Eligibility Requirements

  1. Either individual students or teams of up to 3 may enter the competition.
  2. At least one of the members of the team must be either undergraduate, graduate, or certificate-seeking students currently enrolled at Georgetown University. Only Georgetown students are allowed to pitch.
  3. Students must be either part or full-time students in the semester of the competition.
  4. All members of the team pitching in any Georgetown Entrepreneurship Challenge preliminary event must be available to attend the final event.
  5. Participants may not pitch a business that was incorporated prior to April 2019 or has already received funding greater than $50,000.
  6. Students or teams who were awarded a cash prize at the 2019 Georgetown Entrepreneurship Challenge or Bark Tank may not pitch the same business idea in the 2020 Georgetown Entrepreneurship Challenge. Students or teams are eligible to compete again with a different business idea. Students that did not reach the final stage of last year’s competitions may pitch the same business idea this year.
  7. The venture cannot be a wholly owned subsidiary of an existing company or non-profit organization.
  8. Both for-profit and non-profit models are eligible, but the idea must incorporate an income-generating model that will lead to financial sustainability.
  9. Individual participants cannot be a member of more than one team competing in the event.
  10. The StartupHoyas Challenge Planning Committee reserves the right to address any circumstances in which the above rules do not apply.  All decisions will be final.  The Committee also reserves the right to clarify, amend, or change these rules when deemed necessary for fairness.

Confidentiality

  1. Only the StartupHoyas Challenge Planning Committee and the judges assigned to evaluate each team will have access to the team’s written submissions. Judges will be asked to treat all information with complete confidentiality.
  2. Entrants should feel free to mark any material submitted as confidential, and to exclude any information that is considered to be truly proprietary.  As a rule of thumb, participants who believe they have a potential intellectual property concern should seek legal advice before making any public disclosures.
  3. Judges, mentors, staff, legal counsel and any individual attending any public sessions of the competitions will NOT be asked or required to agree to or sign non-disclosure, confidentiality or other similar agreements. Competitors are advised not to disclose any information that they would be uncomfortable seeing in the public domain.
  4. While the preliminary rounds are in front of a small audience, the final presentations will be open to the public.  Any information or data disclosed in these sessions should be considered information that is likely to enter the public domain. Competitors should not assume any right of confidentiality to any information presented or discussed in public sessions. Please be aware that members of the media, potential competitors, and members of the financial community may attend public sessions.
  5. By participating in the competition, competitors agree that the StartupHoyas Challenge assumes no liability for disclosures of information provided by an individual or team as part of a submission or otherwise during the course of the pitch competitions.