San Diego-based Qualcomm chose the Demo Fall 2010 conference in Santa Clara yesterday to announce the second round of the Qualcomm Ventures QPrize, an international venture financing competition for early stage startups.
The wireless giant’s venture arm inaugurated the QPrize last year, offering a total of $550,000 in “incentive financing” to finalists from China, India, Europe, and North America. The months-long selection process was billed as a business plan competition, which turned out to be something of a misnomer, since many entries were real companies with real products.
This year, the contest is open to entrepreneurs in North America, Europe, China, South Korea, Israel, and India—and Qualcomm is offering a total of $750,000 in convertible note financing (meaning the note gets converted to preferred shares of the startup company at their next round of equity financing).
Qualcomm also says it’s teaming with Demo, the debut forum for technology startups and their products, so QPrize winners can gain some additional exposure to VC investors. QPrize finalists will be invited to Demo Spring 2011, where they can exhibit in the Demo pavilion and compete in the final round for the QPrize grand prize. The grand prize winner also will get time on the Demo stage to present its technology to an audience of venture investors, industry reporters, bloggers and other DEMO attendees.
Qualcomm says the deadline for business plan submissions is December 14, which means the startups will be selected in 2011. Details on the event are here.
Qualcomm Ventures plans to select as many as six finalists from each of the six contest markets. The finalists will each receive a $100,000 in convertible note funding from Qualcomm. The grand prize-winner will get an additional $150,000 of convertible note funding, for a total prize of $250,000 in venture financing.
