For teachers, principals and department heads

Give your students a real audience.

A free, province-wide entrepreneurship program and pitch competition for students aged 12 and up. It gives a business class an external deadline, a published rubric, and written feedback from working business people instead of only a grade. Free to run. Nothing to install. No budget line required.

Talk to us about your class See the student-facing program

Safeguarding

The part you need answered before anything else.

Read the full rules Read the privacy policy Request a summary for your privacy officer

Under-18 entries require parent or guardian consent. We collect the guardian's name and email at submission and confirmation that they have read the rules and agree to the entry. Without it, the entry is not accepted — this is enforced in our database, not just on the form.
Student work is private by default. A submitted entry is seen only by the judges assigned to that category and by Launch League staff. It is not published, not posted publicly, and never shared with sponsors.
Showing a student publicly is a separate, optional opt-in. Permission to show a video, name or business name publicly — including at the livestreamed Awards Night — is given separately by the parent or guardian, and declining has no effect on judging. Judges are never told who opted in.
Consent can be withdrawn at any time before the Awards Night by emailing us. Withdrawing media permission does not withdraw the entry.
Students keep their ideas. Launch League takes no equity, no licence, and no ownership of anything a student submits.

Ontario curriculum

Where it fits

The competition works as a culminating task, a term project, or an extracurricular. For schools teaching the Ontario curriculum, it can support expectations in the business studies courses below.

Culminating task, term project or club

Already running an entrepreneurship course, pilot or competition? You don't need another curriculum — see keep what works, add what helps.

BEM1OGrade 9Building the Entrepreneurial MindsetIssued 2024
BEP2OGrade 10Launching and Leading a BusinessIssued 2024
BDI3CGrade 11Entrepreneurship: The VentureCollege Preparation
BDP3OGrade 11Entrepreneurship: The Enterprising PersonOpen
BDV4CGrade 12Entrepreneurship: Venture Planning in an Electronic AgeCollege Preparation

Teaching accounting, marketing or leadership instead? See how Launch League fits all 25 Ontario business courses.

Ontario put entrepreneurship in Grade 9 and Grade 10, revised Career Studies and added a financial literacy graduation requirement. The requirements and coverage sheet marks every specific expectation in BEM1O, BEP2O and Career Studies covered, partly covered or not covered — and says plainly that we do not deliver the financial literacy graduation requirement, because TVO does. The curriculum alignment sheet maps every class to specific expectations — by code for BEM1O and BEP2O, by strand for the 2006 Grade 11 and 12 courses, which publish no codes — and says plainly what the program doesn't cover. It also supports a Specialist High Skills Major in Business, and works just as well for schools that don't follow the provincial curriculum — the plan, the rubric and the feedback stand on their own.

Term plan

A school year, mapped

You can run the whole arc, or drop in at any stage. Nothing here is mandatory.

September – December
Groundwork
Students work through Business 101 — 8 practical modules on the problem, the customer, the offer, finding customers, sales, numbers, systems and the pitch. Every module ends with a real-world action and a written output you can assess. Self-paced and free, so it slots into a unit or runs alongside one.
January – February
Build the plan
Each student or team completes a one-page business plan using the free builder, with prompts tailored to their category. This is the artifact you can assess directly.
February – March
Record and submit
Three short videos: a 60-second elevator pitch, a five-minute plan briefing, and a slide walkthrough. A phone camera is fine — judges score substance, not production. Entries close March 31, 2027.
April
External judging
Volunteer judges — working business owners and professionals — score every entry against a published 100-point rubric and write individual feedback.
May – June
Results and feedback
Winners announced May 31, 2027 at a livestreamed Awards Night. Every complete entrant receives written judge feedback by June 15, 2027, whether or not they placed.

Assessment

The rubric is published

Students know exactly what they are assessed on before they start — and so do you. Some teachers assess against this directly.

Problem & Opportunity: 20
Solution: 20
Customer & Market Understanding: 15
Feasibility: 15
Business / Sustainability Model: 15
Impact & Potential: 10
Communication & Pitch Quality: 5

For students

What your students get

An outside audience
Working business owners and professionals read their plan and watch their pitch. Not a teacher, not a classmate — a stranger with real experience.
Written feedback, every entrant
Not just the winners. Every student who submits a complete entry receives individual written feedback against the published rubric.
Something to point at
12 award categories, each carrying a $500–$2,500 prize raised from its own sponsor — plus a plan they can actually use if they decide to build the thing.

Educator toolkit

Run Launch League in 6 classes

A minute-by-minute lesson plan and projectable slides for every class, an assessment rubric in the province's four categories, a curriculum alignment sheet, a letter home with a permission slip, printable worksheets and a student workbook. Nothing to build.

Open the toolkit

School Champions

Be your school's point person

An hour or two a month to share dates, answer student questions and connect Launch League with the right classes.

Become a School Champion

Evidence of learning

Students leave with evidence of learning, not just a presentation.

Every stage produces something a teacher can see and assess — built by the student, then read by someone outside the school.

Customer research, from real conversations
An offer: who it's for, what it costs, why it's worth it
Pricing and the economics of one sale
Customer-acquisition thinking, and one action taken
A written business plan
A recorded pitch
External written feedback from experienced businesspeople

For this school year

Thinking about it for this year?

For school boards and SHSM programs: turn entrepreneurship learning into a real pathway.

Tell us the grade and course and we'll send a one-page summary you can take to your department — or talk it through in twenty minutes.

Get in touch Look at Business 101 first