For teachers, principals and department heads
A real audience for your students' ideas.
A free, province-wide entrepreneurship program and pitch competition for students aged 13 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.
Consent and student privacy
The part you need answered before anything else.
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Consent can be withdrawn at any time before the Awards Night by emailing us.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.
Where it fits
The competition works as a culminating task, a term project, or an extracurricular. For schools teaching the Ontario curriculum, it maps directly onto the entrepreneurship courses.
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.
A school year, mapped
You can run the whole arc, or drop in at any stage. Nothing here is mandatory.
Students work through Business 101 — six modules, about 45 minutes total — covering problem-finding, customer research, pricing, marketing, financials and pitching. Self-paced and free, so it slots into a unit or runs as homework.
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.
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.
Volunteer judges — working business owners and professionals — score every entry against a published 100-point rubric and write individual feedback.
Winners announced May 31, 2027 at a livestreamed Awards Night. Every entrant receives written judge feedback by June 15, whether or not they placed.
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.
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
7 award categories working toward a $9,500 sponsor-funded prize pool — plus a plan they can actually use if they decide to build the thing.
Thinking about it for this year?
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 fifteen minutes.
Keep going
- Business 101 — free six-module courseIdea validation, customers, pricing, marketing, financials, and pitching. About 45 minutes.
- Official rules and the 100-point judging rubricExactly how entries are scored, published in full before you write a word.
- Youth entrepreneurship programs in OntarioWhat's open at 13, 15 and 18 — and the eligibility catch on every funding program.
- The Launch League programAll five stages — learn, plan, connect, pitch, launch — and how they fit together.