Amazon just announced their annual web services Startup Challenge. The prizes include $50,000 in cash, $50,000 in AWS credits, mentoring sessions from AWS technical experts, and AWS Premium Support Gold for one year. OfficeDrop was a finalist in in this competition last year, and it helped us get some of our initial traction and press. We definitely recommend that other startups apply for this year’s competition. OfficeDrop has also had a fair amount of luck winning/making it to the finals in several other cloud computing awards, including winning MITX’s 2009 Cloud Computing Award and being announced as a winner of the 2009 AlwaysOn Global 250 in the category of cloud computing.
We are very excited to have been so successful in these competitions, and thought it might make sense to share some of our game plan for entering these competitions. Here are the steps we take when approching a competition that might be a good fit for OfficeDrop:
1) Research the award.
a) Understand the awards’s mission statement.
b) Who are the judges? What are their backgrounds? Media-types? VCs? Technologists?
c) Who were the past winners of the award? Do you see your company standing on the stage with them?
2) Develop a clear positioning statement on how and why your company is right for this award. Come up with 3 to 5 sentences. Combine the core mission of your company with the angle that the award judgement panel will eat up.
3) Ask questions. For many competitions, the coordinators are very helpful and want to try to encourage cool startups to participate.
a) Develop a dialog with the person organizing the competition. Organizing the event is probably both fun and stressful. Keep your interaction enjoyable and don’t over-do it.
b) Always thank the person once you’ve submitted your application.
4) Have a demo account for the judges. Ensure that the way you’ve set up the demo reinforces your positioning statement and play well to the award judges.
5) Use customer testimonials/case studies that reinforce your positioning. Judges like hearing about users who are having success with your service. Be specific. Judges like concrete data and metrics. If your product / solution saves time or money (whose doesn’t), don’t just state it. Quantify it.
6) Set up a timeline for completing the application.
a) Positioning statement - 3 weeks prior to the deadline
b) First draft - 2 weeks prior; get comments from the rest of the team/advisors
c) Final draft - 1 week prior; this draft should include all comments/revisions. Yes, this should include those painful edits needed to stay under the word limits.
d) Final proof read - Couple of days before the application is due. Don’t look a the document for a few days, and then read it end to end. Look for a logical flow/structure and make sure the application fits the positioning statement.
7) If the submission also includes a presentation, practice, practice and practice. Know thy audience. It is really important to have a crisp presentation that stays on message. Make sure you present why you are the most eligible to win the award. This is involved enough, that it is worth an entire blog post (or a book) by itself. I’ll do a follow-up blog post on the art of making the sell, later on.
This process has worked out pretty well for us, but does require real commitment. However, given the press that we’ve received and the positive attention and feedback we’ve gotten from customers after we’ve won these awards we feel that the work was worth it! Here’s to your chances in the next competition that you enter!! Good Luck!
