Speakers and judges
Who teaches, and who decides.
Names are published here as each person confirms, and not before. What is already fixed is the shape of the panel and the standard everyone on it is held to — which is worth knowing before you enter.
Academy speakers
Six sessions, six practitioners.
Every speaker is briefed to the same instruction: teach participants something they can apply to their business proposal that week. Not a talk about entrepreneurship. A session that changes what someone writes.
Problem, Customer & Market Validation
Speaker to be announced
Value Proposition & Business Model
Speaker to be announced
Go-to-Market & Growth
Speaker to be announced
Finance & Business Viability
Speaker to be announced
UAE Ecosystem & Global Markets
Speaker to be announced
Pitch & Funding Readiness
Speaker to be announced
What every speaker is asked for
Real operating experience over theory. Teaching through actual situations rather than frameworks alone. Practical UAE or Indonesia market context. And comfort demonstrating responsible AI use, because that runs through all six sessions.
The judging panel
Five seats, five different perspectives.
The Grand Final panel is deliberately composed rather than assembled from whoever is available. Each seat brings a perspective the others cannot.
Seat 1 · Institutional
A senior Indonesian institution representative, providing institutional perspective and credibility. If the mission prefers to remain Patron rather than judge, this seat goes to an independent senior business leader.
Seat 2 · Corporate or strategic partner
A senior representative from a partner with commercial, innovation or entrepreneurship experience. No single sponsor holds more than this one seat.
Seat 3 · Entrepreneur or practitioner
A founder, CEO or operator with direct experience building or scaling a business.
Seat 4 · Investor or finance
Venture capital, angel, corporate venture, investment or private equity. This seat brings the investment and scalability view.
Seat 5 · UAE ecosystem
An incubator, accelerator, chamber, free zone, entrepreneurship centre or UAE-based ecosystem leader, so the UAE ecosystem is genuinely represented.
Semi-Final panels
Two panels of three judges, ten participants each: one entrepreneur, one commercial leader, one investor or ecosystem professional per panel. Same criteria, same briefing, same scale, with a calibration review before the Top 10 is confirmed.
The standard
What every judge agrees to.
Independence is the thing that makes an award worth winning, so it is written down rather than assumed.
Every judge must
- Demonstrate credible business experience
- Understand early-stage entrepreneurship
- Evaluate businesses objectively
- Follow the YES scoring rubric
- Attend the full judging session assigned to them
- Maintain confidentiality where required
- Give professional and respectful feedback
Conflicts of interest
Judges disclose conflicts of interest before scoring begins. A judge with a material conflict with a participant abstains from scoring that participant entirely.
Judges score independently before any panel discussion, using the same 1–5 scale. Completed scorecards and decision records are retained as an audit trail.
The Program Team retains responsibility for judge suitability and competition independence, regardless of which partner has funded what.
Formats
What you'll actually be asked to do.
Semi-Final · Top 20
Five minutes, then five minutes of questions
Around ten minutes in total. The panel is testing whether you can explain and defend what is in your proposal, not whether you can perform.
Grand Final · Top 10
Seven minutes, then eight minutes of questions
Around fifteen minutes in total. The Grand Final is run as a professional business pitch event, not a student presentation competition.