission Requirements
The Spirit of the Competition
The Venture Labs Investment Competition (VLIC) and the prestigious qualifying competitions purport to
stimulate and nourish the Entrepreneurial Spirit in MBAs and other graduate
students around the world. In particular, these competitions seek to encourage
entrepreneurially oriented graduate students to develop and grow new ventures
based either on their own ideas and technologies or those developed by others,
including faculty members at their respective colleges and universities. These
competitions also seek to provide the participating graduate students with
forums in which they develop skill in pitching their ventures to investors and
receive constructive feedback for increasing the probability of successfully
launching their ventures. Finally, each year the Venture Labs Investment Competition will
provide the “best” of these ventures with substantial resources to assist the
“winning” student team in launching its venture.
To provide a relatively level “playing field” for student teams from around the
world, the directors of the major competitions have developed the following set
of rules that all participating teams are expected to satisfy. At the same time,
the directors recognize that no set of rules, no matter how thorough or
carefully developed can ever cover all circumstances. Accordingly, all teams and
the universities that they represent are expected to abide by the specific rules
enumerated below as well as the overall spirit of these competitions. The
directors reserve the right to disqualify any team that violates the rules,
regulations or the spirit of the competitions.
Venture Labs Investment Competition Eligibility Requirements
Venture and Team Eligibility Rules
- The authors of the business plan will retain all rights to the plan regarding its use at all times prior to and following the competition except as stated below. Due to the nature of the competition, we will not ask judges, reviewers, staff or the audience to agree to or sign non-disclosure statements for any participant.
- All public sessions of the competition, including but not limited to oral presentations and question/answer sessions, are open to the public at large. Any and all of these public sessions may be broadcast to interested persons through media which may include radio, television and the Internet. Any data or information discussed or divulged in public sessions by entrants should be considered information that will likely enter the public realm, and entrants should not assume any right of confidentiality in any data or information discussed, divulged or presented in these sessions.
- The University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business, the organizer of the Venture Labs Investment Competition, may make photocopies, photographs, videotapes and/or audiotapes of the presentations including the business plan and other documents, charts or material prepared for use in presentation at the VLIC. Students retain all proprietary rights. The University may use the materials in any book or other printed materials and any videotape or other medium that it may produce, provided that any profits earned from the sale of such items is used by The University solely to defray the costs of future Venture Labs Investment Competitions. The University has non-exclusive world rights in all languages, and in all media, to use or to publish the materials in any book, other printed materials, videotapes or other medium, and to use the materials in future editions thereof and derivative products.
- An electronic copy of the final plan and an one-page executive summary are due on or before April 15, 2010. Teams not meeting this deadline may be disqualified.
- Plans should be submitted as a single, printable PDF file. Plans are
limited to no more than 16 pages (not including a single cover page or
single table of contents page). The 16 pages are limited to a maximum of ten
pages of text and 6 pages of appendices.
- Page format is 1½ inch line spacing with 1 inch top, bottom, left and
right margins, 12 point font. This line spacing and font requirement applies to the textual
content of the document and not to titles and descriptions accompanying
pictures, graphs, tables or worksheets. All pages must be numbered excluding
the cover page. The cover page must include venture name and university
affiliation.
- Financial data should include a cash flow statement, income statement, and balance sheet. Include an explanation of the offering to investors indicating how much money is required, how it will be used, and the proposed structure of the deal, i.e., stock, debentures, etc. The team is not required to reveal its desired deal, although the judges may ask questions about it. Also, delineate the possible exit strategies.
- Appendices should be included only when they support the findings, statements and observations in the plan. Because of the number of teams in the Competition, judges may not be able to read all the material in the appendices. Therefore, the text portion of the plan (10 pages) must contain all pertinent information in a clear and concise manner.
- Judges will use the three-part VLIC Judge's Evaluation form. Part I
(valued at 40%) is designed to help assess the written business plan focusing
on key elements and the effectiveness of the summary financial data. Part II
(20%) assesses the poise and professionalism of the presentation. Part III
(40%) evaluates the perceived viability of the venture. This quantitative
assessment is meant to complement, not replace, the qualitative evaluation of
the judges in their determination of winners.
- In the Opening Round and Semifinals Round, each team will be given 15 minutes to present its business plan followed by a 15-minute question and answer session between the presenting team and the judges. In the Finals, each team will be given 20 minutes to present its business plan followed by up to 25 minutes of question and answer. THESE TIME LIMITS WILL BE STRICTLY ENFORCED. The Money Round may have a different time allotment and format.
- Each member of the team present at the competition must participate in the formal presentation of the plan.
- Teams may not observe other teams’ question and answer sessions in their division until after they have presented their own plan. A team, once it has finished its presentation, may observe both the presentation and Q&A session of the teams that follow it.
- Equipment needs: Each presentation room will be set up with a LCD
projector and screen. Each team will need to bring its own laptop computer.
Student Involvement. The competition is for student created, managed, and
owned ventures. In other words, students must (1) have played a major role in
conceiving the venture, (2) have key management roles in the venture, and (3)
own significant equity in the venture. In general, a member of the student team
should be CEO, COO, or President of the venture, or members of the student team
should occupy 50% or more of the functional area management positions that
report directly to the CEO, COO, or President. Members of the student team
should also own 50% or more of the equity allocated to the management team and
key advisors. An equity position of less than 50% of the equity allocated to the
management team and key advisers, and/or less than 20% of the total equity of
the venture will be suspect and require the students to show evidence that they
were a major cause in the venture creation. One objective of this rule is to
exclude ventures formed and managed by non-students who have given token equity
to MBAs for writing their business plan.
Team Composition. This is a competition for graduate students, and at
least one graduate student must be a member of the venture’s startup management
team. A team with a few undergraduates will be allowed to compete, and the
undergraduates may participate fully. All graduate students, not just MBA
candidates, are eligible to participate in the competition. This includes
executive MBAs. Non-students may be members of the venture’s management team and
may participate in planning the venture. However, only students may participate
in the competition. In other words, only students may present the plan and
answer questions from the competition judges. The maximum number of students on
a competition team is five (5); although there is no restriction on the total
size of the venture’s founding team.
Student Enrollment. The competition is for students enrolled in the
current academic year. Students who graduated in the preceding academic year are
not eligible to participate. However, an exception will be made for students who
both wrote their business plans for academic credit and graduated during the
preceding summer. An exception will also be made for students from universities
south of the equator that have a different academic year.
Nature of Ventures. The competition is for new, independent ventures in
the seed, start-up, or early growth stages. Generally excluded are the
following: buy-outs, expansions of existing companies, real estate syndications,
tax shelters, franchises, licensing agreements for distribution in a different
geographical area, and spin-outs from existing corporations. Licensing
technologies from universities or research labs is not excluded and is
encouraged assuming they have not been commercialized previously. All ventures
must be seeking outside equity capital.
Prior Activity. Ventures may compete only once in the Venture Labs
Investment
Competition or in any of the qualifying competitions. Also, ventures may not
compete in any VLIC qualifying competitions after they have competed in the
Venture Labs Investment Competition. However, ventures may compete in different
VLIC
qualifying competitions in different academic years, provided that they meet all
other Prior Activity and VLIC Qualification Rules. Ventures with revenues
in prior academic years are excluded. Ventures that have raised investment capital
from sources outside of friends and family before the current academic year are excluded. However, both student and other team members may
have worked on an idea or new technology in previous academic years or in the
case of the student team members even prior to entering graduate school,
provided that their venture had no revenues and raised no outside investment capital, and/or did not undertake any other formal startup activities prior to
the current academic year.
University Sponsored. The business plan must be prepared under faculty supervision. Ideally, the business plan will be prepared for credit in a regularly scheduled course or as an independent study. The business plan must represent the original work of members of the team. All universities with participating teams are strongly encouraged to send faculty or other university advisors to the team to most, if not all, all of the competitions in which their teams compete.
Dropping Out of a Competition. If a team does not compete in a
competition after registering an Intent to Compete, the team and university will be
disqualified from competing in the Venture Labs Investment Competition and any other
VLIC participating competition that year and the following year.
© McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin
Venture Labs Investment Competition Submission Requirements
Confidentiality and Intellectual Property Guidelines
Business Plan Guidelines
Presentation Guidelines
