The MindTrek Launchpad jurors will choose the winner according to the criteria listed below.

The preliminary jury will choose the finalists and ensure that the products, services or demos are functioning as described. In some cases, the preliminary jury may explore the potential finalists’ financial eligibility for Tekes and/or Finnvera funding (however, funding eligibility is not a mandatory criteria).

The final jury will focus more on the pitching presentation – simulating the real world situation: you must be able to sell your ideas and impress the right people in a minute. Six minutes is plenty of time for pitching!

All jury decisions are final.

Judging criteria:

• The vision and the mission
• Originality and creativity
• Design, usability, and functionality
• Business and earning model
• Competitive advantage relative to current and evolving set of competitors
• Market potential
• Market entry
• Likelihood of long-term success and scalability
• Team composition, commitment and competence
• Achievements to-date (contracts, customers, partnerships, references, product & quality certifications, patents, copyrights...)
• The presentation

A couple of questions you might want to address in a pitch:

• Which problem does your product or service solve, which need does it fill?
• What wave are you riding? What trend gives you the boost?
• Why is it better than any other existing solution?
• Why are your customers buying and recommending your product? What makes it desirable?
• How big is your market?
• How do you plan to make money?
• How exactly are you going to reach your customers?
• Who are your competitors?
• Why couldn’t other (some of them big) companies do it?
• How many users do you have? Customers? Partners? 
• What are your qualifications to make it a success?
• Do you need to hire someone?
• What are your dreams as an entrepreneur? How are you willing to grow? – Into how big a company, how profitable, how many employees by the year X?
• How much funding do you need? Why?