Visibility is a major thing for start-ups, and one thing to be able to get that is to pitch your company in an event or for an award. Winning an award means media coverage, some times real money and access to investors. There are several competitions in which a start-up can submit its business. Strangely enough, there is no website which lists them all in an overview.., so I had to do some research on the web in order to come up with the following suggestions.
I want to create a complete list of awards here. So if you know of any other awards, please comment on this post so I can add it to the list.
Upcoming competitions
- Accenture Innovation Awards – Dutch companies in media, entertainment or communication that started in the last 3 years can participate.
- The Strands awards – competition for early stage international startups in the area of recommendation technologies with a very appealing price of $100.000.
- CNET Networks UK Business Technology – this competition has some 17 prestigious awards for UK business technology innovators. Final deadline to submit applications is May 31, 2008, but maybe it is enough to become the IT Community Hero of the Year.
- The Startup Awards major competition for UK start-ups in October 2008.
- Vodafone Mobile Clicks for mobile start-up companies to develop new, innovative, creative and technically viable mobile internet products and/or services. Date to be submitted June 25, 2008. Awards during Picnic in October 2008, Amsterdam. Awards of Euro 100,000.
- Google Android Competition, with total monies available of USD 10,000,000.
- Web Marketing Web Awards, in 96 categories, including best websites, to be submitted till June 15, 2008.
- Startup Awards in the UK, including the Online Startup of the Year, Young Entrepreneur of the Year and Innovative Business of the Year. Deadline entry 4 th July 2008.
- London Technology Fund Competition, for potentially high growth seed, start-up early stage technology companies, based in London. Price from 100,000 till 1M Pounds sterling. Deadline 30th June, 2008.
- DEMO GOD AWARDS and the DEMO People’s Choice awards.
Completed competitions
Make sure you set your agenda for next year awards.
- Blackberry Women in Technology awards – Female internet hero Professor Lizbeth Goodman of the SMARTlab Digital Media Institute was named the BlackBerry outstanding woman in technology, while Beatriz Alonso Martinez of Avid Technology Europe Ltd was awarded the ‘Best use of technology within the multimedia industry by a woman’.
- The First Women Awards – UK competition created to acknowledge women who are pioneers in business. Female internet hero Fru Hazlitt, former Managing director, Yahoo UK and now CEO of GCap Media, was one of the price winners in the past.
- 2008 Fast Growth Business Awards – Margeret Manning, CEO of award winning digital communications agency, Reading Room won the Female Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2008.
- Broos van Erp Price, A Dutch ICT competition with an award of euro 50.000.
- UK Internet Industry Awards
- The Webby Awards, recognizing outstanding Websites in 65+ categories!! Ans also a Webperson of the Year. The Oscars of the Internet.
- Startup Camp, arranged through Speed Geeking sessions during the Camps in SF, London, with an impressive attendee list.
- Plugg Start-up of the Year Award, with the European Focus on web 2.0
- Innovation and Technology awards for Swedish startups.
Tech conference competitions
- Crunchies Techcrunch awards
- The Next Web Awards
- Women 2.0 Business Plan competition – took place at the recent Women 2.0 Conference and Pitch Night in San Fransisco.
- Web 2.0 Expo – Keep an eye on the blog to check for awards during the Web 2.0 Expo editions in New York and Berlin.
- PICNIC Green Challenge 2008 – is your start-up doing something to stop climate change? Enroll in this competition.
- Seedcamp, who at least once a year, brings together Europe’s top young founders and a world class network of mentors in one place.
Hey Simone,
What a fantastic idea! It’s great award programs like the aforementioned that really give upstart entrepreneurs the exposure and boost they need to get a business running and ever-expanding. Thank you for posting this fabulous blog entry.
I’m an official Microsoft ambassador and right now we’re really trying to scale up our connections with influential bloggers like yourself. I’d love to share with you some of the stuff we’ve been doing in the last couple months to help women entrepreneurs; we’re really committed to providing all the necessary resources to help women start, grow and expand their business.
We just wrapped up a women’s entrepreneurial tour across the US; the response and turn-out was great!
I’d really love your take on these offerings we have right now; I would have contacted you via email but I didn’t know which was the best way to reach you.
Thank you so much, I hope I didn’t overstep my bounds by directly contacting you. Definitely get back to me if I’ve piqued your interest– I’d love to share more info with you.
Best,
Kimberly
Official Microsoft Ambassador
k-rosenberg@live.com
From the (2008) 23rd Annual SIAA Codie Awards award winners page:
CORPORATE CATEGORIES
Content Newcomer of the Year
• Generate, Inc.
Education Newcomer of the Year
• Adaptive Curriculum
Software Newcomer of the Year
• OpenSpan, Inc.
http://www.siia.net/codies/2008/winners.asp
From the (2008) TechCrunch50 recognition awards page:
DemoPit Audience Choice Award (this winner gets the last presentation slot on stage at the conference)
Best Consumer Start-up
Best Entertprise Start-up
Best Mobile Start-up
Best International Start-up
Best TC50 Presenter
http://www.techcrunch50.com/2008/techcrunch50-awards/
From the 2008 SXSW Interactive awards page:
We are pleased to reveal the 11th Annual Web Awards Winners. Make sure to explore all the finalists honored at this year’s ceremony.
Hundreds and hundreds of innovative web designers and developers from across the globe submitted websites in this year’s competition, all sites that have been launched or completely redesigned in 2007.
http://2008.sxsw.com/interactive/web_awards/
I’m not sure this is exactly what you’re looking for, but this is from my political calendar at http://www.allthingsreform.org
David Weller
Generally I see awards as having a great ability to attract attention themselves, simply because there are always so many people looking to get coverage. Thus awards are a great way to get coverage! I give one example. One of the most popular sites in the UK is the Saatchi Gallery, but it happened not by chance, they employed many tactics to attain that level of participation. Not least paid traffic to start, then they launched their competition and the traffic went up to 50 million pages with a few million uniques.
So my advice would be, if you want coverage, rather than partake in someone else’s, create your own competition!
Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) today announced recipients of its “Seeds for Success: Empowering Women Entrepreneurs” grant program, choosing three unique, innovative business ideas from more than 5,500 proposals. The grant recipients were selected by Yahoo! and Carolyn Kepcher, entrepreneur and former star of NBC’s “The Apprentice.” Each grant package includes $20,000 in cash, $5,000 in web site consulting, and web site hosting from Yahoo!.
We are looking for your help!
The crowd (=that is YOU) knows much more than we do about innovation in media and communications industries. If you know of great new concepts (< 3 years), please let us know on http://www.innovation-awards.nl.
Many award competitions have a deadline in June and July for events in September and October, 2008. Check out the list in the post, which I have updated with recent info.
In Germany we have such a place. http://www.foerderland.de/660.0.html promotes most of the awards that are connected to startups. Most of them are limited to certain states but on occasion you’ll find German Awards that are open internationally.
Hi, great resource, thanks for putting it up. In our “Result Opportunity Radar” for emerging leaders, we have also managed to index very interesting companies who enter lists / competitions such as, Businessweek (http://www.businessweek.com/), Guidewiregroup (http://guidewiregroup.wordpress.com/about/), EContent Mag (http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/Editorial/Feature/EC100-Introduction-&-Category-Descriptions-51631.htm), MEF (http://www.m-e-f.org/news/mef_news/meffys_2009_shortlist_underlines_mobile_entertainments_evolution_and_global_reach/)
that give a very good idea of the European tech scene too