Entrepreneurship Competition: students will be challenged to create a non-profit or for-profit business idea which
improves mental health care through service delivery, concept/approach, and/or access to care. Students of
psychology, social work, and counseling programs will be eligible to participate. Submissions will include business
proposals that fulfill the requirements of submission guidelines.The winner will receive a $10,000 cash prize.
Submission Guidelines:
- Create a non-profit or for-profit business idea (can be a service and/or a product) which improves the mental
health and wellbeing of the people utilizing the service/product through concept/approach, service delivery,
and/or access to care. This can be a specific service, a therapeutic or coaching model used for service
delivery, a website and/or app, a physical or digital product, or something even more outside the box like an
NFT/Web3 community.
- Idea must utilize a business model framework or combination of business model frameworks, through one or
both of the following options:
- More information on these business model/frameworks:
From SBA.gov:
There's no right or wrong way to write a business plan. What's important is that your plan meets your needs. Most
business plans fall into one of two common categories: traditional or lean startup.
Traditional business plans are more common, use a standard structure, and encourage you to go into detail in
each section. They tend to require more work upfront and can be dozens of pages long, and include an executive
summary, company description, market analysis, organization and management, service or product line, marketing
and sales, funding request, financial projections, and an appendix.
Lean startup business plans are less common but still use a standard structure. They focus on summarizing only the
most important points of the key elements of your plan. They can take as little as one hour to make and are
typically only one page, including key partnerships, key activities, key resources, value proposition, customer
relationships, customer segments, channels, cost structure, and revenue streams.
Go to https://www.sba.gov/business-guide/plan-your-business/write-your-business-plan to read about Standard v.
Lean Startup Business Plans, along with actual samples of each to review.
The Y Combinator is a startup incubator/accelerator in Cambridge, MA which has helped launch over 3,000
companies, including Airbnb, Stripe, Coinbase, Dropbox, Twitch, and Reddit.
Their framework for a for-profit or non-profit idea includes:
- Company name
- Company URL (if any)
- Demo (show in video format)
- Description of what the company does in 50 character or less
- What will your company make/do (product or service description)
- Why did you pick this idea to work on?
- What's new about what you're creating? What substitutes do people resort to because it doesn't exist yet (or
they don't know about it)?
- Who are your competitors and who might become competitors?
- What do you understand about your business that other companies in the same realm just don't get?
- How do or will you make money? How much could you make?
- How will you get users/customers/clients? If your idea is the type that faces a chicken-and-egg problem in the
sense that it won't be attractive to users until it has a lot of users (e.g. a marketplace, an ad network, etc.), how
will you overcome that?
- Is this a for-profit or non-profit company?
- Has an entity been formed yet?
- Who are the founders and what is the planned equity ownership breakdown among founders, employees,
stockholders, etc.?
- Please provide any other relevant information about the structure or formation of the company
- Is any code or technical work needed for the company and if so, who will write it?
- Is there anything else we should know about your company?
- Please tell us something surprising or amusing that you have discovered
Final Submission Requirements:
- Create and submit a 5-15 minute video explaining the main purpose of your idea and how the plan will enable
your idea to be successful; submit video through the approved competition video submission platform (*this
will be spelled out in more detail soon)
- Submit a written document that covers each element of the business model framework with a written
description for each section (PDF format); Be sure to include your name, email address, school/program, and
phone number on the PDF document header
- Submit a detailed visual timeline of business implementation (PDF format)