Business plan competitions have been around for several years, primarily offered by business schools initially, they are becoming increasingly mainstream- being offered by some states, wineries, economic development programs and even Avon. If you are in the early stages of planning or are a young start up, do not turn up your nose at this excellent source of seed funds and advice. Most competitions are organized annually, particularly the university based events.

Typically, you or your team register to participate and follow the contest timeline for submitting preliminary materials such as an executive summary. Depending on the contest, you may have to submit a full business plan at a later date and if your plan makes it to the finals, you and your team will have to appear in person to do a presentation or “pitch” in front of the judges and investors in some cases. Competitions sponsored by businesses on the other hand, sometimes require only an essay or video entry describing your business idea.

At the university level, business plan competitions are staged for undergraduate or graduate students, depending on the university, and grad students may not necessarily have to be pursuing an MBA for some competitions. For other competitions, all members of a competing team do not have to be students of the university, if at least one on the team is a student or former student in some cases, the team can compete.

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For all my male readers who complain that all the best business startup contests I list are for women, here’s one that you can enter too.

Intuit, the software company behind Quickbooks, Quicken and other great software is sponsoring the “Just Start” business contest. (note that you can still enter even if you have a business already). I love the name of this contest- complements the concept of this blog don’t you think?

Here’s the scoop in a nutshell.

Prizes:

One Grand Prize winner gets $40,000 in cash and $10,000 in resources

Two First Prize winners get $5,000 each

Eligibility:
Open to legal residents of the 50 United States and District of Columbia, who are 21 years of age or older as of date of entry. Please read all the fine print and other eligibility details at Intuit’s website.

Enter the Contest

Access the online entry form which is very straightforward at IWillJustStart.com. Register and either submit a 2 minute video or a 250-word story with a photo attached explaining your business idea, what you would be resigning from and what you would do with the winnings to pursue your business. That’s it!

Deadline to apply: Entries must be submitted online no later than 11:59:59 p.m. Pacific Time on December 15, 2007.

There are two phases of judging. All entries will be judged by Intuit’s team of judges which include a marketing expert and business consultants/bloggers who will choose 5 semi-finalists. The public will then get to decide which of the 5 semi-finalists should be the grand prize and first prize winners.

All winners will be announced around February 1, 2008

Good luck and if you choose to enter, please let the rest of us know in the Comments section below.

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For this week’s round-up of interesting links, I chose to highlight a few of the business plan competitions listed on the blog that have deadlines that are drawing near.

The Great Lakes Entrepreneur’s Quest (GLEQ) Competition
How Much: $25,000.00
The deadline to register: October 31, 2007

Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award
How Much: $25,000+
The deadline to submit manuscript: November 5, 2007

Avon’s Hello Tomorrow Fund.
How Much: $5,000 seed money to start a program, business or project that will empower women.
The deadline to apply: December 17, 2007

The Make Your Dreams Come True with Mirassou business plan competition
How Much: $50,000 in seed money
The deadline to apply: December 15, 2007

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The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award launched October 1, 2007. Though this is not directly related to opening a typical business, it will ultimately catapult one lucky author’s writing business and career. Here are the details.

Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award is open to writers from more than 20 countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and Japan. Authors can enter their unpublished English-language novel manuscript for consideration through Amazon’s CreateSpace website starting October 1 through November 5, 2007 or whenever the first 5,000 entries have been received, whichever is earlier. (CreateSpace is a self-publishing platform that enables authors, filmmakers and musicians to create and sell books, DVDs and CDs on demand).
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The Avon company has always been big on empowering women by providing economic opportunity. Initially they did this by making it easy to get in business selling makeup and so on. In their latest effort to empower women, they developed the Hello Tomorrow Fund.

The fund over the course of 52 weeks (which started April 2007) will choose one applicant every week to award $5,000 to help that person start a program or a project or develop an idea that will empower women. In addition to the USA, the fund will be available to assist women in 20 other countries including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
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Posted in Women Only, Worldwide Eligible, BusinessPlan Competition, business grant, funding your business 8 Comments »