It’s definitely a fast-pitch event at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Thursday, but it’s all about business ideas, and no softball pitches are likely.

A “Pitch Party” at the Top of the Hill Restaurant is a bid to “get energy going” for the seventh year of The Carolina Challenge, an annual program to encourage university-affiliated entrepreneurs to roll out their ideas in search of backing, adviser Patrick Vernon said.

The Pitch party and the Challenge run under the auspices of the Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative in the Kenan-Flagler Business School. They fit with a larger effort to find and encourage ideas that have promise but lack backing. Groundwork Labs will open in Durham’s American Tobacco complex next year to incubate start-ups.

The area just had Triangle Entrepreneurship Week, too.

Teams who have a business idea they want to enter in the Challenge do not have to pitch at the party, but they ought to consider it, Vernon said.

The Challenge is a student-run program that begins with rounds of 16 teams in several categories, or tracks, in February and winds up with final presentations by each track’s winner on March 28. That gets the business competition wrapped up shortly before many of the participants hope UNC’s men’s basketball team will be competing in the NCAA Final Four.

Teams that make the final Challenge will take home $15,000 for first place, $10,000 for second, $7,500 for third and $5,000 for fourth. Funding is from the John Stedman Endowments.

Fast-Pitch Pitches at Party

It is definitely hardball fast pitch at the party. Each team has two to three minutes to do a presentation with PowerPoint or another software application. Pitches will be going on simultaneously at various “stations” in a format that Challenge organizers liken to a battle of the bands.

There also will be “speed networking” sessions. Teams are advised to have a one-minute pitch ready for those.

Backers have recruited a list of judges who will circulate. Each judge gets $2,000 of “pitch cash” to use to cast votes. The judge gives $1,000 to his or her favorite team and $100 each to 10 others.

Not unlike real-world entrepreneurship, the winners are the teams with the most “cash.”

The real prizes, however, may be getting contact information from judges who would like to work with teams on concepts they see.

The rules say a team can be any size from two on up, but one member has to be a UNC student, staff employee or faculty member.

The tracks for the start-up ideas are science, social efforts, technology and traditional businesses. Vernon said the organization is trying to establish an alumni track to allow Kenan-Flagler graduates to pitch their ideas to potential backers, too.

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