Results

Please click here to download: 2007 Y2K Results

Important Info

Deadline

6:00am, Sunday, December 23, 2007

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Registration and Submission

Teams must register for the Y2K and submit their executive summary and entry agreement online at YES's new online platform called YESnet. YESnet is available at http://yesatyale.org/yesnet/. Instructions for registering your team and submitting your documents are available for download below.

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Entry Materials

Please click here to download: Contestant Kit
Please click here to download: Entry Agreement
Please click here to download: Prize Claim Form
Please click here to download: YESnet Instructions

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Questions?

Joe Walker, Y2K/Y50K Director, joseph.walker@yale.edu

Mike Ma, For-Profit Liaison, m.ma@yale.edu
James Zhang, Social Entrepreneurship Liaison, james.zhang@yale.edu
Mike Zink, Life Sciences Liaison, michael.zink@yale.edu

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Resources

Please click here to download: Kickoff Flyer
Please click here to download: Kickoff Presentation
Please click here to download: Teambuilder 1 Flyer
Please click here to download: Executive Summary Workshop Flyer
Please click here to download: Executive Summary Workshop Handout
Please click here to download: Executive Summary Workshop Presentation, by Maureen Burke
Please click here to download: Teambuilder 2 Flyer
Please click here to download: Speaker Series Event 1 Flyer
Please click here to download: Speaker Series Event 2 Flyer

Competion Info

What is the Y2K Competition?
The Y2K Executive Summary Competition is an easy-to-enter competition for aspiring entrepreneurs and a great way to prepare for YES’s annual Y50K Business Plan Competition in the spring. The Y2K competition is intended to encourage a broad range of Yale undergraduate and graduate students to flesh out their ideas in business terms and form teams that combine technology and business strengths.
 
The Y2K entry consists of a short, written description of the market opportunity for your service or product, the product or services concept, your competitive advantage, and brief descriptions of the skills, achievements, and other qualities that you and any team members bring to the process of creating a new company. Most entries are only about 2-3 pages.
 
The Y2K competition is designed to help you generate ideas and begin to build a team for the Y50K. If you enter the Y2K, no matter whether you win a prize or not, you put yourself in a better position to enter the Y50K because you will have the experience of analyzing various issues involved in planning a business. Then you can either build on your Y2K idea or discard it to work on a different project. Going through the various sections on your Y2K entry will also help you identify areas in which you need the skills, perspectives, and personalities of other people to fill different roles on your founding team. Participation in the Y2K, however, does not mandate subsequent Y50K entry second semester.
 
The Y2K rewards all competitors with feedback from qualified judges and offers cash prizes (see below) to nine exceptional entries. Checks are made out to individual team members and business incorporation is not required. In addition, Y2K winners receive access to an additional entrepreneurship competition through YES’s venture capital contacts. Finally, all Y2K teams will receive valuable experience and feedback to give them an extra edge in the Y50K next semester.

A cash prize of $2,000 will be split among winning entries as follows:





  

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How does the judging work?
A panel of judges from the Yale and New Haven venture communities, including experienced entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, legal professionals, and patent expert reads the entries. Some general criteria used by industry, private investors, and venture capitalists in evaluating the attractiveness of new venture opportunities are:

• High growth potential
• Originality of any new technology
• Feasibility
• Market leadership potential
• Quality and breadth of team
• Well defined market opportunity
• Ability to withstand competition
• Written quality of the entry

 

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Who is eligible?
All full-time and part-time Yale students, staff, and faculty at all levels of education and from any department, registered in the current semester of the Competition (Fall 2005), are eligible to enter. People that do not meet this requirement may join or form teams, provided that at least one of the principal contestants on the team is a current Yale student, staff, or faculty member. Teams are encouraged to seek the involvement of Yale faculty, alumni, post-docs, researchers, staff, students from other schools, and people from outside the Yale community. Entries must be the original work of entrants and may be entered by an individual or a multi-member team. The size of a team is not restricted, and neither is the number of entries submitted by a team or an individual. Teams that have already secured arrangements for capital from any source must disclose the amounts and sources clearly in their entries. The Judging Panel of the Y2K Competition reserves the right to disqualify any entry that in its judgment violates the letter or the spirit of the competition Guidelines.
 

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What do I include in my entry?
You may submit a executive summary with a maximum of 1200 words describing your business idea. Keep in mind that the judges appreciate brevity and clarity. Entries must be submitted via the Y2K website. Some elements of an executive summary are:

1. Public Summary: How would you describe your idea to the public? Do not disclose any proprietary information or technology.
2. Opportunity Statement: How would you describe the business to a potential investor, team member or customer if you had only a short elevator ride to share together? Use one to three sentences.
3. Market opportunity and Strategy: What existing problem(s) will you solve with your service or product? What are the primary benefits to customers? What is the level of potential sales of your product or service? How will these sales happen? Who will you first customer(s) be?
4. Product and Services: Who will the competitors be? How will you sell your product or service? Where does your revenue come from? Develop a brief concept statement for the product or service that can be shown to potential customers.
5. Market Analysis: Who will the competitors be? How will your service or product compare to those of your competitors in terms of usefulness, cost, styling, ergonomics, time-to-market, strategic alliance, technological innovations, compatibility with related products, etc? How large is your target market and how will you reach the consumer?
6. Financial Plan: Projections on the financial needs and projected revenues of the venture.
7. Management: Include a summary of each team member?s background applicable to the proposed venture. If the full team is not assembled, include a description of the desired background and skills of the team members remaining to be recruited.
8. Entry Agreement: Available on-line (coming soon!). Should be filled out and submitted with your entry.

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Will my entry remain confidential?
Your submissions will remain confidential. All judges and organizers agree verbally to non-disclosure agreements. However, as a required component of the Y2K submission, we ask that you submit a title for your business idea and short (50 words or less) description of your idea – a public summary – that may be published by the organizers in promotional materials or press releases. Do not disclose proprietary information about your idea in the short description.

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Will my intellectual property be protected?
The Yale Entrepreneurial Society (the organizer and sponsor) and the competition judges and other sponsors take all reasonable measures to assure that all contestants retain their rights to their business ideas and intellectual property. The sponsors and judges of the competition include non-Yale organizations that are interested in fostering the entrepreneurial process. Some of these organizations are in the business of working with and investing in the ideas of entrepreneurs. However, co-sponsoring organizations will not have access to the plans and shall make no claim to any of the property or rights. The judges agree verbally to non-disclosure agreements which extend for six months after the public announcement of the winners of the competition. The competition cannot and will not take further responsibility to protect the intellectual property or other rights of the contestants.

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When is the entry due?
The due date for submitting your entry is 6:00 AM, Sunday, December 16, 2007. No entries submitted after that time will be accepted. Entries must be submitted online. Winners will be announced at the Y2K Awards Ceremony in the beginning of the spring semester.

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What if I don’t win?
Regardless of whether you win, you’ll be able to receive valuable feedback and assessment from our experienced judges. You also get the opportunity to meet potential teammates for the Y50K Business Plan Competition in the spring. The Y2K executive summary competition should be considered a stepping-stone to writing a full-fledged business plan. Even if you don’t win a prize in the fall, we encourage you to develop your idea into a plan and enter it in the Y50K.