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Twenty candles for MIT's $100K Entrepreneurship Competition

E-mail | Print | Comments () Posted by Scott Kirsner May 6, 2010 01:57 PM

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I'm expecting MIT's Kresge Auditorium to be jammed next Wednesday night, when the 20th edition of MIT's annual business plan competition, known as the $100K (originally it was just the $10K), holds its finale. Several teams will have the chance to present short "elevator pitches" about their ideas, and one team will get a $100,000 check to help launch their company.

Not every winner of the competition has gone on to raging success, but there have been some notable finalists and grand prize winners over the years, including Harmonix Music Systems (a 1995 finalist that later created the videogames "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band"); Akamai Technologies (a 1998 finalist that IPOed the following year); and Brontes Technologies (a 2003 finalist acquired by 3M three years later for nearly $100 million). Brian Cantwell, an MBA candidate at Sloan who is managing director of this year's competition, tells me that one of the best financial returns for a start-up spawned by the program was when Silicon Spice, a telecom chipmaker that participated in 1995, was acquired in 2000 for $1.2 billion (in Broadcom stock, I should add.) Organizers say the $100K has spawned about 120 companies, which at some point have employed over 2,500 people.

Last year's winner was Ksplice, now a ten-employee Cambridge start-up that enables system administrators to update the software on a Linux computer without having to reboot it afterward. Last month, the company was named to VC Journal's list of the twenty most-promising start-up companies in the U.S., and last summer it won a $100,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Science Foundation. (The company hasn't yet taken in any venture capital funding.)

Here's the quite entertaining two-minute pitch Ksplice gave at the $100K finals last spring:

And here's a video retrospective of two decades of the competition.

The finale event is Wednesday, May 12th... it's free to attend... and it runs from 7 PM to 9:30.

tags $100K, Akamai, Brian Cantwell, Brontes Technologies, business plan competitions, Harmonix Music Systems, MIT, Silicon Spice

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About Scott Kirsner Scott Kirsner was part of the team that launched Boston.com in 1995, and has been writing a column for the Globe since 2000. His work has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, The New York Times, BusinessWeek, Newsweek, and Variety. Scott is also the author of the books "Fans, Friends & Followers" and "Inventing the Movies," was the editor of "The Convergence Guide: Life Sciences in New England," and was a contributor to "The Good City: Writers Explore 21st Century Boston." Scott also helps organize several local events on entrepreneurship, including the Nantucket Conference and Future Forward. Here's some background on how Scott decides what to cover, and how to pitch him a story idea.

Events

June 12: MITX Innovation Awards
Honoring innovative sites, software, and tech products created in New England.

June 13: Mass Innovation Nights
The monthly product launch event and schmooze-fest comes to the North Shore for the first time.

June 18-21: BIO International Convention
The enormous biotech industry trade show comes to town, with speakers like Senator John Kerry, Christopher Viehbacher of Sanofi, and Human Genome Sciences CEO Thomas Watkins.

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