Venturethon: The Next-Generation Business Model Validation Competition Transforming Entrepreneurship

Venturethon is a new model of entrepreneurial competition that emphasizes building real ventures rather than just pitching ideas. It was founded by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Artūras Jurgelevičius – a researcher in entrepreneurship and venture builder – as a response to gaps he observed in traditional hackathons. In essence, Venturethon is a sprint-based, challenge-driven entrepreneurship program and global competition designed to transform early-stage ideas into validated business models and launchable startups. Unlike typical startup contests that prioritize rapid coding or polished pitch decks, Venturethon focuses on evidence-based venture creation – participants must test assumptions, validate their market, and demonstrate real traction before presenting their business. This article explores the origins of Venturethon, how it works step-by-step, and the benefits of this approach over hackathons and other competitions in the startup ecosystem.

Origins: From Hackathons to Venturethon

Dr. Artūras Jurgelevičius conceived Venturethon after nearly a decade of teaching entrepreneurship and organizing hackathons across universities. In those hackathons, he noticed a repeating pattern: teams would feverishly build a prototype over a weekend, present an impressive pitch, perhaps win a prize – only for the idea to fade away after the event. Traditional hackathons are great for energy and creativity, but they rarely translate into sustainable startups. As Jurgelevičius observes, hackathons tend to reward speed and presentation skills rather than the deeper work of validating business models or understanding markets. In many cases, participants “focus on coding fast or pitching well, not on validating business models or understanding markets” and thus long-term entrepreneurial skills aren’t developed.

Frustrated by these shortcomings, Jurgelevičius drew on his academic research in challenge-based learning and hands-on venture building to design a new approach. He envisioned a bridge between hackathon excitement and real startup execution – a format where the intense creativity of a competition is coupled with rigorous validation and follow-through. “That’s how Venturethon was born — a global business model validation competition where participants don’t just build ideas, they build ventures,” explains Dr. Jurgelevičius. In other words, the goal shifted from simply producing a demo to building a viable venture. This origin story underpins Venturethon’s mission: to convert the innovative spark from hackathons into a sustainable launchpad for real startups.

How Venturethon Works: A Step-by-Step Venture-Building Sprint

Venturethon is structured as an extended sprint (typically 4–6 weeks) rather than a 48-hour hackathon. It combines elements of a competition, an accelerator, and an educational bootcamp into one cohesive process. Participants from around the world join cohorts (as individuals or teams) and progress through a guided venture-building journey, supported by mentors, workshops, and a global community. The emphasis is on learning by doing: “Don’t just build ideas – validate business models and launch real ventures” is the guiding motto.

Figure: Participants collaborating during a venture-building sprint. In Venturethon, student founders move beyond hackathon-style brainstorming and devote several weeks to validating their ideas with real customers. They conduct interviews, build MVPs, and gather data to prove (or disprove) that a market demand exists. This evidence-driven approach addresses the common hackathon pitfall where projects die after the event – instead, teams leave Venturethon with tested business models and early traction, not just slide decks.

Each Venturethon cycle follows a structured, step-by-step process that mirrors the stages of real startup development. The process can be summarized in seven key steps:

Problem & Customer Definition – Identify and define the target customer segment and pain point clearly.

Problem Validation – Validate that the problem is real, through user interviews and data collection.

Market Analysis – Estimate the market size, opportunity timing, and context for the idea.

Minimum Viable Product – Build and test a minimum viable product (MVP) or experiment that addresses the problem.

Iterate Messaging & Channels – Experiment with marketing messaging, channels, and pricing to gauge customer response.

Traction Tracking – Measure early traction indicators (e.g. user sign-ups, engagement, retention) to validate that the solution is gaining real interest.

Pitch a Validated Business Model – Finally, pitch the venture to judges and investors, focusing on a validated business model backed by evidence, rather than an unproven idea

Throughout this journey, participants attend workshops on lean startup methods, customer discovery, and business model design. They apply proven frameworks and templates (such as a Business Model Validation Canvas) to systematically test their assumptions. Mentors – including experienced entrepreneurs and investors – provide feedback at each stage to keep teams on track. This intensive curriculum typically unfolds over five weeks in a Venturethon cohort. For example, Week 1 focuses on problem framing and team formation, Week 2 on customer discovery and market research, progressing through MVP development and traction in Weeks 3–4, and culminating in Week 5 Demo Day where teams pitch to a panel of judges and stakeholders. By the end, successful teams have a validated venture model with real-world data – and potentially an invitation to continue building with Venturethon’s venture studio or partner incubators.

Importantly, participation in Venturethon is free and open to a broad audience. It is designed primarily for students and first-time founders globally – those who want to learn entrepreneurship by actually doing it. However, Venturethon’s ecosystem is much wider than the participants alone. Educators (teachers, professors) are encouraged to integrate Venturethon challenges into their courses or mentor student teams, turning classrooms into “launchpads” for startups. Investors, accelerators, and venture studios are invited to observe and engage with the teams, providing mentorship or judging and scouting promising startups emerging from the competition. Corporate partners can also sponsor Venturethon events or propose real-world problem statements for students to solve, gaining innovation insights and access to new talent in the process. This inclusive, multi-stakeholder approach means Venturethon is not just for hackers or business students – it’s a platform that brings together aspiring founders, experienced entrepreneurs, industry partners, and academia into one collaborative venture-building community.

Benefits of Venturethon Over Traditional Competitions

Because of its unique format, Venturethon offers several advantages over conventional hackathons and business plan competitions. The core difference lies in its focus on validation and venture outcomes rather than short-term outputs. The following points highlight how Venturethon stands out:

• Focus on Evidence, Not Hype: “Most hackathons reward speed. Venturethon rewards evidence,” Dr. Jurgelevičius explains. In hackathons, teams often guess what users want and concentrate on coding a quick prototype or crafting a flashy demo. In Venturethon, teams must prove what users want through validation and testing at every step. Progress is measured by real customer feedback and market traction, not just the ingenuity of an idea. This trains participants to ground their startup in data and customer insight.

• Extended Duration for Real Testing: A typical hackathon lasts only 24–72 hours, and business plan contests may span a few weeks of document prep. Venturethon, by contrast, runs as a 4–6 week sprint that deliberately includes time for market experiments and iteration. This longer format means participants actually engage with customers and markets during the competition. In fact, unlike many contest entries that are rarely tested with real users, Venturethon projects are validated in real market conditions before the final pitch. The result is a far more realistic entrepreneurship experience, where teams have the opportunity to pivot or refine their model based on feedback.

• Outcome: Validated Ventures vs. Prototypes: The end product of a hackathon is usually a demo app or prototype, and in business plan competitions it’s often a slide deck or written plan. Unfortunately, many such outputs remain theoretical – “plans often stay theoretical” and prototypes get abandoned after the rush. Venturethon explicitly aims for a different outcome: teams leave with an “investment-ready, validated venture model” that has initial traction. In other words, winning teams are not just winners on paper – they are potentially ready to incorporate a startup or enter an accelerator immediately. Venturethon even offers top teams a pathway into its own venture studio or referrals to incubators/accelerators, bridging the gap to post-competition support.

• Skills and Learning: Hackathons tend to hone technical coding skills and pitching under pressure, while traditional business contests develop analytical planning and writing skills. Venturethon, by design, cultivates a broader entrepreneurship skillset: participants practice customer discovery, market analysis, rapid prototyping, growth hacking, sales, and investor pitching. These are “critical 21st-century skills” for entrepreneurs – such as problem-solving, resilience, communication, and adaptability – that Venturethon emphasizes through its hands-on approach. The experience is akin to a mini startup accelerator, compressing months of learning into an intense curriculum. As one promotional tagline puts it, “Venturethon is where students stop being dreamers and start being founders.”

• Sustainability and Follow-through: A frequent criticism of hackathons is that 99% of projects are dropped once the event ends, with teams and sponsors rarely pursuing them further. Venturethon is explicitly structured to avoid this fate. By requiring evidence of traction and by involving stakeholders (mentors, investors) early, it creates momentum for teams to continue after Demo Day. As Jurgelevičius notes, “unlike short-lived hackathon projects, Venturethon creates a pathway for teams to continue developing their ideas, access incubation, or even attract seed funding.” The built-in venture studio and global network serve as a safety net and launchpad for promising projects. This increases the chances that ideas born in Venturethon will evolve into real startups with impact, instead of ending up shelved.

Conclusion: A New Paradigm for Entrepreneurship Competitions

In summary, Venturethon represents a novel paradigm in entrepreneurship education and startup competitions. It shifts the focus from fleeting hackathon projects to a more academic, challenge-based learning approach that yields tangible venture outcomes. The concept is still emerging – there are no major “unicorn” success stories yet, as the emphasis is currently on the process and learning. However, the strength of Venturethon lies in its methodology: it provides aspiring entrepreneurs a complete pathway from learning to launch, equipping them with skills and validated business models that can endure beyond a single event. By involving all players in the startup ecosystem (students, educators, investors, corporates) in a collaborative format, Venturethon also builds an international community aligned towards evidence-driven innovation.

Dr. Artūras Jurgelevičius and his team continue to develop the Venturethon concept through research and practice. The initiative has the feel of a playbook come to life – an academic idea tested in real-world competition. If hackathons were the product of the last decade’s startup culture, Venturethon is poised to be the next evolution: a competition where “the future of entrepreneurship education is not in pitching ideas, but in building ventures that solve real problems.” For first-time founders and students, it offers a chance to learn by launching; for investors and partners, it offers a pipeline of de-risked, vetted startups. Venturethon’s ultimate promise is to turn more of those weekend brainstorms into sustainable startups, by ensuring that validation and learning are at the heart of the entrepreneurial journey.