Anniversary competition "Business of innovative technologies"
BIT 2013: New season
The competition begins accepting applications for participation in the federal track.
All semifinalists will get into the accelerator!
The entrepreneurial competition "Business of Innovative Technologies" (BIT), celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, announces the start of a new season – the acceptance of applications for participation in the main, federal track of innovative projects competitions begins.
For ten years, the BIT, held under the motto "Make the investor believe in you", has become one of the most famous and authoritative technological entrepreneurship contests in Russia.
It unites students and employees of leading technical universities, scientific organizations and business schools and helps to bring original ideas and products to the market.
An important innovation of the BIT-2013 season was the acceleration program for semi-finalist projects, which includes both remote seminars and a full-time intensive course in Moscow. In combination with the prize fund of the federal final of 3 million rubles, as well as excellent opportunities to "shine" in front of the right investors and the central media, BIT provides startups with a unique chance to reach the next stage of development as quickly as possible.
In addition to the federal track, the BIT also unites 14 affiliated competitions. Any participant can apply both to "his" regional/university, and to the All-Russian BIT. The federal track has stricter refereeing, but it opens up much broader prospects for worthy players. Last year, the all-Russian BIT collected more than a thousand applications from promising startups.
The novelty of this year is a deep educational and acceleration program of projects that have reached the semi–finals of the all-Russian competition.
The first part of it includes 12 online seminars on the basics of technological entrepreneurship. In them, reputable Russian and foreign experts will tell you how to properly communicate with investors, select a startup team, build a business model, take into account the subtleties of legal registration and patenting, and explain many other things that help not to make unnecessary mistakes at the very beginning of the journey.
Each team will receive its own tutor, who will accompany the team, monitor the assimilation of the material, answer questions that arise and identify needs that require the participation of in-depth subject specialists-mentors. In turn, mentors – and each team will have several of them – will help in the competent "packaging" of the project, advise on technological subtleties or issues of marketing, law, patenting and share their experience of the success of their own endeavors.
Semi-finalists who have successfully completed distance seminars will be invited to Moscow for a two-week full-time intensive course in September. Here, teams will be able to combine studies (3-4 seminars a day in several streams in subject areas), communication with mentors, experts and journalists, as well as the final refinement of their project for submission to the judges.
The successes of the finalists of the competition of previous years can serve as an excellent recommendation for the BIT. Among them is the LinguaLeo Internet service, which teaches English to more than 3.3 million users worldwide and has received investments of more than $ 3 million.
Another typical example is the Displair project, which has appeared in the reports of many world media – from BBC, CNN and Discovery to Wired, Engadget and PC World. Behind the original "air screen" of this company, customers from "first magnitude" companies like Google, Intel, Marlboro, Microsoft and Volvo have already lined up.
However, the main thing in the BIT, as in the Olympic movement, is not victory, but participation. The three-million prize fund of the All-Russian final can serve as a solid incentive for many teams. But even more important are the intangible bonuses that all worthy participants will receive. This is, first of all, the shortest way to interested investors (the judicial corps of the BIT includes representatives of the Russian and American community of venture investors, business angels and entrepreneurs), the opportunity to tell the whole country about themselves in the central media, study in a full-fledged accelerator, as well as the help and expertise of experienced mentors.
The effectiveness of participation in the BIT competition demonstrates several more visual indicators. The semi-finalists of the two previous seasons have collectively received more than 20 million euros of investments attracted by the projects, and over the past season, more than a thousand publications about the BIT appeared in the Russian media.
To participate in the contest, you must register on the website of the BIT contest and fill out an application.
Good luck to you!
For all questions, please contact: info@bit-konkurs.ruPortal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru