Welcome to the Minnesota Cup!The Largest Statewide New Venture Competition |
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The Minnesota Cup is an annual competition that seeks to support and accelerate the development of the best breakthrough ideas from across Minnesota. We are looking for the next great entrepreneurial success story in our state.
This competition is for all entrepreneurs, whether your breakthrough idea is high tech or no tech, whether you are just putting your ideas into a business plan or if you've been out building your venture.
The 2012 competition is now underway. Participants have until May 18 to submit their ideas (May 25 if entering the Social division). Good luck!
Entry process for all divisions other than Social:
1) In the upper righthand corner of this page, click on "Enter the Competition".
2) You'll be taken automatically 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 (your email address) and password for accessing your entry.
4) The system will send you a registration confirmation email, in which you must click a link to confirm your email address and access the entry form. This email comes from producteev@producteev.com and is frequently ending up in spam so be sure to monitor this folder.
5) 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 to edit/revise your entry as many times as you would like prior to the deadline of 11:59pm on May 18.
To enter the Social division, please see http://svpmn.org/programs/social-ent-cup-award/.
Quick Links:
CNN Money Coverage of Prominent Small Business Competitions Across the Nation
Innovative medical device, biotech, health IT and life science ideas.
Innovative ideas involving clean technology and renewable energy.
Innovative products, services and solutions in manufacturing, recreation, education and all other ideas.
Innovative web 2.0, mobile, software and hardware ideas.
Innovative solutions to society's most pressing social problems.
For full and part-time undergraduate and graduate students attending a college or university in Minnesota and who are between the ages of 19 and 30 and have less than 5 years of work experience.
Minnesota Cup Supplements
Each year, Twin Cities Business provides enhanced coverage of the Minnesota Cup through a 16 page supplement. To the right are supplements from the 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 & 2011 competitions that can be downloaded as PDF's.
Success Stories
As the Minnesota Cup program grows and evolves, one of the most important themes is that the program works. Many past finalist and semi-finalist have met investors, advisors, board members, business partners and business professionals through various Minnesota Cup events, the semi-final reception, the awards event in the fall and through media attention they have received during and after the competition.
Whether it's 2005 finalist HealthSimple who went on to successfully sell their business to Johnson & Johnson, 2006 winner VAST Enterprises and their growth including a partnership with Fabcon or 2009 winner Alvenda who closed on their series A round soon after the competition ended, we hear stories of past entrants that have had great success since participating in the Minnesota Cup.
