Entrepreneurship Competitions
Skevos Evripidou
Department of Computer Science,
University of Cyprus
{skevos@cs.ucy.ac.cy}
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Entrepreneurship Competitions
 Simulate the process of Start-up Creation.
 Competitors have to create a full-ledge Business Plan (BP)
 Mentoring and education is usually offered.
 An evaluation committee (Jury) Judges the BPs and award
the prizes.
 Monetary award are usually offered
 The big Prize: Getting the necessary to experience, connections and
motivation to create a successful venture
 Valuable feedback form the Jury.
 Connections to Local and International VC.
 Continuous mentoring and assistance form the Competition and
its associates.
Skevos Evripidou
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MIT $100K competition
 The MIT $100k was born in 1990 as a $10K Competition, when
the MIT Entrepreneurs Club and the Sloan New Ventures
Association teamed up to create a competition that would take
advantage of the winning combination of engineers and
business students.
 The MIT Global Startup Workshop is the world's premier
conference on how to foster entrepreneurship by creating
supportive infrastructure and catalytic events.
 Since 1998 the non-profit, student run organization has held
12 international workshops, spanning 6 continents and
attracted participants from 60 nations.
 A 2009 survey by the Kauffman Foundation reported that the
aggregate value of all the companies founded by MIT
graduates and faculty would make MIT the 11th largest
economy in the world.
Skevos Evripidou
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European Innovation…
 The World Wide Web was invented in Europe at the
CERN research Lab around 1990.
 USA based companies are dominating all commercial aspects
of WWW/Internet.
 USA leads the world in Knowledge-based (High-tech) Startup
companies.
 Many of them from Europeans that go to the USA for studies
 The Educational system of the USA has played a pivotal role.
 Silicon Valley was created when the Dean of Engineering of
Stanford loaned money to two of his students Hewlett &
Packard to start a company.
 MIT initiated an Entrepreneurship competition in 1990
Skevos Evripidou
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Entrepreneurship: Europe vs USA
 Europe and the USA
When one compares European and American start-ups,
figures are striking. The biggest American successes
have tens of thousands of employees and their market
values are in the tens of billions of dollars. European
success stories generate thousands of jobs and billions
of dollars in market capitalization. Another interesting
difference is the time to IPO: in the USA, start-ups
often go public on the NASDAQ, 5 years after their
foundation; in Europe, the time span is more around 8 to
10 years. Also, European founders are very seldom less
than 30 years old.
Start-Up: What We May Still Learn From Silicon Valley Herve
Lebret http://www.startup-book.com/content-and-summary/
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EUROPE
 Chapter 8: few success stories in Europe. The chapter shows the
start-up world has not succeeded in Europe. The most famous
examples are analyzed and the slowness of the development is
shown. Some features are compared with those of Silicon Valley:
the age of founders, the smaller size of companies for example.
 Chapter 9: venture capital in Europe. As a logical consequence, VC
has not been very successful in Europe. Its history is described and
some reasons of these failures are analyzed.
 Chapter 10: the start-up infrastructure in Europe. Because of the
failures, Europe has tried to compensate with multiple tools and
initiatives. But the system does not work, does not “live”. We are
far from an eco-system. I analyze again the reasons which are, I
think, mainly cultural.
Start-Up: What We May Still Learn From Silicon Valley Herve Lebret
http://www.startup-book.com/content-and-summary
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Cyprus Entrepreneurship Competition Challenge
DARE
To Believe that your Ideas and concepts
for High Tech Products and Services
Can Be Transformed Into a
High Tech Company of Tomorrow
 In the First 6 years over 120 teams with more than 400
team members took our challenge.
 At least Twelve companies have been created by CyEC
alumni.
Skevos Evripidou
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UNICA Entrepreneurship Competition
 The UNICA Entrepreneurship Competition for 2009 and
2011 is Sponsored by the Cyprus Research Promotion
Foundation.
 The competition will run every two years, starting in
2009
 The awards will be accompanied by a commemorative
plaque and a monetary prize as follows
 First Prize €20,000
 Second Prize €10,000
 Third Prize €5,000
 16 Universities participated in the first competition
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Participating Universities and Teams
 Universidade de Lisboa: Drugs2Brain
 Freie Universität Berlin: parelectrics - device for the
diagnostic of skin cancer
 Stockholm University: Xbrane Bioscience
 University of Amsterdam: Emovision
 University Roma TRE of Roma: Power save and design
with the LED lighting
 Tallinn University of Technology: e-Fitting Room
 University College Dublin: HeyStaks
 University Ss. Cyril and Methodius: Educational
Counseling Centre
 Lomonosov Moscow State University: Fiber optic system
to monitor technical
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 Vrije Universiteit Brussel: Ycc Surf Europe Customized surfboards at standardized prices
 University of Ljubljana: UNIKI systems
 Université Paris-Dauphine : SOM Systems
 Universidade Nova de Lisboa: Ion Jelly
 Complutense University of Madrid : WATER FOR ALL.
Design of Novel Membrane for Desalination by
Membrane Distillation (MD)
 Université pierre et Marie Curie: AGORABOX
 University of Cyprus: VI Scientific: Mobile vision
products for the blind and visually impaired
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Organizing Committee
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Prof. A. Carcaterran, University of La Sapienza
Prof. J.M. Dalle, University Pierre et Marie Curie
Prof. Ivana Murkovic Steinberg, University of Zagreb
Prof. Skevos Evripidou, University of Cyprus
Andreas Moleskis, Chairman of the Cyprus Research
Foundation
Prof. Dr. Rosette S’Jegers, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Prof. Dag Noréus, Stockholm University
Frederik Rijk de Pont, JADE
Margaret Rudzkior, Eurochambers
Prof. Dr. Benjamin Van Camp, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Kris Dejonckheere, UNICA
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Judges
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Igor Prodan, University of Ljubljana
Marc Goldchstein. Vrije Universiteit Brussel
José María Gómez, Complutense University of Madrid
Dag Noréus, Stockholm University
Ivana Murkovic Steinberg, University of Zagreb
Paulo Soares de Pinho,Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Roberto Pujia, Roma Tre University
Catherine Léger-Jarniou, Université Paris-Dauphine
Georges Kalousis, Université Paris-Dauphine
Dan Maher, University College Dublin; Nua Venture
Jean-Michel Dalle, Université Pierre et Marie Curie
Martin Gersch, Freie Universität Berlin
Rogério Gaspar, Universidade de Lisboa
Velimir J. Stojkovski, Ss Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje
Gadi Rothenberg, University of Amsterdam
Elena Semenova, Lomonosov Moscow State University
Ulf Eriksson, SU Innovation AB, Stockholm University/
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Judging process
First Round Judging
 Jury divided in two groups with Eight Business Plans per group.
 The assignment of BPs to each group ensure that they will be no
conflict of interests.
 Teleconferencing Meeting for each group, after the completion of
the evaluations, for discussing and ranking the Business plans of
the Group.
 Each group selects three BPs for the “semi-final” stage.
Second Round
 All judges that had no-conflict of interest, were invited to
evaluated the BPs that they have already seen and participate in
the second round.
 The three Finalist were selected during a Teleconference meeting.
Finals
 Teams presented in front of the Jury
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