The Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC) is the largest and richest graduate-level student startup competition in the world. Since its inception in 2001, RBPC has grown from 9 competing teams with $10,000 in prize money to 42 teams from around the world competing for more than $1.5 million in cash and investment prizes. In 2005, as a way to support budding entrepreneurs and give back to the Houston community, Jack Gill and 4 other investors decided to form the GOOSE Society and give the grand prize at RBPC. The GOOSE grand prize is now $300,000 with the potential of a much larger investment.
The early successes of GOOSE and RBPC are closely linked as both organizations helped the other to scale. Over the thirteen year partnership, the Rice Alliance (RBPC) and the GOOSE Society have helped Rice Entrepreneurship climb to #2 in rankings published by Princeton Review and Entrepreneur Magazine.
Out of the twelve winners since GOOSE’s inception, there have been 4 successful exits with the most recent being Adhesys Medical (formerly Medical Adhesive Revolution). Another noteworthy exit was Auditude which sold to Adobe. Overall, RBPC winners have returned 2x more capital to the GOOSE Society than invested.
Click here to vote for the 2018 $5,000 People’s Choice Award sponsored by Sofi: https://poll.fbapp.io/rbpc-2018-poll
The GOOSE Society of Texas is an organization dedicated to the education and funding of entrepreneurs. We are headquartered in Houston, TX and are dedicated to helping build the Houston entrepreneurial and startup funding ecosystem.
