Share This Article
Judging Chair David Wolf welcomes the judges for one of the age categories before they select a winner.
We have our winners!! Sorry — we’re not going to share the names yet. You’ll have to wait until September to find out the winners of our youth business competition.
In the meantime, I’d like to share an insiders’ look at the judging process and how we end up with our winners. (If you want more info on the competition in general, check back to this blog post for details.)
Judging Criteria
We’re not a business plan competition. We want to see actual businesses up and running. That means that anyone applying needs to have run their business for at least 6 months and made at least one sale. When judging these real businesses, here are the criteria we use to evaluate each one:
- Business Idea: Is the concept unique or creative? Does is meet an unmet need?
- Entrepreneurial Thinking: Does the applicant show resourcefulness, persistence, risk-taking and more?
- Customers: Does the applicant respond to customers’ wants and needs?
- Marketing: Are there marketing strategies involved to attract customers?
- Competition: Does the applicant recognize competition, and are there ideas to successfully compete?
- SWOT: Does the applicant understand the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
- Sustainability: Can the business continue?
- Profitability: Does the business demonstrate the potential to be and remain profitable?
The Judging Chair, David Wolf, sat down with me to talk a little about the process and share his excitement for this year’s winners and finalists. Watch him here:
Keep your eyes open for the announcement of the finalists. Then, we’ll announce the winners on Tuesday, September 10. Stay tuned!
