An independent standards body
The Pitch Competition Standards Council standardizes how competitions judge, not what they judge. Disclose your rubric and your scoring method before applications open, have judges score independently, and give every entrant their scores and the judges' comments. Use your own rubric or the Council's Suggested Rubric. The standard is free to adopt and free to publish before your applications open.
Document status
Chairman and Advisory Board
Faculty, investors and organizers who read the drafts, tell us what is wrong and introduce the standard to people in their field. Advisors advise; the Council's directors decide.
About the Advisory Board ›
Chairman
Founder and CEO, LiveJudge™
Founder, Eventsquid (acquired 2023)
Thirty-plus years founding, running and selling software companies. Before software he practiced law for eleven years in corporate-reorganization litigation. Kranitz designed LiveJudge™ software to enable efficient, precise and fair scoring across dozens of industries.
Full biographykranitz.com
Advisor
Professor of Entrepreneurship
Babson College
Holds the Frederic C. Hamilton Chair of Free Enterprise. A board member of the Global Entrepreneurship Research Association, which oversees the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), and leader of the GEM U.S. team; co-author of GEM reports on global, women's and U.S. entrepreneurship.
Full biographyBabson College
Advisor
Assistant Professor of the Practice of Management
Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University
Faculty Director of the Center for Social Ventures, with more than 20 years building companies, investing in founders and advising entrepreneurs. His work spans entrepreneurship, social enterprise, sports business and leadership. MBA, Vanderbilt; bachelor's, Dartmouth.
Full biographyVanderbilt Owen
Advisor
President, Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs
Co-founder, HarvardAE Accelerator
President of Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs since 2012 and an Instructor in Executive Education at the Harvard Kennedy School, with more than twenty years as an entrepreneur, investor and executive across start-ups, corporations and nonprofits.
Full biographyBrookstreet EquityWhy a standard
A panel that talks its way to an answer has produced an opinion, not a score.
The Standard, Section 1.0
Most competitions treat the panel discussion as the serious part of judging. The judges huddle,
compare impressions and align on a winner. But the moment the most senior, most famous or most persuasive judge says what they thought, a panel of five becomes one judge and four ratifiers, and
the disagreement the host recruited five judges to get is smoothed away before it can count for
anything.
The PCSC employs a method that judged Olympic sports incorporated long ago.
In Olympic sports, like figure skating, gymnastics and diving, judges evaluate independently, communication between them during evaluation is restricted or prohibited, and scores are combined by formula rather than by discussion. Section 1.0 takes the same position. Judges score alone against the published rubric, scores lock before any discussion, and the result is arithmetic rather than negotiated. A question of fact may still be raised before scores lock; a statement of opinion is out of order.
Placements get published; the reasoning behind them usually does not. Without a per-criterion breakdown and personal judge notes, the entrant leaves with a rank and nothing they can act on, and the host has nothing to point at if the result is ever questioned. Scores by criterion and the judges' own comments turn a 7.4 into something a founder can use.
Answered bySection 1.2: FeedbackMost hosts write their own rubric, and that is often the right call: a campus competition, a sector accelerator and a research symposium are not judging the same thing. The trouble is that many never publish it, so an entrant cannot know what they will be measured against until they are in the room, and the rubric can quietly change between rounds. The standard does not ask you to change your rubric. It asks you to publish it before you open and keep it fixed once entries arrive.
Answered bySection 1.1: DisclosureA judge who mentored a team, invested in one or works beside a founder is still on most panels, because nobody asked. The standard asks: a judge with an interest in an entry declares it and does not score that entry, and the recusal is on the record.
Answered bySection 1.0: Independent JudgingWhat is standardized
The council standardizes how entries are judged and nothing else. Which rubric you score and how you run your competition are up to you, and the guidance we publish for both binds nobody.
The council does not require any particular software, and any platform that can publish a rubric, keep judges' scores apart and send every entrant their breakdown conforms to the standard. The council does recommend LiveJudge™ because the Suggested Rubric ships with the system (it can be modified as needed, or replaced with your own) and the process is built in: see Software.
Adoption
Running to the standard is not a certification you purchase. If your competition conforms to the standard, you have qualified.
Read the StandardYour rubric, its weights, how scores are combined and how judges are chosen must be published at or about the time contestants apply, and must not change after the first entry. Entrants should be able to read how they will be judged before deciding to enter.
Judges should score alone and commit their scores before any discussion of the entry, and a judge with an interest in an entry should not score it. The panel should not confer to reconcile scores or agree on a placement (except in cases of a tie).
Give every entrant their own scores by criterion and the judges' comments. A founder should leave knowing where they lost, not just that they lost. LiveJudge users receive scoresheets and judge feedback memos.
One claim, one seal. An event that keeps the three conditions above runs to the PCSC Standard and may say so. Everything the seal does not cover, the rubric, the format, the timing, the divisions, is yours, and changing it costs you nothing. Free to display, nothing to sign, in light and dark versions.
Get a sealContact
Tell us which event, which section, and what you would change.