George Brown Polytechnic is located on the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and other Indigenous peoples who have lived here over time. We are grateful to share this land as treaty people who learn, work and live in the community with each other.
PITCH IT GBC! 2025 is now closed for new applications
PICTH IT GBC! 2025 is now closed for new applications. Please check back in August 2026 for the next offering.
PITCH IT GBC! is accepting applications from any George Brown Polytechnic student or recent graduate, with an active georgebrown.ca email account, who is looking for seed funding to support the creation of a business/social innovation.
Pitch your business or social enterprise and win part of a $14,000 prize fund.
Applications close at 4:00 p.m. Thursday, 23rd October 2025. Open to any GBC students and recent grads from 2024/2025 programs.
There will be two streams of the competition. 1. Currently operational businesses or social innovation, and 2. Ideation stage organization or social innovation.
Registration for 2025 will open on Monday, August 4, 2025! Check out the competition structure and eligibility below.
Submission Supports
2 BMC/Pitch Workshops will be run before the competition, so please be sure to attend one of these for a learning opportunity to help strengthen your submission.
We received over 100 applications for Pitch It GBC! 2025. A judication panel chose the top 8 applicants from the 2 streams. Stream one was operational, student businesses and stream two was the ideation stage.
Congrats to all who applied, all who pitched and those who won!
See you at Pitch it 2026!
About
The PITCH IT GBC! competition is designed to provide seed funding to support aspiring entrepreneurs in developing and pitching their current business or ideation-stage business. Participants have an opportunity to win a portion of the $14,000 prize fund. Two streams of the PITCH IT GBC! competition will occur simultaneously:
- Stream 1: Currently operational business and
- Stream 2: Ideation stage business
Applications can be submitted by solo entrepreneurs or multi-founder teams. Prizes will be awarded once per business/ideation innovation pitch and not per team member.
Prize Funds
The prize pot will be split in the following way:
Stream 1 – Currently Operational Business
- Winner – $2,500
- Second – $2,000
- Third – $1,500
- Fourth – $1,000
Stream 2 – Ideation Stage
- Winner – $2,500
- Second – $2,000
- Third – $1,500
- Fourth – $1,000
How to enter and steps for the competition
- Interested participants must register their interest.
- Business model canvas and pitch skills workshops will be run during September and October, and applicants are encouraged to attend.
- Applications with completed Business Model Canvas and video pitches between 3 and 4 minutes in length via ScreenPal with a visual presentation are not required, and are to be completed and submitted by 5:00 p.m., Thursday, October 23, 2025. (Instructions on how to complete this will be emailed to all applicants who register an interest on the startGBC website.)
- Applicants may enter only one stream and will be self-selected when submitting their business model canvas which stream they wish to be considered.
- Applications will be reviewed by a panel of startGBC independent advisors.
- A selection of applicants will be invited to compete in the final round by 5:00 p.m. on Monday, November 10, 2025.
- Finalists will pitch their ideas at a live event to a panel of judges on Thursday, November 20, 2025.
- Winners will be selected on Thursday, November 20, 2025, and winners will be announced by 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, November 20, 2025, at a startGBC Global Entrepreneurship Week Mocktail Event held between 5:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. at George Brown Polytechnic.
- Funds will be deposited into their George Brown Polytecnic Stu-View student account.
- Entries can be single applicants or multiple founder partnerships.
- The main applicant must be a current student at George Brown Polytechnic or a recent alumnus (who graduated between November 2024 and November 2025).
- Open to domestic and international students, but the intention must be to establish a business/social enterprise in Ontario, Canada.
- Applicants must use an active George Brown Polytechnic email account to submit an application and receive competition communications and be able to receive funds via Stu-View if successful.
- All applicants must be available to present a 4-minute live pitch at the PITCH IT GBC! final competition on Thursday, November 20, 2025, in order to be eligible to receive funding.
- The applicant/Team can be at the concept/ideation stage and does not need to be operating or registered at the time of entry.
- Finalists are not guaranteed funding.
- Applicants will learn the identity of the final competition selection panel on Monday, November 10, 2025.
- Applicants will retain ownership of all intellectual property contained in their submissions.
- Applicants are encouraged to attend a Business Model Canvas/Pitch workshop provided by startGBC.
- Applicants are reminded to look through the rubrics provided in the initial Pitch email provided at the time of expressing their interest.
By submitting an application to the PITCH IT GBC! competition, applicants consent and agree to abide by the following rules and regulations:
- George Brown Polytechnic is not responsible for any lost, late, illegible, incomplete, falsified, destroyed, or failed entries, or for any electronic miscommunications or failures of any kind, which may limit a person’s ability to participate in the competition.
- Each participant may only submit one business idea.
- Deliberate or negligent misappropriation of the intellectual property of another person is an ethical breach that will be grounds for disqualification from the competition.
- In the event that startGBC is prevented from continuing with the contest by an event beyond its control, startGBC or George Brown Polytechnic has the right to modify, suspend, extend, or terminate the competition.
- startGBC and George Brown Polytechnic reserve the right to use competition submissions, as well as photographs or videos taken of competition applicants, as a group or individually, over the course of the competition, for educational and promotional purposes in perpetuity.
- In the event of a dispute regarding who submitted an entry, the entry will be deemed to have been submitted by the authorized account holder of the email address used to submit the entry at the time of entry. “Authorized account holder” is defined as the natural person who is assigned to an email address by an Internet service provider, online service provider, or other organization responsible for assigning email addresses for the domain associated with the submitted email address.
- By participating in the PITCH IT GBC! competition, entrants agree to be bound by these official rules and the decisions of startGBC and the judges, which are final and binding in all respects. Failure to comply with the Official Rules will result in disqualification.
- All rules and regulations proposed within are subject to change, at the sole discretion of startGBC, at any time, without previous warning or notification to contest applicants.
- All prize fund winners will be required to remain engaged with startGBC until April 2027 and provide updates to the startGBC Manager on the progress of the business creation.
- All applicants will be required to complete the annual startGBC entrepreneurship survey until April 2028.
- All applicants will be required to complete a competition exit survey, which will require applicants to reflect on the process and personal development in line with the George Brown Polytechnic Human Skills Framework.
- The final competition will be recorded by startGBC/George Brown Polytechnic and will be made available for viewing by startGBC/George Brown Polytechnic. All applicants will be required to sign a video/media release form.
- Prize winners must provide startGBC with a budget forecast on how the prize funds will be spent by 5:00 p.m., Friday, November 28th, 2025.
- George Brown Polytechnic and startGBC respect your right to privacy. Personal information collected from applicants will only be used by George Brown Polytechnic/startGBC to administer the competition and, only if consent is given at the time of entry, to provide applicants with information regarding upcoming workshops, events and competitions. For more information regarding the manner of collection, use, and disclosure of personal information by George Brown Polytechnic, please refer to the George Brown Polytechnic Privacy Policy.