Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Competition
e-Fest® is delivered in partnership with the Schulze School of Entrepreneurship and EIX.org, a non-profit online platform for entrepreneurship education. e-Fest is a three-day event that brings together the top 25 teams from a national pool of online business plan submissions. e-Fest features four competitions, professional development workshops, presentations from prominent business leaders, and a keynote presentation delivered by Richard M. Schulze, the benefactor of e-Fest and the founder and chairman emeritus of Best Buy.
How e-Fest Works
e-Fest and the Schulze Entrepreneurship Challenge kicks off in February with an online round as a panel of entrepreneurs and business professionals select the top 25 student teams to move forward in the competition. Each online submission receives at least two anonymous judging scores, which are computed to determine the Top 25 Finalist teams. Read about the judging criteria.
After this online round, the Top 25 Finalist Teams are invited to compete in person at e-Fest (travel stipends awarded to all finalist teams) at the Schulze School of Entrepreneurship located on the University of St. Thomas campus in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Becoming one of the 25 e-Fest finalist teams is an elite recognition in itself. But wait there’s more! Finalist teams have the chance to network with other top student entrepreneurs from across the nation, attend workshops, promote their businesses to national news outlets, meet Richard M. Schulze, Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Best Buy, and take home a portion of the $215,000 in cash prizes.
As an advisor, I would 100% recommend that my students participate in e-Fest.
The feedback session after the Schulze Entrepreneurship Challenge was extremely useful!
e-Fest was not only fun, but very educational. The workshops were engaging and informative and the keynote speakers were AMAZING!
This event has been absolutely pivotal to my development as an entrepreneur!
