This year’s top three winners of the Business Association of Stanford Engineering Students, or BASES, E-Challenge are vying for something more than just the cash prizes - they will represent Stanford at the Draper Fisher Juvetson Venture Challenge in early June.

Out of 75 submitted business plans, the Adaptive Hearing Solutions proposal — developed by electrical engineering graduate student Paul Cuff and business students Rory McDonald and Will Anderson — took top prize and is automatically in contention for the DFJ Venture Challenge. The E-Challenge boasts an impressive award of $250,000 in venture funding. The next two business plans, Noburol and SmartWorks / Consumer Micro-Robots, will have wild-card status in the DFJ Venture Challenge.

The Adaptive Hearing Solutions business plan outlines the developing of a filter that would reduce noise and enhance the speech quality of hearing aids. The Noburol proposal details outpatient procedure for patients who have suffered head trauma. Lastly, the SmartWorks / Consumer Micro-Robots pitch calls for an inexpensive robot that would help clean homes.

Junior Elvina Mintarno, an organizer and member of BASES, said she was pleased with the impact BASES has on the Stanford campus.

“BASES has done a really good job promoting entrepreneurship in the student body,” she said. “Many students see themselves working for big companies. We’re opening the door for people who want to do their own work after they earn a degree.”

The E-Challenge is designed to encourage students to look beyond the competition and to think long-term about their business plans.

“In the past, many projects stopped after the E-Challenge,” Mintarno said, adding that the goal is to have students think seriously about starting a company.

Mintarno said she felt larger off-campus competitions would raise interest in entrepreneurship here at Stanford.

The DFJ Challenge will bring together winners from 10 other California Universities — including California Institute of Technology and UC Berkeley — and will be judged by venture capitalists.

Joshua Raffaelli, an analyst with DFJ, a venture capital firm, explained that the goal of the competition is to expand the participants’ business perspective.

“This competition aims to encourage students with great ideas to enter their school’s business plan competition by providing the means, venture funding, for students to follow through with starting a business,” Raffaelli said. “This is a fantastic catalyst for future entrepreneurs.”

What differentiates this business plan competition from similar contests is the large grant prize. Usually, the sponsoring institution offers a cash prize award but the DFJ Venture Challenge will offer its prize in funding, meaning the winners will be expected to use the money to realize their ideas.

“Traditional business plan prizes can have conflicting short-term incentives where the prize money itself is the goal instead of the goal of starting a business,” he said. “The DFJ Venture Challenge takes a longer-term funding approach. While this award may not be appealing to those students going only after prize money, not surprisingly, there is strong desire for venture funding from those students and faculty who wish to pursue their business ideas beyond their school’s competition.”

Tina Seelig, the executive director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, said she feels that the DFJ Venture Challenge and the University support will serve budding entrepreneurs well because they will meet important people already working in the field.

“It’s fabulous that DFJ has decided to host this very special business plan competition, which allows the winners of all the business plan competitions in California to learn from each other and to compete,” Seelig said.

She added that the environment that the competition creates is good for emerging entrepreneurs.

“This is a fabulous learning opportunity for all the students because they get to experiment in a very low-risk environment and they get the best mentors possible — successful entrepreneurs, faculty members with experience building ventures and venture capitals,” she said. “The students are learning the ropes in a very supportive environment.”