Chapter 21
Business Plan Competitions and Other Contests
Essential Idea: Enter Your Business or Business Plan into a Contest to Win Big Money to Fund Your Business
Economically depressed Washington, DC, decided that one way to spur development and promote entrepreneurship in the city would be to have a business plan competition. According to Steve Moore, the president and CEO of the Washington DC Economic Partnership (WDCEP), “Small business can thrive here. We want to be known as a place where entrepreneurs bring their ideas and make them real.” (PR Newswire, March 29, 2010.) So WDCEP teamed up with some partners and launched a business plan competition. To qualify, a business needed to compete in a series of oral presentations against other teams.
The winner that year was a business called Affinity Labs, a company that manages a shared cooperative workspace for small businesses, entrepreneurs, nonprofits, and startups. At Affinity Labs, “members develop the services, clients, partners, vendors, processes and infrastructure they need to succeed on their own. Think of it as shared office space meets incubator meets entrepreneurial clubhouse.” (www.AffinityLabs.com.)
Affinity Labs competed against 40 other DC businesses over two months and ended up in the finals against three other strong teams. Each finalist gave a 30-minute pitch before a panel that included business owners, VCs, government officials, professors, and graduate business students. In the end, the panel decided that ...
