5x5 Pitching Competition

Give students a real audience, and real pressure, for an idea they own.

The format is deliberately tight: five slides, five minutes, then questions. Teams pitch either a startup idea or a proposal to change something inside a company, and a panel of entrepreneurs, venture investors, corporate leaders, and MBA mentors responds with the kind of direct feedback that is hard to find anywhere else in a programme. It runs beyond the MBA, with students from MAcc, MFin, and MRE welcome. Expect a working session rather than a gala, with networking around the presentations so teams can keep talking to the judges and to each other. The strongest teams carry on over dinner with the judges afterward, pitching further in a smaller room. Whether or not an idea goes further, shaping it to five minutes and defending it out loud is the point. Judges are being confirmed.