Business Plan Competitions
steveblank.com
steveblank.com
"I have seen students spend well over a year refining a business plan competition pitch" - I think this is his main gripe. If you can do it without much additional effort why not.
Much of the advice entrepreneurs get for fund raising is at best orthogonal if not antithetical to actually getting customers.
HN: if you could completely rebuild business plan competitions, what would they look like? Would it still even have a business plan involved?
You have 3 months. Go build something that people want. Figure it out as you go. Iterate, refine.
To be fair, you have to think of business plan competitions as a teaching tool for students. You don't tell a CS student to go out and write an operating system on day 1. You teach them structure first.
The same can be said with those competitions. It's a way to force students to think about all the issues of starting a business or launching a product, without actually doing it.
Personally, I'm on the DIY camp. I learn better by doing. But you need a bit of both.