I've been invited to judge in the Global Round, what's next?

In this article

Register or Log in

Begin by logging into your accelerate account here, or, if you do not already have an account, by registering as an expert. You can follow these steps to register as an expert.

Interest and Participation

Indicating which Programs you are interested in judging is a critical step in your request to become a MassChallenge judge. This will determine which programs you will receive information about and which judging rounds you will be invited to participate in.

Indicating Interest
You can select your Programs of Interest on your personal profile page. 

Simply scroll down to the appropriate section and select the checkboxes next to the programs you'd like to be involved with.

Indicating Judge Participation
To indicate your interest in participating as a judge, continue scrolling on your profile page until you see the "Participation" section.

Select the checkbox next to "Judge" and your desire to participate as a judge with our programs will be noted within the system.

Commitment

Our experts go through a curation process, and will be reached out to when an appropriate judging round is searching for judges who would be a best fit for participation.

Commitment email
You will receive an email directing you to the participation section on Accelerate where you can indicate how many applications you can commit to judging.

Make a commitment
Applications are assigned and committed in batches of 10. It will take 1-2 hours to read through a batch of 10 applications.

Here you can select YES, to indicate that you can judge in this round. You can also select the amount of applications you would like to begin judging using the drop down menu. These will be allocated in batches of 10. 

Or you can select NO, you are not available. This does not disqualify you from being a judge in another judging round.

Click,"Save Changes" button. See that your commitment to judge in the round has been saved.

You can review your commitment and change it at any time by reviewing the Participation section of your profile.

Judging notification

You will receive an email when judging is live. Included in the email will be the timeline for reviewing applications, instructions on how to allocate applications to yourself as well as a reminder about your username.

A few things to note:

Unfiltered Applications
We've taken your primary industry into account when allocating applications to you; however, based on the range of startups who apply, some of the applications assigned to you may be in fields outside of your primary focus - that's OK! Please review all your assigned applications with the exceptions of of those where there is a conflict of interest. 

Finally, please remember that the applications you will be reviewing have not been filtered by MassChallenge. In this online Round 1, you will be helping in selecting applications which will advance to Round 2. Ultimately, about a third of the Semi-Finalists will make it into the local Accelerator Programs.

Judging Portal

You will be automatically directed to your judging portal when the judging round is live.

You can begin reading your applications by clicking the blue," Request applications" button.

You will also see a table that displays your total commitment, how many you currently have assigned (this will read zero until you've allocated a batch to yourself), and your total completed and submitted to date.

An example judge portal is seen below:

Application batches

Applications are assigned in batches of 10, and judges can save their progress and revise scores for each batch before submitting the batch.

Judging criteria is split into 3 components.

Numerical Feedback

• Numerical scores range from 1 - 10, with 10 being "best"
• Used to indicate areas of strength or areas that need improvement

Written Feedback

• Minimum of 30 words
• Used to provide overall evaluation, specific strengths or weaknesses

Overall Recommendation

• The decisive judging score and what will determine if the startup moves ahead to Round 2 (in-person) judging
• Options range from "Definitely Recommend" to "Definitely Don't Recommend"
• Only viewed by select MassChallenge staff and is not shared with the entrepreneur

When you have completed a batch of ten applications and are satisfied with your evaluations please click the blue, "I'm done with these applications" button to submit that batch.

To allocate more applications to yourself, return to your judge portal and click the, "Request Applications" button again.