7MT sits in a family of severe-time, almost-no-slides contests. This page maps that family. None of the programmes below are partners, licensees, or organisers of Seven Minute Tech.
Three Minute Thesis, Falling Walls Lab, MT180, TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield, and LEAP Rocket Fuel are independent programmes. We describe them because applicants compare formats. Dates and figures below are drawn from public coverage and programme pages; they can move. Check the organiser if you plan to enter those contests.
Every year we receive emails that begin “I already did 3MT, can I reuse the slide?” or “Is 7MT the Chinese Falling Walls?” Those are fair questions. Timed-pitch culture is now a global infrastructure: universities run thesis competitions, science festivals run breakthrough labs, and startup conferences run battlefields. The shared grammar is ruthless — a clock, almost no slides, a room of strangers who do not owe you their attention. The differences matter just as much as the grammar. Three minutes is a different sport from seven. A thesis is a different object from a company. A Berlin science summit is a different room from a Shanghai builder finale.
7MT chose seven minutes because three is barely enough to set a hypothesis and eighteen is a keynote. We open the door to founders and independent builders, not only enrolled research-degree candidates. We are not a franchise of anyone else’s rulebook. If you want the origin of our constraint, read About. If you want our rules, read Compete.
Three Minute Thesis originated at the University of Queensland. The format is now used by universities worldwide: research-degree candidates present their thesis in three minutes, with a single static slide and no props. The clock is unforgiving. The slide cannot be a deck. The speaker cannot hide in jargon that only a supervisory panel would allow. 3MT trained a generation of researchers to find one sentence that survives contact with a mixed audience. That is a public good, and we say so plainly.
7MT is not 3MT. We run seven minutes, not three. We are builder- and founder-oriented rather than thesis-only: a technical co-founder of a four-year-old company is eligible; a literature review with no original work is not. Our slide rule is in the same family — one static image, no animation — but the extra four minutes change the talk. You can lay out a mechanism, show one piece of evidence, and still have time for a consequence. You can also drown. Applicants who paste a 3MT script into a seven-minute slot usually finish at 3:40 and look lost. Rewrite for the length you actually have.
If you are a current PhD candidate and you want the university-administered thesis contest, enter 3MT at your institution. If you want a longer, builder-facing stage that also welcomes researchers, apply to 7MT. Doing both in the same year is allowed; recycling the same script without adaptation is a waste of both clocks.
Falling Walls Lab is a three-minute pitch programme for emerging researchers and innovators. Local labs feed a global finale in Berlin around the Falling Walls Science Summit. Public reporting on the 2025 cycle described more than 2,750 applicants, 82 labs, and 60 countries, with around 100 people reaching the Berlin global finale. For 2026, local labs continue through the year — for example, coverage of Falling Walls Lab Riga has pointed to 30 June 2026 — and the Berlin finale sits in early November around the Science Summit (sources have cited windows around 5–9 November or 6 November 2026; treat those as organiser-dependent, not as 7MT dates).
Criteria often discussed in Lab briefings include Breakthrough, Relevance, and Performance: is the idea a real step, does it matter beyond the lab, and can the speaker hold a room. That triad is cousin to our four-part rubric (comprehension, content, engagement, communication), not a copy of it. Falling Walls is a science-summit machine with a Berlin centre of gravity. 7MT is a builder competition with heats in eight cities and a November finale in Shanghai. We do not host a Falling Walls Lab. We do not send winners to Berlin as a 7MT prize. If Berlin in November is your goal, apply to Falling Walls Lab through their own local-lab process. If Shanghai in November is your goal, apply here by 30 June 2026.
Ma thèse en 180 secondes is the Francophone three-minute thesis format, often abbreviated MT180. Like 3MT, it asks doctoral candidates to explain a thesis to a lay audience in three minutes with a single slide. It has a strong home in French-speaking universities and a culture of rhetorical precision that English-language contests sometimes under-train. 7MT heats in London and Berlin will hear English (Berlin also German); our Asia-Pacific heats accept Mandarin or English. We do not run a French-language heat in 2026. MT180 alumni are welcome if they meet eligibility and rewrite for seven minutes. A 180-second cadence is a gift for the hook; it is not a full 7MT talk.
Startup conferences run a different sport with similar costumes. TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield is a venture pitch with a product, a market, and a round on the table. Judges are investors. The clock is short. The slide count is not one. Demo culture is the point, not a disqualification. LEAP in Riyadh has run a Rocket Fuel track; coverage of a recent finals cycle mentioned 100 founders from 44 countries. Those stages are adjacent to 7MT in the way a marathon is adjacent to a 5K: both involve running, neither is a substitute for the other.
If you need a priced round, go to a battlefield. If you need to prove that a technical idea can be told without a deck, a demo, or a soundtrack, come to 7MT. We will not pretend that a seven-minute no-props talk is a seed round. We will also not pretend that a twenty-slide market narrative is the same skill as holding a room with one image. Some 7MT alumni later appear on startup stages; that is a sequence, not a partnership announcement.
| Programme | Time | Visuals | Who it is for | Relation to 7MT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Three Minute Thesis (3MT) | 3 minutes | One static slide, no props | Research-degree candidates, thesis | Independent. Same family of constraints, different length and eligibility. |
| Falling Walls Lab | 3 minutes | Short pitch, local labs → Berlin | Emerging researchers and innovators | Independent. 2025 cycle: 2,750+ applicants, 82 labs, 60 countries; ~100 to Berlin. |
| MT180 | 3 minutes (180 seconds) | One slide, no props | Doctoral candidates, Francophone circuit | Independent. Different language network. |
| TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield / LEAP Rocket Fuel | Short, varies | Decks and demos expected | Startups raising or showcasing | Adjacent, not identical. Rocket Fuel coverage has cited 100 founders / 44 countries. |
| Seven Minute Tech | 7 minutes live; 90-second video to apply | One static slide, no props, no demo | Builders, founders, researchers | This site. Eight city heats, semifinals, November finale. |
Three minutes forces a single move: name the problem and gesture at a result. That is enough for a thesis teaser. It is rarely enough to walk a non-specialist through a mechanism without hand-waving. Ten minutes invites a second slide, then a third. Seven minutes is long enough to do hook, problem, mechanism, evidence, and ask — the structure we teach on Resources — and short enough that you still have to cut. The extra four minutes versus 3MT are not a luxury. They are the space in which a founder can say how the thing actually works, and in which a researcher can show one number that is not a slogan.
We borrowed the severity of the clock, not the brand. We will keep saying that until the emails stop asking whether we are “the official 3MT for industry.” We are not. We are 7MT.
Enter 3MT if your university runs it and your object is a thesis. Enter Falling Walls Lab if a local lab is open and Berlin in November is the room you want. Enter MT180 if you work in French. Enter a battlefield if you are raising. Enter 7MT if you can live with one slide, no props, and seven minutes in front of a mixed panel of technical specialists, operators, and communicators. You can enter more than one. You cannot pretend they are the same line on a CV. Applications for 7MT 2026 close 30 June. Start at Apply.