Eligibility Rules

The Spirit of the Competition

The Lunar Ventures competition purports to stimulate and nourish the Entrepreneurial Spirit in graduate students in business, engineering and the sciences. In particular, this competition seeks to encourage entrepreneurially oriented graduate students to create and develop new ventures related to space exploration and commercialization based either on their own ideas and technologies or those developed by others, including faculty members at their respective colleges and universities. The competition also seeks to provide the participating graduate students with forums in which they develop skill in pitching their ventures to investors and receive constructive feedback for increasing the probability of successfully launching their ventures. Finally, each year the Lunar Ventures competition will provide the "best" ventures with advice, contacts and resources to assist the "winning" student team in launching its venture.

To provide a relatively level "playing field" for student teams, the following set of rules have been developed and all participating teams are expected to satisfy them. At the same time, we recognize that no set of rules, no matter how thorough or carefully developed can ever cover all circumstances. Accordingly, all teams and the universities that they represent are expected to abide by the specific rules enumerated below as well as the overall spirit of the competition. We reserve the right to disqualify any team that violates the rules, regulations or the spirit of the competition.

Venture and Team Eligibility Rules

Student Involvement. The competition is for student created, managed, and owned ventures. In other words, students must (1) have played a major role in conceiving the venture, (2) have key management roles in the venture, and (3) own significant equity in the venture. In general, a member of the student team should be CEO, COO, or President of the venture, or members of the student team should occupy 50% or more of the functional area management positions that report directly to the CEO, COO, or President. Members of the student team should also own 50% or more of the equity allocated to the management team and key advisors. An equity position of less than 50% of the equity allocated to the management team and key advisers, and/or less than 20% of the total equity of the venture will be suspect and require the students to show evidence that they were a major cause in the venture creation. One objective of this rule is to exclude ventures formed and managed by non-students who have given token equity to students for writing their business plan.

Team Composition. This is a competition for graduate students, and at least one graduate student must be a member of the venture's startup management team. A team with a few undergraduates will be allowed to compete, and the undergraduates may participate fully. All graduate students, not just MBA candidates, are eligible to participate in the competition. This includes executive MBAs. Non-students may be members of the venture's management team and may participate in planning the venture. However, only students may participate in the competition. In other words, only students may present the plan and answer questions from the competition judges. The maximum number of students on a competition team is five (5); although there is no restriction on the total size of the venture's founding team.

Student Enrollment. The competition is for students enrolled in the current academic year. Students who graduated in the preceding academic year are not eligible to participate.

Nature of Ventures. The competition is for new, independent ventures in the seed, start-up, or early growth stages. Generally excluded are the following: buy-outs, expansions of existing companies, and spin-outs from existing corporations. Licensing technologies from universities or research labs is not excluded and is encouraged assuming they have not been commercialized previously.

Prior Activity. Ventures may compete only once in a Lunar Ventures competition. Ventures that have raised equity capital from sources other than the members of the student team before the current academic year are excluded. Ventures that have legally set up a venture identity or have undertaken any other formal startup activities prior to the current academic year are excluded. However, both student and other team members may have worked on an idea or new technology in previous academic years or, in the case of the student team members, even prior to entering graduate school; provided that their venture (a) had no revenues, (b) raised no outside equity capital, and/or (c) did not undertake any other formal startup activities prior to the current academic year.

University Sponsored. The business plan must be prepared under faculty supervision. Ideally, the business plan will be prepared for credit in a regularly scheduled course or as an independent study. The business plan must represent the original work of members of the team. All universities with participating teams are strongly encouraged to send faculty or other university advisors to the team to the Lunar Ventures competition.