Pitch Competitions and Business Competitions
The Severino Center helps teams perfect their business plans, models and presentations for entry into local, regional, state and national business plan funding competitions. Rensselaer undergraduates and graduate students have participated and won funding in a variety of student entrepreneurial business competitions. Practice your presentation skills, grow your resume, win prizes.
There are the three “I’s” of innovation and “identification” is the first. Identifying problems worth solving is the first step towards being a change-maker. Before you can fix something, you need to understand the problem. This competition requires you to choose a highly compelling unsolved problem and explain why it has not been solved yet and why it should be solved. NO SOLUTIONS ALLOWED! Check back soon for details on the next competition.
A biannual contest to develop innovative ideas with the potential of changing the world.
The Change the World Challenge provides a unique opportunity for students of all disciplines to form teams and develop ideas into a viable business concept. Round one consists of articulating the problem, conceiving of a solution, and developing a preliminary plan to move it forward. Top ideas are advanced to the Catalyst Incubator Program and I-Corp Program for a focused experience in which students further develop their business ideas, perform customer discovery, and explore solutions to the problem. At the end of the incubation period, the top teams are awarded $1,000 each and become eligible for the Best of the Best prize of $5,000 at the end of the year. Open to all current Rensselaer students. Check back soon for details on the next challenge.
Build a business model canvas around your idea and compete for prizes!
The canvas is a visual chart comprised of nine essential components of a business including value proposition, infrastructure, customers, and finances. In addition to the canvas, the application must include hypotheses for each of the nine elements on the canvas and also include a description of how 3-5 of the hypotheses will be tested.
Applications will be reviewed by a member of the AdVenture Team and teams are invited to attend coaching sessions prior to the competition.
The most competitive applications will be invited to present their business model to an external panel of judges. Judges will provide the teams with feedback for fine-tuning and clarifying their business model and their presentation for future competitions. The judges' scores will determine the winners. Cash and in-kind services are awarded to the most promising teams. Teams are invited to participate in the Catalyst Incubator program. For teams awarded a monetary prize, the money is distributed in increments based on achieved milestones.
Plans can be for a technology-based product, service, process or technique. The submission must be unique to the market.
This competition is open to teams of current RPI undergraduate students, RPI graduate students, and RPI faculty. Teams will compete only against others in their cohort (i.e. undergraduates competing against undergraduates, etc.)
Check back soon for details on our next event.
Founded by Rensselaer alumni, Sinclair Schuller ’04 and Abe Sultan ’04, along with Rakesh Malhotra, Nuvalence empowers its clients with the skills, knowledge, and expertise needed to realize their digital platform and product ambitions.
Nuvalence knows RPI has the best and brightest builders available and wants to engage students across the campus and provide opportunities to develop platform & data-intensive experiences, preparing students to be the type of employees Nuvalence and other high-paying STEM employers need.
Opportunity 1: Hardware and AWS Services Requests
Practical experience is resume gold. That is why Nuvalence is funding freshman and sophomore student requests for hardware and AWS services that will aid them in getting hands-on experience with AI technologies. What kind of project? Any challenging hardware or software project you are working on or have been wanting to do but don’t have the resources to get started.
Rolling applications. [Submit project details and requests here.]
Opportunity 2: Builder Awards
Nuvalence wants to recognize the best builders at RPI with a monetary prize. Think you have what they are looking for? Members of the Nuvalence team will judge all submissions. For undergraduate seniors only.
[Submit project details and requests here.]
HackRPI is Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s annual intercollegiate hackathon hosted by students for students. HackRPI is intended to inspire and challenge innovators, creators, developers, and entrepreneurs. Think you have what it takes to stay awake and meet the challenge? For details visit: https://www.hackrpi.com/
Innovation Awards
Faculty & Student Innovation Awards
Faculty are eligible to compete for Faculty Innovation Awards. These are grants to support technology development by RPI faculty. Awards are given to develop new technologies that have the highest potential for impact on society.