About

The MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition is a year-long educational experience designed to encourage students and researchers in the MIT community to act on their talent, ideas and energy to produce tomorrow’s leading firms. Now in its 21th year as a student organization within the MIT School of Engineering, the Competition has awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and business startup services to outstanding teams of student entrepreneurs who submitted business plans for new ventures showing significant business potential. The refinement process of the Competition, its network of mentors, investors and potential partners, and the cash prizes awarded have helped many of these teams to act on their dreams and build their own companies and fortunes.

The MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition provides teams who enter with valuable resources in the following areas crucial to successful entrepreneurship:

  • Networks of world-class entrepreneurs, investors, and potential partners
  • Mentorship by successful and seasoned professionals
  • Education in specific business planning skills as well as general entrepreneurial insight
  • Content rich feedback on their business model from world class entrepreneurs, investors, and professional service providers on our Judging Panel
  • Teambuilding opportunities to create a winning team of founders
  • Access to members of the private equity community
  • Broad media exposure and PR buzz

Students from all five schools at MIT (Sloan, Engineering, Science, Humanities, and Architecture) at the undergraduate and graduate levels have entered and been successful in the Competition. Multi-disciplinary teams that combine members from technical disciplines with members from the Sloan School have proven the most successful competitors. These teams bring together the pieces necessary for making the bridge between technology and the marketplace. Their business plans are judged by a panel of experienced entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and legal professionals.

Real Ideas, Real Companies….

As the world leader among student run university entrepreneurship competitions, the Competition has facilitated the birth of over 130 companies with aggregate exit values of $2.5 billion captured and a market cap of over $15 billion. These companies have generated over 2,500 jobs and received $770 million dollars in Venture Capital funding.

Many of these companies have been extremely successful. Recent IPOs have included Akamai (AKAM), net.Genesis(NTG), and C-Bridge Internet Solutions (CBIS). Recent acquisitions include Brontes Technologies (by 3M), Direct Hit (by Ask.com), Silicon Spice (by Broadcom), WebLine Communications (Cisco), and Harmonix (MTV). Other success stories include Actuality Systems, Frictionless Commerce, SensAble Technologies, Stylus Innovation, Virtmed, and Virtual Ink.

20 Years of $100K

The MIT $100K was born in 1989, when the MIT Entrepreneurs Club and the Sloan New Ventures Association teamed up to create a competition that would take advantage of the winning combination of engineers and business students. In the spring of 1990, 54 teams competed in the first competition with the winner receiving $10K, and $3K and $2K going to the runners up. The original sponsors included the deans from the MIT Sloan School of Management and the School of Engineering as well as Thermo Electron and Price Waterhouse. The MIT $10K has run every year since its inception, and in 1996 it evolved into the $50K with $30K going to the winner and $10K each to two runners up. In 2006, the $50K doubled in size with the incorporation of the Development Track, and became the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition.

Today’s competition is the nation’s premier business plan competition, with three separate contests, each focused on different skill sets: Elevator Pitch Contest, Executive Summary Contest, and finally, the Business Plan Contest. There are six distinct tracks, allowing students to concentrate on their specific areas, while learning how to turn their ideas into companies.