Starting next week TechStars will be holding a March Madness-esq elimination tournament for startups. There will be 64 startups going head-to-head over 6 rounds with the winner advancing until only one remains. Who wins will be determined solely by voting on the site This or That.

The premise is simple and it should be entertaining (here's my entry - retweet support appreciated). I think it could be better though.  Here's what I'd change.

Voting

Popularity Contest

The way the voting works right now the startup with most votes in each head-to-head matchup advances. Unfortunately, this could lead to the scenario where a particular startup (or two) with founders with strong social media presences rallying their followers and stealing the competition. In this case it isn't the better startup winning it's the one with the founders with the biggest influence.

Hopefully there will be enough people voting in the contest that no one influencer can dominate.

But what would be better is if the general populous vote only made up 33% of the score.  The rest coming from TechStars staff (33%) and a select group of notable people in the community (33%).

Public Votes

I'm not super familiar with the This or That site, but looking at it just now it doesn't seem like you can see who voted and what they voted for. Combine this with the above change and now things are getting interesting. It would be great to see how the TechStars staff and the select notable judges are voting.

Vote Comments

It would also be cool if you could include a short comment with your vote. Not only would this help the startups, but anyone following the competition would learn as well. There are discussions for each match, so hopefully there will be some good, HN-style debate.

Categories

There doesn't seem to be any criteria for voting. If I'm looking at two random startups how am I supposed to pick one as the "best"? I think it would be fun if each round had a theme and you were supposed to vote based on who won for that theme.

Round of 64 - Best Idea

This is pretty straight forward and open ended. The startup with the best idea gets the vote.

Round of 32 - Best Landing Page

There would be a screenshot of each of the landing pages with links to the actual site. Voters could review both and pick the winner.

Round of 16 - Best Business Plan/Monetization Strategy

Which has the clearest path to making stacks of cash.

Round of 8 - Shark Tank

The final 8 would each appear on a special episode of This Week in Startups. There they would have 60 seconds to pitch their business. At first I was thinking that Jason Calacanis would have to refrain from commenting on the pitches, so as not to sway the vote, but then I realized that would be pretty boring. So instead he can comment, but not give number scores.

The pitches are trimmed and embedded on the voting page. Best 60 second pitch wins.

Round of 4 - The Founding Team on Mixergy Interviews

It's not the idea, but the people, right? The remaining 4 would each have 15 minute Mixergy interviews with Andrew Warner. This is their chance to prove that the idea doesn't matter because the founders are so great.

Once again the interviews would be cut and embedded on the voting page.  Best founding team advances.

Finals - TechStars Interview

This is it. The finals. Only two left.

Each would sit for a standard, no holds barred, TechStars interview, broadcast live. Gripping, right? There's so much talk about the Y-Combinator and TechStars interviews, how awesome would it be to see two live, with the Startups Madness Championship hanging in the balance?

The interviews would be embedded on the voting page and the "best" startup would win.