Do not hesitate to contact us with any questions by email at [email protected].
Please click through our FAQs below to learn more about the details of the competition. If we don’t answer your question below, please don’t hesitate to email us at [email protected].
For Judges and Mentors
For Competitors
- a current part-time, full-time, or postdoctoral student at any of the nine divisions of Johns Hopkins University during the current academic year.
- a member of the venture’s startup management team. As long as at least one member of the team meets both of these requirements, additional individuals not affiliated with Johns Hopkins can participate.
Absolutely! However, teams are prohibited from submitting a venture that won 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place in a previous competition.
Yes.
Mentors will provide feedback through Liveplan, a business plan development platform, in Stage 1 of the competition. HopStart staff will also review Stage 1 submissions to determine whether each team has sufficiently completed all sections of its business plan. All teams will be notified of their eligibility to compete in Stage 2 (Competition Day) in early April. On Competition Day, teams will pitch their ventures in 3-minute presentations live to judges, who will rate teams using this rubric, then convene to select finalists in each category. In Round 2, judges will evaluate finalists’ live presentations using this rubric. These rubrics are meant to provide general guidance to judges during deliberations. Winners are selected based on a combination of rubric scores and discussion at the conclusion of the presentations.