The Cyvia and Melvyn Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship

Battle of the Classes

 

Compete against your fellow Coogs in the 3rd Annual Battle of the Classes competition. Battle of the Classes is open to all UH students and is especially encouraged for students who have worked on a startup idea in an entrepreneurship or senior design class.

Apply by submitting an application with a pre-recorded version of your pitch. The top ideas from each college will be invited to pitch live in the semifinals and finals. The best pitches in the finals will win an award to continue working on their idea.

Important Dates:

• Tuesday, January 18: Applications open
• Friday, March 25: First round applications due
  • Including a recorded version of your pitch.
• Friday, April 1: Semifinalists notified
  • The top ideas from each college will be notified that they will continue on to the Semifinals round where they will pitch their ideas in person in front of a panel of judges.
• Thursday, April 7: Semifinal round and final round (students will pitch their in person!)
  • The top three ideas from the final round will win an award to continue working on their startup idea.

Pitch Requirements

Students will be allowed four minutes to pitch their idea. And cover the following topics:

• The solution they are proposing
• Their customer for the proposed solution
• What value the customer will receive from the solution (ie time saving or cost savings)
• A marketing strategy and how they plan to reach their target customers
• Their next steps

Slides are encouraged but should be used sparingly. Six or seven should be enough to cover all the required material.

The idea must be the students(s) own idea, meaning it was not developed with the help of a professor.

Pitch Judging Criteria

The judges will judge the pitches on 3 different criteria:

1. The market potential of your startup idea
   • Is there a need for this business, do you have evidence that this is what your customers want, how big of a problem is this, is there a large enough market to sustain the business idea).
2. Preparedness for next steps
   • Can you actually take the next steps to launch and are your next steps feasible?
3. Quality of the pitch and preparation of the team
   • It’s clear you have written a script and rehearsed the pitch, your slides are clear and coherent

Resources

Check out these books to learn some of the entrepreneurial basics:

• Talking to Humans
• 24 Steps Disciplined Entrepreneurship
• Lean Startup
• The Right It
• Traction, How to Achieve Explosive Customer Growth

Need some help developing your pitch? Check out some resources here and watch Battle of the Classes 2020 here.