2021-2022 Greenlight Maine Collegiate Business Pitch Competition
Greenlight Maine is delighted to announce that it will once again host its Collegiate Business Pitch Competition for the 2021-2022 season.
Due to ongoing considerations in addressing COVID-19, this year’s program will once again be run remotely and on the ZOOM platform. As such, the initial vetting presentations that students will participate in will be held on Saturday, November 20, 2021 starting at 1:00 PM.
Participating students must:
- Apply by October 29th by emailing haibicoor@thomas.edu to state your intent to participate in the competition. Include in your email: names of the participants, your company name/brand, and your college/university.
- By November 11th, create and email your “3 min. Business Pitch” PowerPoint presentation (to MacKenzie at haibicoord@thomas.edu) for feedback, which you will deliver on ZOOM (on November 20th) to a panel of judges.
- On November 20th, 1PM-5PM, each participating student/team will be assigned a specific time slot on within which they will make their PowerPoint presentation on ZOOM.
- Embedded video or animation is not allowed
- A PowerPoint may be up to, but not to exceed, 4 slides. Each slide can be a single image or have no more than 5 single line Bullet points.
- Student entrepreneurs will be fully responsible for setting up their own PowerPoint presentation when their presentation time arrives. Neither Greenlight Maine staff nor their designees will be responsible for ensuring that an entrepreneur’s PowerPoint presentation is set up properly or that it successfully interacts with the Zoom platform.
See the FAQs below or contact MacKenzie Abernethy via email (haibicoor@thomas.edu) or phone 859-1159 for info.
FAQs
All prior participants that did not advance to the finale in past programs are eligible to pitch again.
All participants will be identified by number only-no names or college affiliations.
Each contestant/s will have 3 minutes to pitch followed by a 5-minute Q&A.
For this elimination round as many as 3 individuals from each company will be allowed to pitch. However, in the televised competition only 2 will be allowed.
The judges will score on a numerical system from 1 to 10 in each of the 5 following criteria;; Feasibility 20%- Innovation 20%-Scalability 20%-Overall quality of business idea 20%-Ability to grow business in Maine -20%.
All judges will have no affiliation with any Maine college.
Televised Pitch Competition
This televised competition will be among the best chosen from the initial pitch off held November 20, 2021.
As it is envisioned to be on the ZOOM platform, this round will conform to all of the same rules set forth for the initial pitch-off.
It will take place on the ZOOM platform during the first full second week in January of 2022.
All pitches will again be 3 minutes with a 3 to 4 minute Q&A. This is for the televised show only. Once the televised segment has been filmed, all presenters will get 10 minutes off camera to take a deeper dive into their business with the judges.
Presentation times will be allotted and, at this point, schools and presenters will be identified.
From this round, 3 finalists will be chosen.
The Grand Finale
The grand finale of the collegiate series will be recorded in April and air in May or June of 2022. The three finalists will vie for the chance to win first ($10,000), second ($7,500) and third place prizes ($5,000) in cash and the possibility of other services and benefits.
The pitching format will remain the same as the elimination round.
We look forward to everyone’s participation and good luck!
This event will be televised statewide on Maine Public Television, live streamed on Facebook, available on demand and on YouTube.
Over the course of the first 5 seasons of Greenlight Maine over $25 million dollars have been invested in companies that have appeared on the series.
All past episodes of all 5 seasons are available on YouTube at Greenlight Maine.
For further information or questions regarding these instructions, please feel free to contact MacKenzie Abernethy at 207-859-1159 or mackenzie.abernethy@thomas.edu or haibicoor@thomas.edu.
