Weber State University is excited to invite your students to participate in its 2nd Annual Outdoor Weber idea pitch competition focused on adventure recreation concepts. The contest allows any qualified University student worldwide to compete for a $45,000 grand prize to help them turn their idea into a real business opportunity. Second and third place are awarded $20,000 and $10,000 respectively.
The entry process is fairly simple and designed to encourage students to simply create a 90-second pitch video explaining their outdoor recreation product or service (examples of our finalists in 2018 found here) and upload to our Outdoor Weber website between January 14, 2019 and January 30, 2019.
· Beginning February 1, 2019, the videos will go live on the Outdoor Weber website for general public voting purposes.
· The public may vote once per day per IP address for their favorite idea(s).
· The 25 videos with the most votes will move on to the semi-final round of judging.
· Ten additional concepts from ten pre-determined regions across the U.S. will also be selected to move to the next round. All in all, 35 concepts will move forward to the semi-final round.
· A panel of semi-final judges will score and select 10 finalists from the 35 who will be invited to the beautiful Ogden, Utah valley to work with a team of mentors to help them refine their business ideas and prepare for their concluding 10-minute presentations to the final judges.
· The final judges will then select the winners of the competition who will be announced at our final awards ceremony on the evening of Friday, March 22, 2019.
Last year, we welcomed Marcus Lemonis, star of CNBC's The Profit to keynote the event and congratulate winners. Many of last year's finalists made connections and even secured contracts with various nationally-recognized outdoor and/or product manufacturing companies. We anticipate even greater corporate involvement this year.
We would love to see your students compete and invite you to share with them and your colleagues.