The Maine Startup Challenge, a business plan competition designed to encourage entrepreneurial thinking across all ages and foster the next generation of Maine entrepreneurs, is returning for its second year.
The competition—organized by Maine Venture Fund—will have four tiers again this year: K-8, High School, College, and the Open tier. Each tier will have two cash prizes with a total prize pool of $19,000.
Ahead of applications opening on Sept. 4, Maine Startups Insider spoke with Nina Scheepers, principal at MVF, about the competition, what she learned from running it the first year, and the importance of fostering entrepreneurship at an early age.
MSI: There were already several pitch competitions in the Maine innovation ecosystem. What gap did MVF see that prompted you to create this event last year?
Well, two things here. MSC is a business plan competition, not a pitch competition. The panel of judges are evaluating the business ideas based on what is articulated in a written business plan, not how well the entrepreneur can talk about or pitch their business. So, this can be a great first step for a person looking to get initial feedback on their idea.
And second, we expanded our focus to include students—we have four tiers: K-8, high school, college, and the open tier for adult entrepreneurs.
Why is it important to support entrepreneurship from such a young age?
Entrepreneurship takes skills like problem solving and creative thinking and helps demonstrate how to apply them to real world issues. It’s awesome to see students take the skills they are learning in school and apply them in a new way. We think this can be really empowering for students, and can help them identify starting a business as a career path they might want to explore.
You offer entrepreneurship-focused Lesson Plans on the MSC website. Do you know how many teachers are using them? What’s the response been like from teachers who have?
Yes, we provide a lesson plan with video content to help teachers and students, who have maybe not interacted with a business plan, work their way through brainstorming an idea and putting together a business plan summary. I think we all know that teachers are super busy, so we are working to find pockets where the MSC dovetails with content they are already teaching in their classrooms. Classrooms who are already engaging with Junior Achievement or Jobs for Maine Graduates programming have felt like a natural fit, where MSC can be the next step in applying their learning. We are also piloting a program this year where Joe [Powers, MVF’s managing director] and I “guest teach” which has been a way to lessen the load on teachers who are interested in bringing entrepreneurship into the classroom.
Maine Venture Fund is preparing to host the second annual Maine Startup Challenge. What did you learn from the first event and how are these learnings being incorporated into this year’s event?
Last year, the students really stole the show! So, we are doing a lot more work to increase the student participation and highlight them during the showcase event. We also reconfigured the prizes to be more even across the tiers, and will do a better job this year highlighting all the finalists, not just the winners.
How do you measure the success of the Maine Startup Challenge in the near-term? And what will that success look like in 5-7 years?
In the near term, we are mostly looking at growing the number of applications and dollars deployed to these early stage ideas and businesses. That said, our ultimate goal is to increase the amount of entrepreneurial activity in the state, and consequently, our pipeline and dealflow.
Our goal is for an entrepreneur who submits an idea this year to get the feedback and support they need to continue to work on the idea, and then come back to Maine Venture Fund for investment when their business is ready for that step!
