The Harvard GSAS Business Club Pitch Competition was on September 30th, 2021, and our Founder – CEO, Javier Farago Escobar, PhD won first place!
The HGBC Pitch Competition started alongside Patricia Bubner, CEO of Orbillion Bio as a keynote speaker, followed by the introduction of judges (Helen Liang – FoundersX; Sri Muthu – Voya Health; James Sinka – co-founder of On Deck).
Pitch´s time was 5 min, with 6min of Q&A in the following order:
Pitch #1: RESE — The Real Estate Stock Exchange
Pitch #2: SaveMentalFast
Pitch #3: Team Janus
Pitch #4: BiomassTrust
Pitch #5: The IPD Team
Pitch #6: PsychEd
Pitch #7: Dapps
Pitch #8: ClirEx
The following guidelines are to help judges and teams know what the evaluation criteria mean.
- Problem/Opportunity
What is the market opportunity? What is the customer problem the new product/service is addressing or unmet need that the venture satisfies?
- Concept/Solution, Customer Validation, Product-Market fit
How is the product/service going to solve the problem/meet the need? How many customers have you met with to validate product-market fit?
- Differentiation from competition
Does the venture have a unique and sustainable advantage over competitive solutions? Why will customers buy its product or service?
- Market Size
How big are the potential market for the venture and its competitors in the next year? In the following 2-5 yrs?
- Business Model
How will the venture make money? Who pays the venture, for what?
What are the key costs in the creation and delivery of the solution Does the venture enjoy any sustainable cost advantages over competitors?
- Marketing/ Distribution
How will the venture reach its target customers? How will it distribute its product? Who are its channel partners?
- Team
List team members and their short bios. Is the team uniquely qualified to solve the above problem? Does the team understand it may need to augment its ranks with key players not yet on board? Does it have a business and/or scientific/technical advisory board with credible advisors?
- Risks
Has the team identified the key technology, market, team, and financial risks? How will it mitigate those risks? How will a venture capital investment be used to reduce or manage those risks?
- Financial
Are there preliminary financial projections (income statement and/or cash flow)? Has the team identified how much funding it is trying to raise?
- Other: environmental or social impact, team diversity, patents, etc.
Some VCs use additional criteria such as environmental or social impact, team diversity, patents filed (especially in case of medical ventures), and whether the team can outsource part of its production or development. Please address additional criteria wherever applicable.
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