The awards are placed in an "award basket". The winner elected by the jury will be nominated as the MindTrek Startup of the Year 2008, and given the right to pick up the prize first from the basket. The three prizes are:

• Two tickets for an international conference (max á 1300 €), like LeWeb in Paris (December 9th – 10th)
• Supercoaching training by Sharon Ballard
  
• Technopolis Ventures incubation program (12 months contract, worth 3 000 €) and an opportunity to participate in the Money Talks Forum
  

For all three award-winners Lexia will offer an IPR and contract consultation. The detailed content of this half-day evaluation and consultation session (worth 850 €) will be decided together with each of the winning companies.

In addition, the winner will get two tickets for the MindTrek 2009 conference and one hour face-time with one jury member to discuss about the concept, business model, financing opportunities, markets, etc.

The company nominated as second will select prize after the winner, and the bronze-medallist will get the remaining prize.

Two international conference tickets:

Supercoaching training:

October 21 – 22 & 28-29, Tampere, FInland. Organised by Ubiquitous Computing Cluster in Finland.

Supercoaching Training is based on a proven Supercoach® Entrepreneurial Training methodology developed by Sharon C. Ballard, Enable Ventures (USA) to coach primarily high technology entrepreneurs for the global marketplace

Training will also provide the opportunity to develop one’s business network both in Finland and abroad.

Key Features:

• New tools and techniques backed up with hundreds of examples of their application across all technologies
• Focuses on how the business will work, rather than on how to write a business plan
• A business plan briefing is created before a business plan is written (the briefing is a multi-purpose communications tool that is easy to update and lengthen or shorten, depending upon the audience and need). Having to create a briefing forces clear thinking and generates essential data for the business plan, making the latter much easier to write.
• Top-down and bottom-up planning and thinking for the financial plans (and a focus on the only line in the financial statements that really matters at a new venture’s start)
• Not centered on only venture capital investors, also to customers etc.

"When you are accepted into our incubator you will be assigned a personal business advisor. He or she will work closely with you to analyze your business and your team in order to discover all of your needs, as well as your strengths and weaknesses.

Together, you will create a milestone plan to develop your business tools, processes and competences during the incubation, acceleration and internationalization phases of your operation. Your advisor's job is not to breathe down your neck or slow you down, but to help you, organize and coordinate development activities for you, and push you to evolve and improve."

Technopolis Ventures has years of experience in securing seed funding for hundreds of start-up companies. Therefore we are familiar with all major financing options: private and public, angels and Venture Capitalists, loans and subsidies. It's a jungle out there, but we can help guide you and your company through it.

We don´t finance companies ourselves and do NOT take compensation from the financiers, so you can rely on us for completely independent expert advice. This advice serves the best interests of your company, NOT the financiers.

MoneyTalks Forum, launched by Technopolis Ventures, is an open and informal networking event offering entrepreneurs an excellent opportunity to connect with many financers at once. The program consists of investor pitches by promising companies and the presentation given by a venture capitalist. Following the formal presentations, it is time for the one-minute elevator pitches. The rest of the time is reserved for networking, facilitated by colour-coded name tags and the experts of Technopolis Ventures."

Pre-coaching of the presentations is performed by Technopolis Ventures Professia's and Technopolis Ventures's experienced business development advisors. For each pitch presentation there will be present 2 - 3 panelists.

Each entrepreneur is given a 30 minute time slot to keep a 7 minute pitch in english and receive comments and proposals for improvement. The verbal comments will be given either in english of finnish. The criteria for Startup Launchpad competition is taken into account in the comments.

Opportunities for pre-coaching:

1) Tampere: 30.9.2008 at 12:30 - 16:00, Technopolis Ventures Professia Oy, Satakunnankatu 13 B
2) Espoo: 1.10.2008 at 9:30 - 12:30, Innopoli 1, negotiating room Hippocrates

Pre-coaching is voluntary and free of charge for the entrepreneur. Participants shall reserve their time slot from Salla Aaltonen (tel 050 353 0474, email: salla.aaltonen (at) technopolis.fi).