If you think your startup idea is too early-stage for the Breakthru competition, Calvin Milbury would respectfully like to set you straight.

Breakthru, the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation’s biennial business plan competition, is essentially designed to guide novice entrepreneurs from the back-of-an-envelope stage to the early phases of incorporation.

“We’re actually looking for someone with an innovative idea who sees a commercial market,” said Milbury, the President and CEO of NBIF, in an interview during a break in the National Angel Capital Organization Summit in Halifax last week.  “If you’re not yet incorporated, you’re actually at an advantage in our eyes.”

The NBIF and the law firm Cox & Palmer last week launched the fourth Breakthru competition, which assesses viable business ideas and teams’ ability to plot out their development and then execute on the plans. Milbury explained that the organizers call it a “business plan” competition because it’s a concept people understand.  It would be more accurate to say the competition is designed to lead several potential entrepreneurs from concept to incorporation, and present prizes totaling about $250,000 to the best participants.

The winner will receive a $100,000 cash investment from NBIF, along with professional services from such firms as Cox & Palmer. The two runners-up will each receive $50,000 plus legal, marketing, and accounting services.  The aim is to give these teams everything they need to incorporate and begin life as a growing company.

“The prize package is a company in a box,” said Milbury.

Now that the entry process has been launched, NBIF is getting the word out that nascent companies have until Dec. 20 to enter the competition. The entries comprise a completed entry form, an executive summary of up to two pages and a $75 entry fee.

And there’s one final component: everyone has to submit a 60-second  video in which they describe the business. Milbury said the video is an excellent tool for assessing the business case because the organizers can get a feel for the entrepreneurs and their plans that they couldn’t get simply from a written submission.

NBIF then tries to get as many of the entrants as possible to a boot camp on January 19 (which is a Saturday, so even people with regular jobs can attend). At this session, the participants are introduced to financial models and certain tools needed to launch a business.

The cadet entrepreneurs take these tools away and then have three weeks to finalize and submit their business plans.The organizers pick five to six finalists, all of whom present their companies at the Breakthru Awards Dinner in Fredericton on March 20, 2013, at which the winners are announced.  

Before the dinner, CBC and Radio Canada hold their own contest with the finalists. They broadcast profiles on the companies, and viewers are asked to choose a Viewers’ Choice award. Because of this, Breakthru is better known in New Brunswick even than NBIF itself, which Milbury sees as a good thing. Milbury said all the entrants are invited to the dinner and are encouraged to proceed with entrepreneurship, whether they’re finalists or not. So far the success of launching companies is evident from some of the graduates of the program.

Scene Sharp Technologies Inc., a Fredericton software company that improves the quality of colour digital photography, won both the Breakthru competition and the Viewers’ Choice award in 2011. It recently closed a $300,000 round of angel financing, which it hopes will help to commercialize a new product for security cameras.

CyberPsyc Software, which develops virtual reality software to treat phobias and anxieties, has raised $250,000 in start-up capital from NBIF and angel investors, even though it did not win an award when it entered.

In fact, some of the leading young companies in New Brunswick moved through  concept phase of their development with the help of the Breakthru competition.