Start-Up Business Plan

About this event

Start-Up Business Plan (event code ESB) is for one to three chapter members who want to propose forming a business of any type and ask a potential source of capital to back it. Like Innovation Plan it uses a pitch deck instead of a written report, but it goes further into customers, channels, competition and money. The deck follows a fixed outline: overview and business concept, problem and business opportunity, customer segments and channels, unique value proposition and competitive advantage, solution, revenue and key metrics (pricing, main expenses, metrics to track), conclusion and financial request, bibliography and optional appendix. You present as the entrepreneurs; the judge plays a potential source of capital. The pitch deck is capped at 20 slides (appendix included), in 16:9 format, numbered from the title slide, following the published outline with every section titled, and the signed Statement of Assurances is submitted separately; penalty points come off for formatting violations. ICDC qualifiers upload the deck through DECA's online submission system in the weeks before the conference (DECA posts each year's window on its ICDC page; the 2026 window ran March 25 to April 8) and the chapter advisor must log in to verify it. The presentation is up to 15 minutes including the judge's questions, every team member must take part, only hand-carried visual aids are allowed, and the single presentation evaluation (100 points) is the whole score.

What judges score

What judges score

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