ANNOUNCEMENT
HKUST-SINO One Million Dollar Entrepreneurship Competition 2024
Posted on 1st May 2024
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology is pleased to announce the HKUST-Sino One Million Dollar Entrepreneurship Competition 2024 (“Competition”) will take place in Oct 2024.
Witnessing the growth of entrepreneurial activities in our region, the Competition aims to provide a platform for HKUST and surrounding community members an integrative learning experience to create and evaluate new business and to prepare students and alumni to start their future career in entrepreneurship. Winners of the Competition can use the cash prize as seed money to build their own company or to further the commercialisation of their inventions and scientific researches.
This year's Competition has expanded its eligibility beyond the HKUST community members to include teams with HKUST licensed technologies, fostering innovation and collaboration. This expansion provides a platform for innovators to transform ideas into viable businesses, promoting entrepreneurship and driving technological progress.
To further support the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals and uphold its commitment to fostering the development of sustainable start-up enterprises, the competition has retained the "Sustainability Impact Awards”. This award aims to encourage the generation and transformation of environmentally friendly ideas into impactful businesses.
With the global collaboration and innovation in mind, this year’s Competition newly introduced an International Track to expand its reach and impact to the global by inviting aspiring entrepreneurs from our partner Universities to showcase their ground-breaking ideas. The top 5 teams from this track will be invited to join the presentation in person at the Final Competition.
To foster the entrepreneurial atmosphere in HKUST community and encourage the involvement of all its community members, a voting activity is introduced again this year. HKUST community members are encouraged to view the videos online and vote on their favourite video. The top video receiving the most votes will win the Best Video Award. Voters will also have a chance to participate in the luck draw for prizes.
Additionally, we will continue to have this competition in 5 different regions including this one in our Clear Water Bay Campus. The 3 winning HKUST Track teams will compete with other winning teams from Beijing, Foshan, Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the Grand Final, which will be held later in 2024.
Participants:
The HKUST Track is open for application. This track is open to all full-time and part-time students at all levels, post-docs, alumni, researchers, faculty and staff from all departments within HKUST. It is also open to local, mainland and international schools who want to compete in this Competition under the condition that the team must have at least one HKUST faculty or student or alumni or staff OR the team is licensed HKUST intellectual property (IP) and/or technology in their start-ups
The International Student Track is by invitation only.
Submissions:
All submissions will be in English and must be submitted online (HERE), no paper entries will be accepted. There will not be a limit on the topics for submission, however, we encourage applicants to focus on the technology and innovation driven business. The topics can be related to nanotechnology, information technology, renewable energy, environment, healthcare, financial services, logistics and social enterprise. For submission details, please refer to “Application & Eligibility”, “Submission Rules”.
Judging Process:
The assessment process consists of 3 rounds: Pitch Deck (with minimum 5 pages but no more than 10 pages), 5-min Pitching Session with 3-min Q&A Session and 5-min Pitching Session with 7-min Q&A Session which will take place from July to Oct 2024. For details of the judging process, please refer to “Judging Process”.
Awards:
Winners of the HKUST-Sino One Million Dollar Entrepreneurship Competition 2024 will be awarded with cash prizes. The Competition will also provide the participants a chance to introduce their business plans to an international panel of investors and executives, while making a name for themselves within the HKUST community and in Hong Kong.
Application Deadline:
We invite interested parties to submit their online applications with their 10 page Pitch Deck for the Round 1 Assessment on or before 5 July 2024.