RICE Business Plan Competition

The Rice Business Plan Competition is the world’s richest and largest graduate-level student startup competition. It is hosted and organized by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, which is Rice University’s internationally-recognized initiative devoted to the support of entrepreneurship, and the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. This is the 17th year for the competition. In that time, it has grown from nine teams competing for $10,000 in prize money in 2001, to 42 teams from around the world competing for more than $1.5 million in cash and prizes.

• There must be at least one graduate-level student on the team, and the team cannot have passed certain milestones
• Typically, the teams have a technology component in one of three broad sectors: energy and cleantech, life science/biotech, information technology, and technology innovation (for those startups which don’t fit neatly in another category)
• We encourage teams from multiple universities and across degree programs, but do not accept students in post-doc or certificate programs
• Learn more about program requirements
• Apply by Feb. 10
• Competition is April 6-8, 2017