The New Brunswick Innovation Foundation yesterday launched its Breakthru startup competition, which will offer the largest prize ever for the biennial contest.
The Fredericton-based innovation agency sent out a press release calling for pre-revenue startups to apply for the contest before Dec. 9. The contestants will be competing for a total pool of prizes worth more than $500,000 in cash and in-kind services. It’s a significant increase over the total prizes of $406,000 in the 2013 event.
“By getting a bigger prize pool, it gives us the ability to be of more help to the winners,” said NBIF Chief Executive Calvin Milbury. The larger amount of prizes will allow the winners greater “runway,” meaning they will have more money and services to spend longer developing their product.
NBIF has already secured two primary sponsors for the event, Cox & Palmer and Deloitte, and is hoping to bring in more sponsors to contribute in-kind services for the prizes. The foundation hopes to bring in more organizations as sponsors partly because it wants more groups participating in the ecosystem for startups.
Milbury said the aim is to come up with a “company in a box” to present to the winners. That means that in addition to an investment by NBIF, they will have legal and accounting services, as well as banking, insurance, web design and the like.
In the previous competition, the first price was worth $192,000 (consisting of $160,000 in cash investment and $32,000 in professional services), second prize $137,000 and third prize $77,000.
NBIF hopes to announce the details of the prize pot for the current competition in November.
Who should enter? According to Milbury, the perfect candidate is a team with a good idea who have done some work on their project but have yet to incorporate. But the competition is open to all pre-revenue New Brunswick entrepreneurs, from those with an idea to those with an organized business.
People can enter by completing the application, paying an $85 entry fee, submitting a two-page executive summary and providing a one-minute video pitch. (Here’s an example of a pitch that impressed the organizers in the last competition.)
Once the deadline for applications passes on Dec. 9, NBIF will comb through the submissions, determine those who are eligible and invite them to the introductory bootcamp on Jan. 17. The entrants then submit their final pitches, after which five finalists are chosen.
CBC will present features on the five finalists on its TV newscast and on its website, and people are invited to vote for their favourites. As in previous years, Breakthru will present a Viewers’ Choice award as well as the prizes chosen by the judges.
The winner will be announced at a dinner, typically attended by more than 400 people, at the Fredericton Convention Centre on March 19.
Breakthru began as a student competition in 2004 and previous participants have included such high-profile startups as Smart Skin Technologies, Inversa Systems and Scene Sharp.
Disclaimer: Entrevestor receives financial support from government agencies – including the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation -- that support startup companies in Atlantic Canada. The sponsoring agencies play no role in determining which companies and individuals are featured in this column, nor do they review columns before they are published.
