(April 20, 2000, Austin, TX)— The 17th annual Moot Corp®
Business Plan Competition will be held on May 5-6, 2000 at The University of
Texas at Austin. The MBAs will compete for more than $130,000 in prizes to help
fund their new ventures. The World Champion
will be named on May 6.
Each May, MBA students from around the world
travel to Austin to compete in the annual Moot Corp® Competition, “the Super
Bowl of business-plan competitions.” They hone their venture capital raising
skills, learn from sage advice from experienced investors, network with their
fellow MBAs and enjoy Austin.
The opening round will
run from 8:00 AM until 1 PM on Friday, May 5.
The teams are divided into five divisions with five or six teams in each
division. The winner from each division
will compete in the finals on Saturday, May 6 beginning at 1 PM. The public is
invited to attend the team presentations on both days.
Moot Corp® 2000
offers additional prizes, new events, greater opportunities to develop skills
in soliciting funds and more exposure to potential investors. On Saturday, all
teams, not just the five finalists, will compete again for monetary awards.
seedstage.com Fast Pitch
In four divisions of Fast Pitch, teams will have 15 minutes to
pitch their ventures to seedstage.com managers who will critique the
presentations, offer advice for improving them, and select the best in each
division. The winners will receive $1,000.
Murphree Challenge
The five first runner-ups from the Opening Round will each have 30 minutes to
interact with Murphree Venture Partners to convince them whose venture
offers the greatest opportunity. The winner will receive $2,000 and the
other participating teams will receive $500.
Moot Corp® was created by UT MBA students in the early eighties to simulate the
real-world process of raising venture capital.
MBAs from leading business schools around the world create business plans and present their ideas to judges from
the entrepreneurial community. This year’s contest includes teams from South Africa, Australia, Hong
Kong, Thailand, Germany, Great Britain, Finland, Brazil Canada, Mexico, Peru
and the United States.
The Texas Business School
has partnered with prestigious business schools around the world to host
continental or regional Moot Corp® Competitions. This was the third
year of the Asian Moot Corp® Competition, now the Nasdaq Asia Moot Corp® Competition, hosted by The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Queensland University of Technology hosted the second Australian Moot Corp®
Competition and the first African Moot Corp® Competition was
sponsored jointly by the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of
Cape Town. Also this year, the University of Western Ontario launched the
Canadian Moot Corp® Competition. In addition to these international
competitions, the winners of five prestigious American competitions are invited
to participate in the Moot Corp® Competition. These are hosted,
respectively, by San Diego State University and the Universities of Oregon,
Nebraska, Indiana and Georgia.
Support from the Business
Community
Dr. Gary Cadenhead, a senior
lecturer in entrepreneurship at the Texas Business School, directs the Moot Corp® Competition. He raises $200,000+
annually from numerous corporate sponsors to fund the program. Partners for the Moot Corp® 2000 Competition are Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst
Inc., Bank of America, Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, The Kauffman Center for
Entrepreneurial Leadership at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Nasdaq
Stock Market and the Price Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies.
“The Moot Corp Competition has
become a launching pad for new MBA ventures, not the intellectual exercise of
its moot roots. In addition, the MBAs have become increasingly focused on
Internet opportunities; 60% of this year’s teams are Internet-based. Expect to
see many of them online before the end of the year,” he states.
Similar to “Moot Court”
The contest began with the desire of
two UT MBAs for a business school activity as challenging and prestigious as
the “moot court” in law schools.
However, for many participants, the process is no longer “moot.”
While Moot Corp® simulates the real-world
process of raising venture capital, many MBAs have converted their classroom
presentations into real-life enterprises, creating viable companies.
The UT MBA Program is ranked among the
top ten worldwide in Entrepreneurship by the Financial Times.
The
University of Texas’ MBA Program in Entrepreneurship was awarded the United
States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship’s (USASBE) Year 2000
National Model Entrepreneurship Program Award.
