Addressing the world’s critical challenges with radical innovations
There are many established business plan competitions. What differentiates the Draper Competition is its express focus on data science as a means to create business value and broader economic and social impacts. Venture teams will notice this focus in the application. For example, teams have to provide a description of the data science methods and technologies that they are using and phases of the data lifecycle in scope of their solutions. For the purpose of this competition, we define data science as
A field that advances or applies computing, mathematical or statistical methods and technologies in synergy with domain expertise and big data sets to solve unmet problems.
Key Dates
January 27, 2023
Applications Due
February 24, 2023
UTSA announces invited teams
April 21, 2023
UTSA hosts competition
Information Sessions
To learn more about the Draper Competition, register to attend one of these online information sessions:
| 1st Session | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Date | Time | Registration | |
| December 15, 2021 | 2 p.m. CST | Register Here | |
| 2nd Session | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Date | Time | Registration | |
| January 18, 2022 | 2 p.m. CST | Register Here | |
Eligibility
- Open to all students—undergraduate or graduate—currently enrolled in two- or four-year colleges or universities in the US and around the world.
- Each team (minimum of 2 and no more than 5 members) must provide faculty or staff advisor contact information on the application.
- The designated Team Leader will serve as the point of contact for venture.
- Faculty or staff advisors may be asked to confirm the eligibility of the team.
- All ventures must be “new”, for-profit, independent ventures in the seed, start-up or early growth stages.
- Ventures must be wholly owned by the team (i.e., investor-funded ventures will be disqualified).
- Ventures need to have a sustainable revenue model. Traditional non-profits, where fundraising is the only or main source of revenue, are not eligible to compete.
- All ventures must currently be seeking outside equity and/or non-equity capital, typically early-stage venture capital investment or early-stage angel investment (in the form of equity, convertible debt, etc.)
- Ventures may have raised SOME level of equity funding AFTER July 1, 2021 or generated at any level of revenues AFTER July 1, 2021 (i.e., within the current academic year) --equity funding awarded as part of an accelerator/incubator program does count toward funding limits. Research and other grants, competitions winning's traditional loads, and any friends and family funding do NOT count toward the funding limit.
- Ventures that have RAISED and CLOSED more than $250,000 in EQUITY capital prior to July 1, 2021 are not eligible to compete. Also, ventures with more than $100,000 in annual revenues (in any individual 12-month period) prior to July 1, 2021 (such as July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021) are not eligible to compete.
For complete information on eligibility, application process, travel, competition deliverables and more, please refer to the Participant Handbook [pdf] (revised 1/28/2022).
