The 2021 McCloskey New Venture Competition will be held April 29-30.
The George Washington University Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship has ranked Notre Dame’s McCloskey New Venture Competition as the fourth-best university entrepreneurship competition in the U.S., tied with Baylor University. This "Top 20 U.S. University Entrepreneurship Competitions" ranking was recently published in the Times of Entrepreneurship. MIT took first place.
Patti Reinhardt, the director of the McCloskey New Venture Competition and the director of student engagement, competitions and events at the IDEA Center said, "We are very pleased that the McCloskey New Venture Competition is being acknowledged for its outstanding impact on our Notre Dame Community, and thrilled to make our inaugural appearance in the top 5! Collaborations our participating teams encounter during the competition season provide lasting impressions on these fresh new ventures, providing a catalyst for their future success. As a competition we value the prizes and awards that it allows, however it is the educational component and the mentorship provided that really have lasting value."
Thanks to a generous gift from Tom and Bonnie McCloskey, the McCloskey New Venture Competition was founded in 2000 as the McCloskey Business Plan Competition. In this annual competition Notre Dame students, alumni, faculty, staff and members of the South Bend-Elkhart community pitch their ideas for a new product, service or technology. The process begins in September and culminates in April with a large final pitch event where over $400,000 in cash and in-kind prizes are awarded to winning teams. In its 20-year history, over 2,000 teams and 7,000 participants have pitched their ideas to more than 3,000 judges and mentors
Visit the Times of Entrepreneurship's website to view the full rankings list as well as its accompanying article.
Originally published by at ideacenter.nd.edu on December 15, 2020.