But I also have to applaud the innovation and sophistication displayed by them and the five other finalists who stood before four judges and dozens of their peers in Huntsman Hall on the University of Pennsylvania campus last Wednesday.
What I saw on display for a few hours had taken months to prepare. Open to any Penn student, the competition began last October with 300 teams, each with a business concept. By the time the 25 semifinalists were chosen in March, each team had written a full business plan.
Eight were selected for the finals, requiring them to make a 10-minute presentation and field questions for 10 more minutes from the investment professionals serving as judges, including P. Sherrill Neff, managing partner of Quaker BioVentures Inc., a Philadelphia venture fund.
College business plan competitions seem to get bigger and richer every year. At stake in the 2011 Wharton competition were $116,000 in cash prizes and awards of "in-kind services," including a $30,000 grand prize.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, which will hold its finals May 11, is prepared to hand out $300,000 in prize money. The overall winner will get $100,000.
And the Rice University Business Plan Competition, which calls itself the world's richest business plan competition, attracts entries from college teams across the nation. This year's winning team, TNG Pharmaceuticals, went home to the University of Louisville with an eye-popping $642,000 in prizes.
Locally, Temple University's Fox School of Business held its 13th Be Your Own Boss Bowl last Wednesday, awarding its grand prize to pureNano Technologies, which seeks to produce ultrapure carbon nanotubes for use in a variety of industries. In all, pureNano received $125,000 in cash, prizes, and services.
