Alerding Castor Hewitt

A few years back, sometime in the mid 1990’s, while an undergraduate business student at Purdue University, a fellow classmate and I entered the Burton Morgan Entrepreneurship Competition.  We were the only undergraduate students chosen as top 10 finalists in the event – an accomplishment for which I am still quite proud. 

I remember the program as being challenging, informative and humbling.  Following rounds of having our business plan reviewed and commented on by professors, we presented to a panel of judges which was made by business owners, private equity investors, and professors.  The judges did not hold back on us.  They told us exactly where our business model issues were.  Most of the issues related to assumptions and implications underlying our financial projections and other business model variables that we had not taken into account.

I remember as a 21 year old being embarrassed by some of the points that we had not addressed in our plan, but the judges’ comments were not degrading – they were taken as a challenge and learning experience.  We did not make the top 5, but the experience was invaluable.

It is amazing that I use these same comments today as a business law / funding law attorney with my business law clients.  I review somewhere in the range of 75 to 100 business plans a year - either for clients seeking private equity or venture capital funding, for due diligence for clients looking to make investments, or for clients creating operational plans to launch out in their own venture.  It is interesting how many of these plans fail to address financial assumptions and implications and business model variables.

Today I am closely connected to two of my three alma maters – Krannert School at Purdue and Butler College of Business where I did my MBA.  Both schools have great entrepreneurship programs.  Last month I guest lectured at Purdue’s entrepreneurship capstone course.  Next month I am serving as a judge in their elevator pitch competition.  I also stay tightly tied in with Butler and have worked on business or private equity deals with certain professors at the MBA program.

This week Purdue announced their top 10 finalists for the Burton Morgan Business Plan Competition.  Our friends at Inside Indiana Business wrote a nice summary of the finalists.  Check out the article.