Entrepreneurs with new ideas are invited to apply for Dalhousie University’s third annual $100K Competition, part of the university’s LaunchPad Accelerator.

The $100K Competition is one of several Launch Dal initiatives organized by the Norman Newman Centre for Entrepreneurship. The contest is modelled after the $100k competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It’s the entry point for Launch Dal’s on-campus LaunchPad Accelerator which runs at The Collider from mid-May to mid-July. Anyone interested in the program can apply here until April 29.

The 10 top finalists receive $10,000 each in non-dilutive funds through the competition and are accepted into the LaunchPad.

“We started Dal's on-campus LaunchPad Accelerator in 2014, largely driven by the early successes of teams like Spring Loaded Technology, Analyze Re, and Sage Mixology, participants in the initial Starting Lean course in 2012,” said Professor Mary Kilfoil in an email. 

“We see our role as feeding the entrepreneurial pipeline in the ecosystem, and helping to fill a need in the market where university-based early-stage startups are still developing their go-to-market strategy.” 

The LaunchPad Accelerator is an accredited eight-week Canadian university accelerator program for early-stage startups that have validated their business model and achieved some market traction.

The accelerator brings together mentors, venture capitalists, and serial entrepreneurs. It provides prototyping capacity and other discounted services to help the early-stage ventures better enter the market.   

The programming is modelled on that offered through the REV program at Communitech in Kitchener, Ont.