Students from Northern California universities and community colleges, including Sacramento State, will compete for cash prizes in the Future Four & More business entrepreneurship competition Friday.

The competition will be held in the Carlsen Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship located on the first floor of Sac State’s University Library as part of the Entrepreneurship Day Conference. Registration for the event starts at 9:45 a.m. with keynote speakers, a community pitch competition at 1 p.m. and the Future Four & More competition at 3 p.m.

This day-long event puts students up against each other for cash and in-kind prizes to help launch their businesses.

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Four-year universities participating this year are Sac State, Humboldt State and Chico State. Other colleges competing including Butte College, Sierra College and all community colleges in the Los Rios Community College District.

According to Katherine Cota, executive director of the Carlsen Center, contestants from those six different schools, maximum of two per school, will be competing in the Future Four & More competition.

Keynote speakers are the winners of this year’s the Social Venture Partners Fast Pitch competition and Kings Capitalize startup contest.

Set up similarly to the television series “Shark Tank,” each team presents their business concepts to a panel of judges, which must include the problem being solved, the product or service description, the value proposition, target market, business model, financial viability, and scaling.

Each team is awarded points based on a criteria rubric from the judges recruited by the competition organizers. First place gets $5,000 and second gets $3,000, with additional prizes being $1,000 for most sustainable business and $1,000 for a people’s choice award.

“Many of these are actually students that are in a class working on this,” said Cota. “But in many cases, it’s just a student who’s got a business, that’s been working on their business idea and are interested in pitching and being a part of this.”

The community pitch competition will be hosted by StartupSac, a nonprofit designed to promote entrepreneurship in the Sacramento region, in collaboration with the Carlsen Center. StartupSac CEO, President and co-founder Jeff Bennett said he kept hearing from investors that Sacramento entrepreneurs aren’t as polished when presenting their ideas compared to entrepreneurs in the Bay Area.

“Investors want to see that you have a product that’s already built and working and has customers. Typically, they want you to be making a significant revenue,” Bennet said. “If not, they’ll look very closely at your team, business model. If all things look good and you show the potential for making revenue, they may not invest in you yet but will reach out which gives you the ability to make connections with them in the future.”

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