The Big List of Business and Startup Competitions
Enthusiastic small business owners and contests go together like peanut butter and jelly. Similarly, entrepreneurs are always looking for new sources of funding and building their networks. Lots of these boxes can be checked off when you enter a startup or business competition. By the way, although many entrepreneurial and small business contests have only one or two winners, the connections the entrants make and the exposure they get can be worth more than the cash prize that goes to the grand prize winner. Often the entrepreneurs who walk away with mere participant ribbons end up being more successful than the contest winners. Further, entering a small business or startup contest the first time helps you sharpen your business plan and better understand what it takes to be a winner – in the contest world and in the actual business world. With a few exceptions – which I’ll get to in just a moment – most of the 2016 contests start taking applications in January. However, the practical way to approach contest entries is to size them up early and start planning which best suit your situation. With that thought, I’m going to share a list of recent contests so you can study them and see if any warrant further study and planning as the 2016 approaches. Roll Tide! But before I give you the list of contests to check out for the future, let me mention one cool regional contest that you can enter right now…if you’re a Business Council of Alabama member: The Small Business Game Changer 2016. Registration just opened and runs until Jan. 29, 2016. The winner will get promoted at Alabama’s Bryant-Denny Stadium and mentioned during Crimson Tide football radio broadcasts for the entire 2016 regular season. If that’s not enough, ’Bama fans, you get two season tickets and free parking. The following list starts with a few programs that are already accepting or close to accepting applications. One of those, Y Combinator, puts two groups of startups through its program each year. I know there are other accelerators, as well as state and local programs, so if you don’t find what you need here, keep looking and talk to local entrepreneurs. Finally, speaking of local and regional competitions, you’ll note that several on this list are associated with universities. These are usually open to both students and alumni. Y Combinator (October 13 deadline) Rhode Island Business Plan (Kick-Off Oct. 15) Start it Up | eMerge Americas (apply now for 2016) Carnegie Mellon University Venture Challenge QPrize | Qualcomm Ventures MassChallenge | World’s Largest Startup Accelerator Build a Business Competition by Shopify. Arch Grants MIT$100K | The Entrepreneurship Competition Startup Battlefield – The premiere startup launch competition | TechCrunch WJF – Sustainable Business Plan Competition New York StartUP! 2016 Business Plan Competition | The New York Public Library FastPitch – The Creative Coast HATCH pitch Innotribe » 2015 Startup Challenge Competition Nw Hampshire (NH) Startup Challenge | Manchester Young Professionals Network Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest GW New Venture Competition | The George Washington University Hult Prize: start-up accelerator for social entrepreneurship Up-Start! Competition – MaRS Test Your Business Mettle :: UNM Business Plan Competition | The University of New Mexico Competitions – Gordon Institute French-American Entrepreneurship Award| FAEA Club 600 Salem State University Business...
read moreHow to sell things: Highlight the obvious
“Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” – H.L. Mencken If you feel a bit insulted by that classic Mencken comment, I need to tell you that so do I. However, there’s a bit – actually a lot – of truth in it, especially when you put it in the context of dealing with large groups of people. And to be fair, Mencken was referring to the “American public” when he said it, which is a rather large group of people. You need to keep this in mind when you’re creating anything that can be remotely considered a marketing or advertising piece for your small business. When you are trying to sell people on something, you have to start out with the mindset that you need to lead your prospects every step of the way. And here’s a very important, and often overlooked part of this: When describing benefits in a sales piece you must include the obvious. Small business owners become so close to their product, service or offer that they stop seeing the obvious benefits. In fact, this is why so many advertising pieces, landing pages, and content marketing materials focus almost exclusively on features instead of benefits. Small business owners gets super excited about all the cool features they have developed that they forget the basic benefits those features create for the consumer. Consider this: The most versatile widget in the world! Our new widget has 27 settings so it can handle whatzits of all sizes! Imagine how much easier it will be to run your line and push product through with that level of adaptability. If you’re still using the old style widget, you’re going to be blown away by the way ours will transform your shop. That may seem okay but it is far too focused on the features and it assumes the person reading it is going to think deeply on the subject. Sorry. People are busy and frankly most don’t like to think. How about something like this: Save $5460 next year by making one simple change You’re spending seven hours a week right now adjusting your old widget to handle all the different-sized whatzits that come through your shop. Do the math. With our widget you’ll save seven hours a week, 52 weeks a year. At $15 an hour, that’s $5460 straight into your bank account. Effective appeals are those that hit people on an emotional level because our emotions are universal. People have widely varying abilities to logic things out, but they are all moved by the same basic emotional triggers. Hand anyone a check for $5460 and it’s going to make a big impression. Make the same person consider the variables involved with increased assembly line productivity and you’re skating on thin ice. A few will get it, but most won’t. Look over your marketing materials and drill down to discover the most obvious benefits and their related basic human emotions so you can tap into those to sell your product of service. Then sit back and watch what happens. Image: By Reid, O. Richard (Oliver Richard), b. 1898, Artist (NARA record: 8466378) (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration) [Public domain], via Wikimedia...
read moreThis Week in Small Business: Should You Invest in More People, or More Technology?
This week’s collection of top articles includes guidance to help you decide between spending on people vs technology, info to get you up-to-date on Obamacare, and tips to show you the best way to approach your local media for free publicity. Leadership, management and productivity It takes people and/or technology to grow your small business or get your startup to the next level. These five questions will help you guide your investment in growth between people and technology. What kind of culture or style do you have in your small business? How would an Amazon-ish style work for you? I think the Affordable Care Act has had the longest rollout of any legislation in modern history, so it’s been difficult to keep tabs on. Here are five things every small business owner needs to know about it. While we’re on practical topics for small business management, be sure you aren’t suffering from these misconceptions about risk. Marketing and sales Marketing legend Seth Godin says businesses need editors not “brand managers.” That’s just one of his insights in this far ranging interview. For B2B small businesses, LinkedIn may be the best place for social media marketing. Here are 13 ways to boost your LinkedIn presence. Email marketing can generate good revenue for your small business, but you shouldn’t go it alone. Free publicity via the media is great, but you need to understand how the media works before you go pitching your small business. Writing for Search Engine Watch, Graham Charlton outlines eight ways small business content marketing and SEO can work together. If marketing and sales departments want to get firing on all cylinders, they need to work together. Here are five ways they can work together for better content. Entrepreneurship, startups and innovation When it comes to commandments, 10 seems to be the right number. Rakia Reynolds gives us 10 commandments for every small-business entrepreneur. The so-called “gig economy” goes hand-in-hand with small business and startups. Here’s sort of a Gig Economy State of the Union article. Politics, government and the economy The National Labor Relations Board has been busy upsetting a lot of small business apple carts lately. Its latest target is the employee-employer relationship between franchisees and the franchise corporations. The SBA will make 40 awards in its State Trade and Export Promotion program to states and territories to support small business exporting. In all, small businesses should receive some $17 million through the program. While the NLRB is dealing with employee-employer issues, the FTC is going after various multi-level marketing operations. It’s working hard to shut down Vemma. Could Herbalife be...
read moreWhy Service Providers Need Errors and Omissions Insurance
Imagine you’re a small tech startup. Maybe you’re trying to carve out a business providing IT solutions to individuals or small companies. Then one bright Rocky Mountain morning you find the FBI at your door with search warrants and they’re coming in to grab some hardware. Like it or not. That’s probably not far from the real story of Platte River Networks, the small Denver-based firm that took possession of Hillary Clinton’s email server. Do you think the folks at Platte River Networks are going to need some expensive legal representation? Without a doubt. I know nothing about the management of this small firm, or its politics, or how much money it has behind it. The point is that small businesses can find themselves in situations that suddenly require them to hire expensive attorneys, even if they have done nothing wrong. Small business insurance We’ve discussed insurance for small businesses and freelancers before on these pages. And I’ve cautioned you to not rely on your homeowner’s insurance if you’re running your small business out of your house. However, that discussion didn’t venture into some areas of liability. Going back to the email server farm for a moment: What if it is discovered that the company didn’t take the standard industry-recognized measures to secure data on its servers? In a case like that the company would essentially be guilty of malpractice, just like a doctor who doesn’t handle a patient case properly. E&O insurance for small businesses If you provide a service to someone, you need to consider errors and omissions (E&O) insurance. Imagine you’re a wedding planner and you really mess up the bride’s big day. Who will you turn to when you get a call from Bridezilla’s attorney first thing Monday morning? Or if you write code for clients and something goes wrong causing your client a financial loss, you’ll probably be asked to make up for the loss…and then some. Unfortunately, in the US when bad things happen – even when they are unintentional – lawyers almost always get involved, and it’s costly. Small business marketing edge There is an “up side” to this discussion. Having insurance in place helps establish your professional credibility. When you’re in discussions with prospective clients, be sure to mention the fact that you are insured. That might prompt them to ask the next interviewee if he or she has insurance. If that person is uninsured, you get a distinct advantage. No one wants to go on a cross-country road trip with an uninsured driver, right? E&O policies are somewhat less standard than fire insurance or personal injury coverage, but a good local small business insurance agent should be able to help you find the level of coverage that is appropriate to your small...
read moreExplore Jeff Hayzlett’s Perspective: If Knowledge is Power in Small Business, What About All the Unknowns?
Does anyone use the phrase, “Hey! Waddya know?” as a greeting any more? That simple phrase seemed harmless enough to me until I was reading through Jeff Hayzlett’s new book, “Think Big, Act Bigger: The Rewards of Being Relentless.” He ploughs the philosophical ground of what we know and what we don’t know rather deeply. When you read the book, I suspect you’ll pause for a few moments in Chapter Eight to consider your own knowledge and presuppositions. A friend of mine used to teach high school students – who, as you probably are aware, know everything. He wanted to get them to consider for even a moment that some of the things they were clinging to as truth, might not be so true after all, so he asked them a couple of questions: “Do you think you know everything?” he asked. (Even teenagers when asked directly have to admit they might not know every single thing there is to know. Once they admitted this he followed up. “Okay, given that there are things in the world that you don’t know, do you think any of those unknowns will ever prove to you that something you hold as true today, in fact, isn’t true?” This is something we need to understand in business as well because, as Hayzlett puts it, if we are overconfident in our knowledge we lose awareness and it makes us oblivious to things in the present and we “stop looking for them and acting on them for the future.” “Not being in a constant state of awareness of who we are, how we are perceived, the trends in our industries, and how we (and our competitors) are doing things means we aren’t thinking beyond what we know (emphasis mine).” Hayzlett writes in his new release. Growing your business and joining the one percent of small business owners who get to those million-dollar levels of sales, takes being in command today and being ready to be in command tomorrow. And let’s face it, tomorrow, by definition, is an “unknown.” You need to be fully aware of this, take care of today’s challenges, and always be looking beyond what is real and true today to what will be real and true tomorrow. Here’s the way Hayzlett puts it: “Too many times we think we have gotten our business to where it is supposed to be and will always be and stop thinking about what is left to learn in the present, not just the future. In other words, too often we get by just focusing on the known knowns.” This is, of course, a paradox and as humans we are uncomfortable living a paradox. But to be successful in your small business you have to have the courage and conviction to go all-in with your vision today knowing that you’re just dealing with the “known knowns.” The key is to keep your eyes open, your awareness volume knob turned up to “10” (or “11” if you’re a fan of “Spinal Tap”) and always be adding to your “known knowns.” When you do that, you position yourself to “Think Big, Act...
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