The Entrepreneurship & Venture Capital program (formerly the Venture Fund) is excited to announce our Spring 2023 Business Plan Competition. Any current student or recent NYU Law graduate (Classes of 2020, 2021, and 2022) with an interest in entrepreneurship is invited to participate—regardless of their experience level.
We are looking for participants to submit a one to two minute video presentation or written pitch explaining their business idea focused on “Tech Innovation” – think artificial intelligence, legal tech, fintech, cybersecurity, or any other tech field of your interest – feel free to get creative! Business ideas should aim to develop innovative solutions.
Your video or written submission should explain the problem you are solving, what your solution is and how that solution works. You don’t have to be working on a startup to enter the competition. The goal here is to identify creative solutions to timely issues we face as a society today and get some practice around pitching that idea to a panel of entrepreneurs and VCs.
The deadline to submit is Friday, March 24 at 11:59 p.m. EST. All participants must either be a current NYU Law student or NYU Law alumnus/a in the Class of 2020, 2021, or 2022. Both individual and team submissions are allowed. Finalists will be invited to pitch their business plan live on Zoom to the panel of judges, and the winner of each group will be awarded a $1,500 cash prize.
The following criteria will be used to judge the video submissions and live pitches:
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Submission (clarity of pitch; coherent and organized deck)
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Concept (relevant concept; creative and unique idea)
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Scalability (practical usability; growth potential)
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Complexity (complexity of the idea; market reach)
$1,500 in cash will be awarded to the Grand Prize Winner of each group (students and/or recent alumni).
Panel of judges:
Sima Gandhi ’07 LLM ’09 – CEO & Co-Founder, Creative Juice
Sima is the Co-Founder and CEO of Creative Juice, the banking and financing platform for creators. Sima is also an active angel investor and advisor, focused particularly on financial services and healthcare companies. Prior to founding Creative Juice, Sima joined fintech
company Plaid as the 15th employee and the first business executive. Earlier in her career, Sima led co-brand business development and consumer lending strategyfor American Express, where she launched the Bluebird product with Walmart, drove Amex’s financial inclusion approach, and led strategy for new lending products. Prior to Amex, she oversaw the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and managed White House/regulatory relationships at the US Treasury Department. She also led tax policy initiatives for the Center for American Progress and started her career as a corporate tax attorney at Simpson Thacher. Sima graduated from Stanford University with a BS in engineering and a BA with honors in Science, Tech, and Society. She also holds a JD and LLM in tax law from New York University.
Missy Tidwell ’03 - Global General Counsel (EdTech), Prosus Group
Melissa is Global General Counsel (EdTech) at the Prosus Group. Previously, she was General Counsel at Reddit, advising on a variety of legal and business matters and managing the company’s core legal functions. Prior to Reddit, Melissa was Senior Counsel at Google advising the Product, Engineering, Business Development and Sales teams on a wide variety of Google products. She started her legal practice at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York, before moving to Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco. Melissa earned her J.D. from New York University School of Law and a B.A in American Studies from Georgetown University.
Joy Marcus ’86 – Co-Founder, The 98
Joy Marcus brings over 20 years’ experience operating digital content businesses and leading them to successful exits as well as investment experience identifying and investing in trend-setting businesses. Joy is a full faculty member at Princeton University, where she teaches the foundational course on entrepreneurship in the School of Engineering and Applied Science and has served as a James Wei Visiting Professor. She is also a Venture Fellow at Jerusalem Venture Partners. Joy has decades of experience identifying, operating, scaling and selling venture businesses. She has held C-suite positions in large companies (AOL, Time Warner, Conde Nast) and in start-up and digital ventures (including as CEO of venture-backed Bloglovin). In those roles, she led both business and technology teams, grew businesses to scale (BarnesandNoble.com IPO), bought and sold businesses (Dailymotion to France Telecom) and launched business units (MTV International). Joy was also an M&A lawyer at Debevoise & Plimpton. Joy sits on the boards of NASDAQ-listed Perion, an ad tech leader, and Qwire, a strategic leader in music technology as well as non- profits the New York Tech Alliance and Video Consortium. She is a graduate of the NYU School of Law and Princeton University.
Jerome Fogel ’04 – Co-Founder, Fogel & Potamianos LLP
Jerome is the co-founder of Fogel & Potamianos LLP. He is known as a dealmaker and innovator in the legal community. He represents successful entrepreneurs, corporations, and sports and entertainment stars. Jerome’s legal expertise includes (but is not limited to) corporate contracts, sports and entertainment, buy & sell side of M&A, fund formation & startups. Jerome was selected to the SuperLawyers® Rising Stars for 2020 and 2021 and is passionate about writing, leadership development, spiritual theology, and golf.
Questions? Contact us at law.evc@nyu.edu.