Business Plan Competitions

These competitions identify and support up-and-coming, innovative, high-growth entrepreneurs.

Participants receive business training, networking, one-to-one support, expert & professional advice, plus kudos and cash-prizes for the winners.

Some competition streams are open to pre-startup/spinout projects, whilst others are for early-stage companies that have already formed.

Earth Blox

Earth Blox is a startup founded by Dr Genevieve Patanaude (pictured) from the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences. Earth Blox launched its services in May 2020, providing cloud-based software-as-a-service that empowers anyone, anywhere to create their own Earth observation and satellite data solutions. It is already being used in a number of sectors including insurance, disaster response and conflict management.

In Autumn 2020, Earth Blox won a rare double victory in Scotland’s most prestigious enterprise awards, taking the biggest prize in Converge Challenge and a win at Scottish Edge. These awards helped raise the profile of Earth Blox in Scotland, which continues to grow from five employees in 2021 to 11 employees in 2022.

Converge Challenge

Converge helps students, graduates and staff across Scotland’s universities and research institutes turn their creativity, ideas and innovations into commercial reality. Working in collaboration with Scotland’s universities, we uncover emerging spinouts and startups, acting as a catalyst to accelerate the creation of innovative products and services that will improve lives and safeguard our planet. The programme springboards new businesses through intensive business training, networking, 1-2-1 support, generous equity-free cash prizes and expert, professional advice from a roster of industry partners.

The challenge has four challenge categories tailored to developing business across all sectors and stages of development:

Challenge	Converge Challenge	Net Zero Challenge	Create Change Challenge	Kickstart Challenge
Remit	For all sectors and enterprise types, open to high-calibre, innovative projects with serious growth potential.	Supporting Scotland’s efforts in becoming a carbon neutral nation by 2045, this challenge welcomes clean-tech & environmental projects that can deliver maximum impact for Scotland’s net zero goal.	For creative and social projects looks to change the world for the better.	A first step towards commercialisation for early-stage business ideas. It’s designed to test the robustness of your idea, equip you for the realities of entrepreneurship and prepare you for the more advanced challenge categories.
Company Stage	Award must be paid into a company account. Expected to go to market within 12 months of award.	Pre-startup/spinout, award can be paid into a personal account.
Top prize	£50,000 plus in-kind support package worth approximately £20,000	£30,000 plus in-kind support package worth approximately £18,000	£30,000 plus in-kind support package worth approximately £10,000	£10,000 plus in-kind support package worth approximately £18,000
Runner up prizes	£20,000 plus in-kind support package worth approximately £9,000	£10,000 plus in-kind support package worth approximately £9,000	2 x £10,000 plus in-kind support package worth approximately £3,000	2 x £7,500
Special prizes for creativity and entrepreneurial spirit	---	---	---	£5,000 x 2
CENSIS special prize	---	---	---	£5,000 plus additional in-kind support
IBioIC special prize	Awarded to a project from any category, £20,000 to host-university, plus additional in-kind support
Cosco Future Tech Award	Awarded to a project from any category, £10,000 plus mentoring
RBS Rose Award	Awarded to a project from any category led by a female entrepreneur, £10,000 plus mentoring

In the last 12 years Converge has trained 600+ entrepreneurs, recreated 330+ companies, and created 1000+ jobs. Converge participants have raised £320m+ in follow-on funding.

Who can apply?

Staff, students and recent graduates of Scottish Higher Education Institutes (HEIs)

Company income cannot exceed more than £150k.
Company must have been incorporated in the last 24 months .
There is an expectation to commercialise within 12 months (subject to sector appropriateness).
Business must be registered in Scotland (or plan to be).

Timelines

Converge runs on an annual basis, with the application deadline typically falling in March. Semi-finalists are invited to participate in training in June, with a further deadline to submit a final business case and video in August. Finalists are shortlisted in September, and the cycle concludes with an awards ceremony in October.

I’m interested! What now?

For more details visit the Converge Challenge webpage and contact a member of the staff enterprise team to find out more. We encourage you to contact us at the earliest opportunity.

Scottish EDGE

Scottish EDGE is a competition aimed at identifying and supporting Scotland’s up-and-coming, innovative, high-growth entrepreneurial talent. The competition is delivered twice per year, typically opening in January & July, with awards ceremonies in May and November.

The competition typically features the following categories:

Category	Scottish EDGE	Social Enterprise EDGE	Young EDGE
Remit and basic eligibility	The main competition category to which all applicants apply. For innovative, high growth-potential businesses in all sectors.	For organisations that clearly demonstrate how their business enriches communities and makes a contribution to society, tackling social and environmental problems in Scotland, nationally or abroad, whilst being built on the back of strong business foundations which outline a sustainable business growth plan. Open to asset-locked Social Enterprises and Charities only.	Supports companies whose Directors are all aged 18-30 (excluding Non-Exec Directors and Investors).
Top prize	Multiple winners of £100,000 (30% grant, 70% loan), plus enrolment in to the EDGE Alumni programme, support from leading business organisations, and dedicated relationship management to help your business grow.	£75,000 (70% grant, 30% loan)	£15,000 (100% grant)
Runners Up	---	---	6 x £10,000 (100% grant)
Special accolade awards	Net Zero EDGE: up to £100,000 (30% grant, 70% loan) celebrating the role that innovative business people and entrepreneurs play in making Scotland’s drive to be net zero by 2045 achievable.	---	---
STV Growth EDGE: £75,000 worth of STV advertising for the winning consumer-based product business.
IBioIC EDGE: up to £100,000 (30% grant, 70% loan), plus membership of IBioIC & mentoring, for the top Industrial Biotechnology Sector business.
Circular Economy EDGE: up to £100,000 (30% grant, 70% loan) for the top Circular business idea.
Creative EDGE: up to £100,000 (30% grant, 70% loan) for businesses operating in one of the creative sector sub-sectors.

All applications are assessed for their value proposition, team, impact, customer focus, business growth and utilisation of funding.

I’m interested! What now?

For more details visit the Scottish EDGE webpage and please contact a member of the staff enterprise team to find out more. We encourage you to contact us at the earliest opportunity.

This article was published on 2024-07-01