The Ocean Startup Project, a national organization focused on boosting bluetech, is looking for participants for its Ocean Idea Challenge, a competition that connects aspiring entrepreneurs with potential co-founders and encourages them to identify an ocean sustainability problem.

The group is looking for individuals or teams who are interested in exploring ideas around reducing industries' the environmental impact on the ocean, in improving ocean health, or in doing more with fewer ocean-based resources.

Over four weeks, participants will undergo skills training, access programming, and focus on conducting at least 25 customer discovery interviews to gain a thorough understanding of their potential customers’ situations, needs and pain points.

Up to $10,000 will be awarded to successful teams who can demonstrate proven market interest. They will be introduced to local innovation hubs to continue building out their ideas.

“Bringing together aspiring founders to explore some pressing ocean sustainability issues will have a tremendous impact on ocean health and the burgeoning ocean startup ecosystem in Canada,” said Don Grant, Executive Director at the Ocean Startup Project, in a statement.
“As these teams explore their idea and develop proven market interest in the Ocean Idea Challenge, we will build more momentum in a rapidly expanding ocean sector in Canada.”

The competition begins with a welcome and networking session on April 21 to connect prospective co-founders and encourage the formation of teams. From there, teams will explore the ocean sustainability problem they identified, and validate their idea during a two-week customer discovery sprint, where at least 25 potential customers will be interviewed to develop proven market interest.

Participants must be at least 18 years of age and cannot be from an existing startup that is earning revenue or has a product in market.
Registration for the Ocean Idea Challenge is open until April 19.

An information session will be held on April 5 at 12pm PDT/4pm ADT/4:30pm NDT.

Awards will be announced after final presentations on May 17.

Apply here