Before the Accelerator there was the School of Hard Knocks, often followed by business school. Before the Lean Startup there was the Business Plan. Before the LAUNCH Festival, Disrupt and Shark Tank, there was the Business Plan Competition. Generally accessible only to MBA students, the university business plan competition circuit allows today's student startups to take advantage of non-dilutive capital, company-showcasing practice and no-strings feedback to validate their - usually research-backed - fledgling businesses. For instance, Rice University Business Plan Competition teams have raised over $1.8 billion in capital and exit dollars ($233+ million last year). See: http://www.ricebusinessplancompetition.com/pdf/201.... Amidst a wide landscape of startup catalysts, the business plan competition stands out as a consistent yet overlooked platform for sourcing IP-rich, professionally led companies supported by the premier educational institutions in the world. SIVI (Student Innovation Venture Incubator) is the syndicate to make world-class university business plan competitions investable to angels everywhere.
SIVI will syndicate all of its deals that will be hand-picked from the best of the best of current and past university Business Plan Competitions, with a focus on team, traction and technology. We have special access to deal-flow as lead investor Nicholas Seet won the Rice University Business Plan Competition in 2005, winning over $1MM in prizes and investments, and grew his company Auditude to become one of the world's largest video-ad servers before exiting to Adobe Corporation in 2005.