The deadline for the Duke Start-Up Challenge: Executive Summary Competition closed last Thursday, February 10th. We had 110 different student teams enter, which we consider to be a pretty successful turnout.
Below are the statistics for the student competition are below:
| Functional Track | Spring 2011 | Spring 2010 | |
| Energy & Environment | 10 | 11 | |
| Health Care & Life Sciences | 15 | 19 | |
| IT & Media | 30 | 27 | |
| Products & Services | 34 | 27 | |
| Social Enterprise | 21 | 25 | |
| Total | 110 | 109 | |
| Special Interest Tracks | |||
| Undergraduate Led (Special Int | 43 | 41 | |
| Women Led (Special Interest Tr | 27 | 29 | |
| Total | 70 | 70 | |
| School (Team Lead) | Spring 2011 | ||
| Pratt | 46 | ||
| Trinity | 29 | ||
| Fuqua | 17 | ||
| Law | 7 | ||
| Graduate School | 4 | ||
| Nicholas School | 2 | ||
| Sanford | 2 | ||
| Graduate School, Fuqua (PhD) | 1 | ||
| Pratt and Trinity | 1 | ||
| School of Medicine / DCI | 1 | ||
| Sum | 110 | ||
In addition, we hosted our first annual "Alumni Track" (hosted by DukeGEN), inviting alumni startup teams to submit their entries for feedback (but not compete for the prize money). We had 50 entries (!) in our first year, and were pleased with that amount of participation. More info here: http://www.dukegen.com/alumni-track
Other updates:
- Grand Prize money has been increased from $25,000 to $50,000 (thanks to Rich Lee, former CEO of Hosted Solutions)
- $10,000 Track prizes for Undergrad-led, Women-led, and Products & Services (misc) prizes.
- Our Finals judges will be:
- Melissa Bernstein '87, Co-founder/Co-Owner of Melissa & Doug
- Bill Geary, Partner at North Bridge
- Jack Egan, Egan-Managed Capital (2nd year of judging the Finals))
- Geoff Kanter '89, Managing Director, MK Media Ventures
- Rich Lee, Former CEO of Hosted Solutions
- Karen LeVert, CEO of Southeast TechInventures
- Tom McMurray '76 '78 '80, Marine Ventures Foundation
- J.B. Pritzker '87 will be our keynote speaker at the Grand Finale on Friday April 8th
Thanks for your support.
Howie Rhee
Advisor to the Duke Start-Up Challenge
