Aspiring entrepreneurs will roll up their sleeves to vie for $15,000 in start-up cash when an annual competition organized by graduate business students at the University of California, Davis, begins Wednesday, Jan. 23.

The Big Bang! Business Plan Competition will celebrate the launch of its second year with a reception at 7 p.m. at MU II in the Memorial Union on campus. Potential competitors will be introduced to the rules and judging criteria, and the clock will start on the four-week period for submissions of executive summaries.

The kick-off event also will include an Entrepreneurs' Grill, in which a panel of venture capitalists will 'grill' representatives from early-stage companies on their business ideas in order to help them hone their plans and presentations.

Students in the Graduate School of Management organize the competition to promote entrepreneurship, innovation and hands-on learning. The competition, which will offer a series of workshops to help competitors craft business plans based on marketable ideas, is open to teams with at least one UC Davis student, faculty or staff member or graduate.

"We're combining the best talent and resources from the university with the brightest new ideas from the community, a merger that can produce powerful results," says Robert Sumner, chair of the competition and a candidate for a Master of Business Administration degree.

"Despite the burst of the tech bubble last year, the entrepreneurial spirit is alive with great ideas, and venture capitalists want to fund sound business plans," he adds. "Big Bang! acts as a catalyst to bring these two groups together."

Several Sacramento and Bay Area venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and representatives of professional services firms will serve as mentors, judges and workshop presenters. The primary sponsor is the Sacramento law office of Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich, and other sponsors include Accel Partners of Palo Alto; Versant Ventures of Menlo Park; and Akers Capital, American River Ventures and Granite Bay Ventures, all in the Sacramento area.

Competitors must submit executive summaries of their business plans by Feb. 20, and qualifiers will be asked to submit complete business plans by April 17. Following a review of the business plans, finalist teams will be selected to make half-hour presentations before judges May 23 and before a public audience May 24.

Judges, who will select the first- and second-place winners, have been asked to evaluate the summaries, plans and presentations as they would for ventures funded by their firms. The audience at the final event will select the third-place winner. Together, the three prizes will total $15,000.

The winners of last year's Big Bang! competition were Emergent Software of San Francisco, VisualCalc of El Dorado Hills and Scalable Life Sciences of Palo Alto.

More information on the competition is available on the Big Bang! Web site.