Creating Real Entrepreneurial Actions Through Education (C.R.E.A.T.E.) is the University of Tampa's business idea competition — open to every student, in every major, in every college.
Contact
If you have any questions, please reach out to Josh Ray, lecturer I and new venture advisor, at joshuaray@ut.edu.
All you need is an idea.
You do not need a business plan. You do not need a prototype, a logo, a website or a co-founder. You do not need a single dollar in sales — this year, we don't want them. C.R.E.A.T.E. is for ideas only.
What you need is an idea and 90 seconds.
Pitch on Sept. 24 at 3 p.m. Twenty ideas move forward into six weeks of bootcamps. Eight teams reach the finals. Three teams split more than $8,000 on Nov. 12.
Everyone has an entrepreneurial gene
Howard Stevenson, a Harvard Business School professor, defined entrepreneurship as "the pursuit of opportunity beyond resources controlled."
Read that again and notice what is not in it. No major. No minor. No college. No bank account. No business background. It describes a way of seeing a problem and deciding to go after it anyway — which is something a nursing student does on a clinical rotation, a theatre student does with a production budget that does not cover the set and a biology student does when the equipment they need is not in the lab.
If you have ever looked at something broken and thought someone should fix that — you already have the gene. For most students it is simply dormant. C.R.E.A.T.E. is where it wakes up.
A note for students outside the Sykes College of Business: we mean this. In recent years, most of the people who reached the finals were business majors — and that is not because business majors have better ideas. It is because they heard about this first. The best ideas in this competition have come from people who noticed a problem the rest of us could not see, because they were standing somewhere the rest of us were not standing. That is you. Come pitch.
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How it Works
- Sept. 24 — Preliminaries
- Sept. 25 – Nov. 6 Bootcamp
- Oct. 23 — Semifinals
- Nov. 12 — Finals
Starting at 3 p.m. — ICB 812 Pitch Room
Every registered team gets 90 seconds in front of a panel. That's it. No slides required, no financials, no product.
After the pitches, we host a live panel discussion while the judges deliberate — so you don't spend the wait refreshing your email. By the end of the afternoon, the field is narrowed to the top 20.
Attendance on Sept. 24 is required to compete.
Six Weeks of Bootcamp
Every Friday in the ICB Pitch Room — time will be based on class schedules.
The top 20 spend six Fridays learning to build, scale and pitch a startup. The bootcamps are designed to take the idea you had on Sept. 24 and turn it into a 5-minute pitch you can defend.
Along the way you will:
- Work your idea through design thinking — the problem first, the solution second
- Learn how to be a great mentee, then get matched with a mentor or mentor team who will support your venture for at least the next six weeks.
- Build out your team. Some of the best co-founder partnerships at ÌÇÐÄVlog¹Ù·½ started with two people who met in this room and realized they needed each other.
The field narrows from 20 to the top 8.
3 p.m. — ICB 812 Pitch Room
Eight teams pitch for 5 minutes each. Three teams split more than $8,000 toward launching their ventures.
What Your 90 Seconds Needs to Cover
Ninety seconds is short. That is the point — it is not enough time to hide behind a slide deck, so it rewards clarity over polish. Cover these five things and you have given a complete pitch.
- The name and the hook: Say your idea's name clearly. Then give one sentence a stranger could repeat correctly to somebody else afterward. If they cannot repeat it, you did not say it.
- The problem, and who has it: One sentence on the problem. One sentence on the specific person who lives with it. Then tell us what the thing actually is — plainly enough that everyone in the room can picture it.
- The customer, and the money: Name one customer specific enough to picture. Tell us what that person does today instead of using your idea. Tell us what you would charge and why that number. "Everyone" is not a customer.
- Why you win: Who already does something like this, and what would you have that a competitor could not copy in a weekend? This is the part that holds up when a judge pushes back.
- Where you are, and why you: What have you already done — even if the honest answer is "nothing yet"? What is the first thing you would do with the prize money? And why are you the person who noticed this problem? Then land your last line.
Judges score on branding, opportunity, revenue model, competitive advantage and current status, and founder fit. The five beats above are those five categories in the order they make sense out loud.
Don't have an idea yet?
Start with a problem, not a product. Two places to look:
Look at your own week. The best student ideas come out of something the founder was already annoyed by — a process that wastes an hour, a service that does not exist near campus, a tool your major needs that nobody has built.
Look at the . Seventeen goals, covering the largest unsolved problems on the planet: hunger, clean water, quality education, decent work, sustainable cities. Every one of them is a market. A for-profit business that does good is still a for-profit business — and those are exactly the ventures we want to see.
You do not have to solve the whole goal. You have to solve one small, specific, real piece of it for one specific person.
Don't know how to pitch?
Walk into the Lowth Entrepreneurship Center and ask for a free Spartan Pitch KitÌý— a set of cards that walks you through everything your 90 seconds needs, one beat at a time. It's free, there's no catch and you don't need to be registered to pick one up.
You can also stop by to talk your idea through with someone before you commit. That's what the space is for.
The Lowth Entrepreneurship CenterÌýis housed in the Daly Innovation and Collaboration Building.
FAQ
No. C.R.E.A.T.E. is open to every ÌÇÐÄVlog¹Ù·½ student — undergraduate and graduate, any college, any year.
No. You can enter alone. Many students find co-founders during the bootcamps.
No. This year's competition is for ideas only. We are not evaluating anything you have built or sold.
Not this year. C.R.E.A.T.E. is deliberately reserved for ideas at the earliest stage so that first-time founders compete on a level field. If you already have revenue, talk to us about the Spartan Accelerator instead.
The Sept. 24 preliminaries, then six Friday bootcamp sessions if you advance to the Top 20.
Only one team member needs to register — but make sure your whole team is ready to pitch on Sept. 24.
Sponsor
C.R.E.A.T.E. is sponsored by CFO Associates, a local accounting and consulting firm founded by ÌÇÐÄVlog¹Ù·½ alumni
