Coventry £30K Entrepreneurship Competition:
This year sees the start of the Coventry £30K - a competition to find the best business plans for starting a new company. It is run by the Coventry University Entrepreneurs student society and, thanks to generous financial support of a number of organisations, provides £30,000 in prize money to help these businesses get off the ground.
Teams entering the competition are provided with training to help lead them through the process of spotting a market opportunity, writing a strong business plan, raising funds and then on to starting and growing the business.
Similar Competitions in the US, notably the MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competittion, have led to the formation and growth of a number of exciting new businesses.
A number of teams that have entered the MIT $50K competition at MIT but were not successful in the final round have still gone on to build successful businesses thanks to the training, support and networking they recieved. |  | Companies emerging from the MIT $50K competition include:
" Firefly Networks
Grew from Internet agent ideas developed by MIT researchers to a company with 70 employees in six years, attracting $20m funding and successfully exited in a sale to Microsoft last year for $40m. "
" Sensable Technologies
A 3-D force-feedback mouse developed in 1993 for a thesis proved popular and has now attracted over $7 million investment. Yearly revenues now exceed $2 million with major contracts at Ford and Nasa. "
" Lexicus
One man's handwriting recognition idea took just one year to prove as world beating, before Motorola bought it and he now leads a large division developing the successful software series. " |