UVEF this month will host the top four winners of the BYU Business Model Competition.

Thursday, February 9 at Novell Building A (Provo), starting at 11:45 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Winners will present an overview of their winning strategies and take questions from the audience about their experience. Winners presenting include:

• AutoBid
• SocialMed
• XoomPark
• ActiveAlarm

Over 85 percent of new businesses fail within a few years, often because they try to plan their way to success. Surprisingly, research suggests that writing a business plan has NO CORRELATION WITH SUCCESS. Go ahead; read that again.

The Business Model Competition represents a radical departure from the standard methodologies of entrepreneurship; the BMC is not a business plan competition.

It's a competition to see who can refine the most successful model.

Participants aren't rewarded for doing lots of library research, drawing fancy graphs, or crafting the perfect sales pitch to venture capitalists. Instead the BMC rewards students for 1) breaking down their idea into the key business model hypotheses, 2) getting outside the building and testing their assumptions with customers, 3) applying Customer Development / Lean Startup principles to make sure they nail the solution, and 4) learning to pivot (or change) until they have a customer-validated business model.

Sound interesting? It does to me!

Please join us on Thursday, February 9th at noon in the Novell Education Center (Provo, Bldg A) to hear what the winners had to show and to ask them questions about their experience.

We look forward to seeing you there!