The deadline is fast approaching to enter New Brunswick’s Breakthru competition, which offers a total prize pot of $1 million and is open to startups across the country.

The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation has set a deadline of 11:59 pm Nov. 15 to submit an entry.

The innovation agency holds the Breakthru competition every other year with the goal of helping young companies to get off the ground with funding and mentorship.

NBIF will award $750,000 in cash and in-kind services to the top three New Brunswick companies. And for the first time it will set aside $250,000 for a company from other parts of Canada that wants to set up base in New Brunswick.

The sixth edition of Breakthru, sponsored by Cox & Palmer and Deloitte, offers the largest prize package of any comparable competition in Canada. The result of the competition is that four young companies will be growing in the province with an average of $250,000 of development capital or expertise. The prizes include professional services like legal, accounting and marketing advice. NBIF Chief Executive Calvin Milbury likes to call the prize a “company in a box”.

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The national competition – which is not open to companies from Quebec, due to unique regulations for competitions in that province – is designed to attract companies to New Brunswick. The winners will receive a $200,000 venture capital investment from NBIF as well as $50,000 in in-kind services.

As well as the prizes, the Breakthru competition helps to educate novice entrepreneurs in developing a business. The process this year will include two bootcamps, one held on the weekend of Dec. 2 and 3, and the second on Jan. 28.

In 2015, Breakthru was won by Castaway Golf, which develop an automated system for retrieving golf balls from water hazards, which could then be sold on to golfers.  

Applicants can find the entry details here. The winners will be announced at the Breakthru LIVE 2017 gala at the Fredericton Convention Centre on March 23, 2017.