Judging business plans at Stanford

So I was invited to be a judge for the 2nd annual ABA business plan competition held at Stanford University which included student presentations from both Berkeley and Stanford Universities.

My takeaways were that "viral marketing" is the latest flavor of the month in trying to get your message out that you have a new company, product or service. A few were leveraging the new VoIP infrastructure that is gaining in users. One plan was leveraging the trend in online gambling and betting. Another trotted out the stale P2P business model for sharing music online, and another was a simple t-shirt printing company. The plan that won took old voice-mail technology and made it friendlier and easier to use on the new smart phones that are now saturating the market.

The winning group of students won on their profound success in stating the problem of traditional voicemail and then illustrating a solution that not only improved existing technology,but had a well thought out plan for deployment into the market. Well researched and justified problem statements are the winners in today's design development, entrepreneurial and innovations game. You must identify a real need with the consumer or an existing problem that everyone puts up with without even knowing it, and then provide a solution that is simple and cleaner than before. Even if it means using technology that is established or not very sexy, it will get the attention of funding angels if your solution serves a real identified need.

All was going well until the judges convened to "deliberate" to choose the runner up and the winner. The winner was unanimous by all seven judges, but the runner up caused some discussion amongst the judging panel. The end result was the team that had the lowest combined score took the 2nd prize because the other 3 teams that were so close in their combined scores. This made no sense to me at all.

To me, the team with the lowest score and the smallest vision won the $1000.00 prize because of their......I still don't know. I suspect some sort of favoritism. It just did not make sense that the team with the lowest combined score received a prize over 3 other teams that were clearly superior in their plans, had much higher combined scores and that were delivered with professional acumen.

Bottom line about being a judge is to identify the members of the organizing committee as well as the other judges and watch them like a hawk in order to seek out their bias in the competition. They undoubtedly bring some sort of preconceived bias to the contest, otherwise they would not be facilitating such an event. It is in their interest to control the outcome to benefit their agenda what ever it may be. One has to be willing to closely follow the moderation of the judging and be willing to standup and point out discrepancies in the process while being rushed and pressured by the clock to arrive at a decision. Even be prepared to walk out under protest if you feel stongly enough about the bending of what you think is fair.