If money is so tight for small business finance, how come there are so many business plan competitions handing out tens of thousands of dollars in cash to startups? Who cares! Start practicing your elevator pitch, check the list of contests at BizPlansCompetitions.com and submit your plan today.
Surely, there’s a business plan competition out there just for you. Several states, such as Wisconsin and Rhode Island, fund competitions for residents or contestants who say they’ll move there. Competitions can also get very local, such as the North of Boston event just for Essex County and the Merrimack Valley. The Global Security Challenge funds startups in any kind of security business; the Breakthrough Innovation Grant is for new products that can be sold through “sari-sari” stores, the mom and pop shops of the Philippines.
The prizes can be quite lucrative, such as the $100,000 first prize for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s MIT Entrepreneurship Challenge. But here’s one big catch: Many of these competitions are run by universities and may require you to have at least one student or alum on your team. You typically send in your business plan and if you make the cut, you will have to show up in person to pitch it — that itself can be a valuable experience. Some of the finalist pitch sessions are public events, but for sheer terror nothing matched the pitch during the Ball State University Entrepreneurship Center’s competition, held in the back seat of a limo while racing around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. And the pitch had to be made in 500 seconds. For 2011, they’re moving the competition indoors.
There’s nothing’s to stop you from entering multiple competitions with the same plan; Forbes wrote about one enterprising fellow who won the MIT prize, then went on to win five others. Hey, that’s a business plan right there.
