The purpose of the competition is to encourage a culture of enterprise at Downing by giving you an opportunity to experience a little of what setting up and running a business is all about. The Competition is designed in such a way that it mirrors the stages that you might have to go through if you were setting up a business by yourself. However, by involving alumni who have substantial experience of the world of enterprise and commerce, we can provide a support structure that will guide you through each stage of the process.

The full details of the Competition are contained in the Rules and Procedures; however, the key features are as follows:

A group of alumni have each invested £10,000 to create a fund to finance the Competition. They plus the Bursar and the Senior Tutor will form the ‘Board’ and will be the judges. The Development Office provides administrative support.

The competition is open to all students and recent alumni and you can enter as individuals or as teams. Students of other Colleges can join in but the there must be a strong Downing element.

The Competition will take place in three broad phases:

1. Proposals: you will be invited to submit business proposals (not business plans) on no more than four sides of A4 to be submitted no later than the last day of Michaelmas NPR (5.30pm, Saturday, 10 December 2005). These are your ideas with an explanation of why you think they might work.
    
2. Business Plans: the Judges will select the best proposals and give grants of £500 maximum to the shorlisted entries to go away and produce a proper Business Plan. These must be submitted by the last day of Easter vacation (5.30pm, Monday, 24 April 2006). Each team will present their plans to the Judges.
    
3. Winner: A winner will be selected and given a maximum grant of £20,000 to implement the idea over twelve months starting after exams in June 2006. The team will have to report to the board periodically and to provide progress reports at regular intervals. At the end of that period an assessment will be made of the success or failure of the business.

The object of the competition is to successfully set up a business and get it to generate a profit. However, running a business is not easy and many start-ups fail for a variety of reasons so, since our purpose is to encourage you into business rather than discourage you, we don’t expect you to repay any losses that you might make but we will allow you to keep half of any profits that are generated.

The period of running the business is limited to twelve months but that does not mean that if it’s successful you can’t carry it on independently through financing from other sources. Members of the Board will be happy to give you advice in this respect.

So if this ignites your enthusiasm then have a good careful look at the Rules and Procedures and start preparing your business ideas.