- People who have the patience to court a jury with a business plan, perfecting their pitch, etc. at such an early stage – while they could be working on their product – don't make the best entrepeneurs.
- The judges are teachers who've been entrenched in the academic world for too long to pass valuable judgement on a startup's viability; Their judgement is either counterindicative of success overall, or they may simply weigh factors that are only important for a more mature business too heavily for the judgement to have anything to do with startup success.
- Most startups fail, including those that come forth from these competitions, there's no measurable correlation.
Take your pick ;)
Any judgement of a startup's possible success that's based upon business plans rather than founders' personalities misses its goal because it does not account for the amount of change to the plans that is required for success, but which will only happen if the founders have sufficiently flexible minds.
A final point then: Does hearing a respected jury tell you your plans are the bee's knees make you more hesistant to change them or throw them overboard when things aren't taking off?