Description

The Digital Venture Challenge (DVC) is an annual new venture competition open to Duke students working on software-oriented new ventures across industries.  The program is hosted by the Pratt School of Engineering’s Institute for Enterprise Engineering and is open to all members of the Duke University student community, including undergraduates, master's and PhD students from all schools across Duke.  The DVC kicks off in September and concludes with a public Demo Day in February.

 

Objectives

  1. To provide a hands-on experiential learning opportunity for Duke students in building new-to-the-world software products and sustainable businesses around them
  2. To foster a climate of entrepreneurship among Duke students and encourage students to consider technical entrepreneurship as a career pathway

 

Eligibility

Participation in the competition is limited to teams meeting the following criteria:

  • The competition will be open to enrolled Duke students at any level (undergrad through PhD) and any school/department.  Team members must be enrolled students at Duke as of the start date (Sep 2022) of the DVC.  Team members do NOT need to be enrolled for the entire duration of the DVC (e.g. a team member who is graduating in Dec 2022 is eligible).
  • Each team may have a maximum of one non-Duke-student member on their team.  Note however that a non-Duke-student member of the team is not eligible to receive a share of the prize money
  • Teams may consist of a minimum of one student and a maximum of eight students.
  • Any winning teams that are selected to advance to Microsoft's Imagine Cup will become subject to the eligibility and project requirements outlined in the 2023 Imagine Cup Official Rules before being awarded formal advancement into the World Final
  • Teams must be building a software-oriented new venture, where the primary product is an enterprise or consumer software application (including mobile apps and APIs).  Service businesses and hardware business (where the primary focus is hardware not software) are not eligible.  
  • Teams can be working on software ventures in any field, including but not limited to: healthcare, energy, consumer tech, education, transportation, enterprise systems, finance, etc.
  • Teams must have formed or plan to form a for-profit or non-profit organization around their product which is financially self-sustaining (e.g. funded through profits generated by the product/service rather than donations)
  • Teams must have current annual revenue less than $50k and have received cumulative prior equity or debt funding of no more than $50k from external sources to be eligible for the DVC
  • Participants who promote illegal, illicit, unethical, immoral, or activities which may be considered unworthy of association with Duke University may be disqualified

 

Categories

Teams must be developing software which addresses a problem in one of the following categories to be eligible for participation:

  • Sustainability: solutions for climate change, agriculture and in green tech
  • Education: innovation to change the way people around the world learn
  • Health & Wellness: tackle issues in diagnosis and treatment, healthcare accessibility, personal wellness and fitness, etc.
  • Lifestyle: projects that shape how we play, work and live (including retail, travel, personal finance, etc)

If you are unsure whether your project falls within one of the above categories, please contact the faculty advisor Jon Reifschneider at jjr10@duke.edu.

 

Why Participate

Participating students will have a unique opportunity to gain hands-on learning in the process of designing and building a product to solve a real-world problem and developing a plan to create a sustainably profitable business around it.  We hope that many teams continue on after the competition to bring their product to market and launch new startup ventures.

In addition to the prizes for competition winners (see below), all participants will receive the following benefits:

  • The opportunity to get their venture in front of the judging panel of investors, entrepreneurs and industry executives
  • Free cloud credits for DVC teams from our partner Amazon Web Services to use for building and hosting your product
  • Opportunities to participate in educational training sessions in building software businesses throughout the competition

 

Prizes

The top 3 finishers in both the Round 1 competition and Round 2 competition will be recognized with a trophy during the awards ceremony.  The winner of Round 2 will be recognized as the grand prize winner of the Digital Venture Challenge.  The winning team will receive the following:

  • A $3000 cash prize to fund continued development of the new venture (note that only team members who are active Duke students at time of award are eligible to receive a share of the cash prize) 
  • An automatic entry as one of 16 teams into the Americas Regional Final of the Microsoft Imagine Cup through our partnership with Microsoft*. The winner of the Imagine Cup competition receives a $100,000 cash prize, $50,000 in Azure credits, and mentorship from the CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella. Any winning teams that are selected to advance to Imagine Cup will become subject to the eligibility and project requirements outlined in the 2023 Imagine Cup Official Rules before being awarded formal advancement into the World Final

* To qualify for the automatic finals spot in the Imagine Cup, the winning team must use Microsoft Azure technology within their product or service and meet all eligibility requirements in the 2023 Imagine Cup Official Rules.  If the winning team does not meet this requirement, the second (and then third) place team will be eligible to receive the spot

 

Judging

Judging in Round 1 and 2 will be done by a panel of industry judges which includes entrepreneurs, successful software executives, and investors.

 

Evaluation Criteria

Teams will be evaluated in Round 2 on the following aspects of their venture:

  • Clearly identified problem and uniqueness of proposed solution
  • Clear business model and path to sustainable profitability
  • Market potential + clearly identified target market
  • Quality of prototype product / demo
  • Initial user traction
  • Team quality