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The Ultimate Business Plan Competition (or how to put Utah on the high tech map forever)
For sometime now I have been wondering who is the best in Utah? Who is the best at sales, who is the best at marketing, who is the best at development, who is the best at operations and on top of all that, who would be the best to lead the best team?
Over the last year I had several conversations about entrepreneurial success with Mark Effinger - a Pacific Northwest entrepreneur and investor. Mark told me about a business plan competition he was once involved in (at least I remember that being the premise). Here was the process:
- The panel of VC judges would throw out the bad plans but keep the most qualified people from those plans “in reserve”
- They would then categorize the best ideas into groups
- They would then take the best plans out of the groups and match them with the best team members out of the submitted plans group. This might even include highly qualified people who had their initial plan disqualified.
- If you were part of a management team that submitted the best plan but another person had better experience than you - then you would be replaced by that other person. The goal being to put the very best teams with the very best ideas. Basically the VC’s would “fire” the unqualified management team members before the company got off the ground. However, if ”fired” members matched well with another team then they could be placed there instead. All team members know that this is the case before they ever go in.
- The new team would be paired with the best plan that fit that team
- The VC’s would sit down with the new teams and help them figure out a new strategy based on the best plan they were now paired with
- Once all was decided and looked good, they would then fund the team with the appropriate level of funding and support them in any and all way possible to success
Apparently this was an incredibly effective method (Mark, if I’m missing something here please clarify in the comments).Â
I really love this idea.
If Utah really needs a home run (and it does) of billion dollar proportions wouldn’t it be in the best interest of entrepreneurs, investors, universities, and even the state government to get behind a project like this, build the right team, build the right company and then appropriately fund that company all the way to (preferably) a billion dollar IPO?Â
Of course there are some things to consider here. Who is the best that’s available? Would the best guys work well together as a team? What makes them the best? What’s the idea and is it really that big? What’s the value? Who will be the customers? What do they want and how do we deliver it to them? What if they fail? These are just a few of the questions that would need to be answered. But these are all questions that can be answered. Frankly, we should answer them.
Think of it as the UEC on steroids minus the undergrads.
Bottom line: Utah needs a series of home runs - one after another - this might be one way to do it. If it benefits all of us, what would we be willing to do to make it happen? How far are we willing to go? Is this an unrealistic dream or is this something that could work?Â
This whole week I have been blogging about the good and the bad in Utah. I can’t get this issue off my mind. I slammed a guy I felt was being incredibly insincere about the state of the state. I noted some great things happening in Ogden. I tried to point out our marketing problem and solution and now this post.  Next week I have the privilege of moderating a round table discussion on the state of entrepreneurship in Utah. There are going to be some heavy hitters in the room and I am excited to be part of this discussion. The two big questions are this: what are we doing to promote entrepreneurship and what are we doing to kill it.
Everybody’s opinion counts (even Matt Asay’s :)). What’s yours?
This sounds like a great way to get a home run IF it’s true that any entrepreneur can be matched with any idea. However, I wonder if some entrepreneurs will feel the most ownership and passion about ideas they’ve dreamed up. In any case, I’d like to see an experiment of this process to see if it works.
Left by Richard K Miller on 10/21/2006Frankly, I think the original idea guy needs to be part of the team - in some capacity. I also don’t think we can throw an entrepreneur at any idea and expect success. This process would be very tricky, There are many things to consider when choosing the team. If done right, I think it could be a great deal.
Left by ctknud on 10/21/2006I loved the Business Plan competitions that I was involved in locally and nationally, but I have to admit, if they told me that someone else was a better fit for my company, I would be pretty upset. I would want to at least be on the team, I agree that I’m not CEO qualified, but I want to be in the game. Once I can afford to replace myself with someone qualified that is the plan, but for now it’s my passion that drives the show. It’s hard to get others to be passionate about your idea.
Just last week I was at the BYU business plan competition kick off and they asked if anyone there was “looking for a team” rather than there for an “idea”, there were about 5 hands in teh crowd of 1000. But this is college.
Real entreprneurs don’t care as much about roles and ideas/ownership as just being part of the energy of it. That is what drives people to be invovled in start ups.
If you want to see some start ups by women, check out Start Up Princess.com sometime, we’re networking and interviewing women entrepreneurs like Nancy Cadjan of Sign Babies (sold 40,000 of her products last year) and Diane Bingham, From Global To You, $5M this year…
Thanks for a great post!
Left by Kelly King Anderson on 10/24/2006