Reno County Entrepreneurship Competition Excels in Virtual Format

Students present to judges via Zoom during the virtual Reno County Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge on November 23, 2020.

With health concerns heating up, many in-person events are at-risk. Dave Dukart and Jackson Swearer of Startup Hutch in Hutchinson, Kansas, made the decision early to pivot the Reno County Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge competition from its traditional in-person format to a virtual one so there would be no chance of having to cancel. Incidentally, this event boasted record participation, with 45 students from Hutchinson, Buhler, and Haven High Schools pitching 23 business ideas. Dave Dukart shares how StartUp Hutch implemented a successful virtual entrepreneurship competition: 

Why did you decide to host a virtual event?  Because it was the right thing to do. We had no idea what the virus was going to do, so we made the decision to go virtual at the start. At the time of the event, our schools are on a hybrid program or all virtual learning. Field trips have been canceled. 

How did your virtual event go?  We used Zoom for the contest. Entrepreneurs turned in their Executive Summaries and Presentations on VentureDash. We did the Elevator Pitch live on Zoom followed by questions from the judges. We divided the judges into two groups. The same judges watched the Presentations ahead of time, then the Elevator Pitch with questions for each business they judged. The executive summaries were judged by a different group of judges. Results were released the following week on Facebook along with a video of the winning presentation. 

How did VentureDash help make your event successful?  Judging was simple and real time. Down-loading competition elements beforehand gave the judges the opportunity to judge them ahead of time. It also provided time for the judges to compose relevant questions.

What VentureDash features did you like? Access 24 hours / day.

What advice do you have to others wanting to host a virtual event?  One of the hardest parts of a virtual event was making sure technology worked. I would suggest a dry run. It gave us confidence that the technology was going to work. I would suggest that the host have access to all the screens that students, teachers, and judges will see. We did a lot of screen sharing.  

What was the best part about this being virtual?  We probably would have had to cancel or scramble to make it virtual. It also provided a safety net for students, teachers, and judges.

The goal of the competition is to expose Kansas middle and high school students to entrepreneurship and give them a hands-on experience. The students’ work is judged by local entrepreneurs, public sector partners, and teachers. This is Reno County’s fifth time to host the competition and this year boasted a record number of participants.

“We know with the challenges of this school year teachers are looking for opportunities to engage their students in a virtual setting. I think it played to our favor this year as we set a record for most teams and individual participants,” said Dave Dukart, StartUp Hutch program administrator. “We always have a lot of fun getting to hear from Reno County’s budding entrepreneurs.”