BiD Student Challenge 2010
Amsterdam Bright City

The BiD Student Challenge is a competition for business oriented students run this year for the second time. In time period of 7 weeks, approximately 100 students will review and improve 30 business plans of entrepreneur’s from developing countries. The main objective is students to apply their ambition and expertise in practice to stimulate local private sector development. Teams of 3-4 business-oriented students will work directly with entrepreneurs from Africa, Latin America or Asia.

The kick-off of the project will take place at Amsterdam Bright City on 19th of October, 2010. During the period of 7 weeks, student teams will be guided by ABN AMRO and E&Y coaches. They will help the students to review and provide improvements to entrepreneur’s business plans in order to present these successfully to financial investors.

The final event is scheduled to take place at the Grand Café of Amsterdam Bright City on 2nd of December. The jury consisting of 6 members on the finals will select the top five teams that provided the strongest impact on entrepreneurs business plans. The jury will decide who the winner is after each of the last 5 teams gave a presentation.

In search for partners

Currently we are searching for interested parties willing to join us as partners that will provide input in different areas.
The topic of this project is Sustainability and Business in Development in emerging markets where we have 30 business plans from entrepreneurs from developing countries on the subject of ICT and Agribusiness.
In order organizing this project, we are looking for companies that will be engaged as sponsors and will present their actions in emerging markets and how they provide help to entrepreneurs to implement their ideas.

Benefit

Every partner that provides input on the project gets promotional benefit from two sides. First, from the student networks via which the students will be approached and second, this promotion spreads to the developing countries where the entrepreneurs with their business plans come from.
With your participation, not only HBO and university students in the Netherlands will be highly motivated to participate and give an extra effort on this project, but also the word will go to the emerging markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America and entrepreneurs will know to whom they can rely in advancing their businesses.

Contact
Ivan Minev from Amsterdam Bright City is your contact person for the BiD Student Challenge. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact him via ivan.minev@amsterdambrightcity.nl.

BiD Student challenge 2009
33 teams improved 33 business plans. Students coming from all over the Netherlands worked for period of 6 weeks, where they prepared a business plan review, answered 2 additional questions for the entrepreneur and prepared a pitch. The best teams won an Internship price at KPMG.
The feedback from the students was that organizationally although for the first time it was perfectly set, communication was good and the competition itself was quite a challenge and offered a lot of knowledge and pro activity.
All of the students appreciated the challenge given to work for entrepreneurs coming from Kenya, Columbia and help them accomplish their dreams. Also the knowledge sharing and the research done by students concerning those emerging markets was a point plus for every participant for his personal development.

Entrepreneurial citations:
The following citations are from last year’s entrepreneurs expressing their opinion of the effort of every student participant in the 2009 competition:
- They showed me how I can sell myself uniquely to the investor;
- The students dissected the BP in detail and reading their criticism I have faith in their recommendations;
- I believe the students are young and full of ideas, I am therefore glad to include some of their ideas to improve my plan;
- I will adjust certain sections of my business plan immediately by engaging a consultant in that field;
- The recommendations were very clear and practical. We were truly impressed with the feedback. Thank you for your help;
- I have already applied the student’s recommendations;

Last year ABN Amro and KPMG and VU provided coaches that guided the students throughout the competition. This year ABN AMRO is again involved, E&Y is here and VU Connected.
The organization of the competition is by Amsterdam Bright City, Move Your World and BiD Network.