Who How Why

Who Should Enter

This program is for Minnesota's entrepreneurs, inventors and small business people. It is for those individuals or early stage businesses that are pursuing their dreams and working on their breakthrough business idea.

Whether you are at the point of inception or already have created a company and are pursuing your breakthrough idea, this program is intended to provide support for you as an entrepreneur.

How to Enter

Entering the Minnesota Cup is easy:

1) Anytime after March 25, 2013, visit the Minnesota Cup homepage and in the upper right-hand corner of the page, click on "Enter the Competition."

2) You'll be automatically taken to a Minnesota Cup application page, which is where all initial entries will be submitted.

3) The application page will prompt you to create a username and password for accessing your entry, which you'll always be able to access and edit up until the deadline by clicking on "Enter the Competition" from the Minnesota Cup homepage.

4) The official Minnesota Cup entry form will then be displayed and you can begin working on your entry.  You'll be able to log-out and log back in as many times as you would like prior to the entry deadline of 11:59pm on May 17 to update your entry.  

5) Please make sure all fields are filled out before 11:59pm on May 17, 2013, as that will be the final entry. 

Why Enter?

Our hope is that in some fashion, we are able to assist each entrant on their journey as an entrepreneur.

For some, it will be a chance to critically think about how to articulate their business idea or how to answer the questions that investors most want to know about their idea.

For others who advance further into the competition, there may be opportunities to expand your networks by meeting leading investors, developing relationships in the business community, gaining valuable media exposure and even winning the top prizes of seed capital and professional advisory services from our partners.

Finally, we are hopeful that the tools that we are providing in the resource center will prove to be useful to you as an entrepreneur, regardless of where you finish in the competition.

For feedback from previous year's entrants, please see the testimonials page.