Pitch Competition: Scenarios for Smart Lockers

Building your Team

• Team Formation: Only teams (not individuals) are eligible to participate in this competition. Teams should comprise individuals with expertise from various domains such as Management, Marketing, Operations, Computing, or others.
• Team Lead Designation: Each team must designate a Team Lead who will serve as the primary point of contact for all communications to and from the team. The Team Lead would be required to complete the registration form on behalf of their team.
• Entrepreneurship Requirement: The Team Lead must be taking or have completed an entrepreneurship course at Bentley University, or participated in an entrepreneurship bootcamp at Bentley University.
• Team Size: There is no strict limit on the number of individuals allowed in a team, but it is recommended that teams consist of 3 to 4 members for optimal collaboration.
• Eligibility: Teams may include undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff, alumni, members of the Waltham community, and other interested individuals. However, the designated Team Lead must be a current Bentley University student, undergraduate, or graduate.
• Team Formation Platform: To find team members or opportunities to join a team, please use the following platform.

Brainstorming Ideas

• Harbor Locker has suggested several use cases that you may use to look for inspiration. Many entrepreneurs look for inspiration in the problems they have faced themselves. 
• To come up with a good idea, resist the temptation to fix your efforts on the first idea that is floated. A team that contains individuals from different backgrounds and expertise generally does well. 
• Consider the use of brainstorming tools to develop your ideas. Here is a list of software tools.
• Talk to potential customers (which may be other members of the Bentley community) to vet your ideas and add more details to your ideas.

Developing your Idea

It is recommended that you develop your idea well. This includes, at minimum, the following: 

• Developing personas that indicate the potential market segment.
• Developing complete scenarios that show how the personas will interact with the proposed app.
• Assessing the potential for the idea, such as a) identifying the market segment b) assessing scale of market segment, and c) assessing whether the idea can be monetized.

Building your Pitch Deck

• See this article about the fundamental components of a pitch deck.
• There are a very large set of resources online that you can search for about building a pitch deck.

Submitting your Pitch Deck

• Create a pitch deck that describes your idea, potential, and feasibility (recommended number of slides:10; maximum:15)
• Upload the PDF version of the pitch deck by November 1, here: Your Pitch 

What to Expect

• The teams will present to a panel of judges on November 6. 
• The winning team will get the opportunity for a discussion to develop the idea with Harbor Locker.
• The winning team may move to the next round with additional seed funding and mentorship to develop the idea.

Will Harbor Locker make available the platform for the student teams to explore feasibility?

• Yes, Harbor Locker will provide free access to the platform for development of the idea so the student team may explore feasibility of what they are developing.  

Who owns the IP (intellectual property) generated through this competition? 

• The ideas being generated may be discussed with Harbor Locker. If the team pursues the ideas towards development and implementation, they may work with Harbor Locker to further develop the idea with seed funding for the next round.

If I do not win the competition, am I allowed to continue developing the idea independently?

• Yes!

If I do win the competition, am I allowed to stop there and not pursue the next round?

• Yes!