NJIT New Business Model Competition Now Open to North Jersey Students, Startups Coping with COVID
The NJIT New Business Model Competition will be held again this fall, this time virtually. For the 2020 contest, the judges will want to see ideas that focus on COVID-related pivots in support of economic restarts for new ventures.
“The New Business Model Competition 2020 has expanded to invite everyone who works or lives in North Jersey to submit their great ideas for startups, to win cash and participation in the NJIT Lean Startup Accelerator,” said Michael Ehrlich, associate professor of finance at the NJIT Martin Tuchman School of Management and director of NJIT’s Leir Institute for Business, Technology and Society.
“This year, we are especially interested in submissions which focus on how startups are responding to COVID, either with solutions or clever ideas on how to advance during these challenging times,” he said. “As we find ourselves working from home or in more constrained circumstances, we feel it is important to reach out to a broad community of entrepreneurs to support our entrepreneurial ecosystem and to demonstrate the vitality of our creative spirits.”
The contest is open to any student at a North Jersey college or university and to any member of the North Jersey community who is looking to start a business in the area. Those submitting as community members cannot be full-time students.
According to the program website, “We are offering pre-competition training through the Lean Startup Jumpstart program … finalists and winners will be part of the NJIT Lean Startup Summer Accelerator” which will provide free training worth 25,000 per team.
The principal program sponsor, Synchrony Bank, will provide Innovation Acceleration Fellowships to the winners of $2,500 each, which will allow them to work on their business ideas while participating in next summer’s Lean Startup Accelerator.
The deadline for submissions is Monday, November 9. For more information please visit this website.
