Great Opportunities for Startups

If there was ever a great time to start a business, now is that time with two great contests!

October 17th, 2007 at 11:00am — Comments: (0) — By: Jonathan Danylko — Tags: Business

Over the past month, I've been seeing a lot of people talking about preparing your ideas and building a business. Now, even the big names are getting in on the action.

Sometimes reaching out and examining how startup businesses arrive at their ideas is stimulating and invigorating. There may be some ideas that spring up from the creativity pool, but there are some that spring a leak and drain the pool completely.

Where am I going with this? It seems large companies are looking for creative ideas...and are willing to pay for them.

Intuit recently announced the JustStart contest where they are looking for the best idea for a startup and are willing to pay you close to $50,000 for your story. According to their site:

The best idea could score $40K in cash and over $10K in expert resources. Plus, two first prize winners walk away with $5K.

Enter the contest, it's easy. Tell us what you'll Just Start. Fact, fiction or fantasy.  What have you always dreamed of doing? What are you resigning from and moving towards? And, how will the Just Start grant ($50k) help you strike out on your own?

So if you have a fantastic idea, by all means share it with the world. Who knows, you may be $40,000 closer to your dream job.

Wait...there's more

For all of you programmers out there, there is another opportunity for you to make more money.

Amazon's Web Services group are giving away $50,000 cash with another $50,000 of free web services to a lucky company or entrepreneur with a great start-up idea as well.

Amazon Web Services Start Up Challenge allows not only a programmer, but a non-programmer to come up with web site ideas. The entry form includes how everything would be defined in your business plan (provided you have one).

So, if you could create your own web site that incorporates Amazon's web services and it's creative enough, why not submit to both contests. Who knows...you may win both.

UPDATE: Oct-18-2007 - Entrepreneur.com JUST added this little gem regarding another site called IdeaBlob that is giving away $10,000 for great ideas.