Business Opportunities Weblog

August 18, 2008 by Rich Whittle | 1 Comment

MSNBC Your Biz:

At a time when banks are reining in loans to small businesses, it’s not surprising that there has been an explosion of contests promising seed money for budding entrepreneurs.

There’s an endless stream of entrepreneur contests available out there run by an array of organizations, some fly by night, others established financial institutions or universities.

But can any of these contests or competitions lead to entrepreneurial gold?

Two such contests that have received some media attention include Ideablob.com, which is run by credit card company Advanta, and American Express Open’s “Micro to Millions” program, which is part of the company’s larger “Make Mine a Million $ Business” initiative.

Basically, credit card companies are trying to tap into the lucrative small business market, and what better way to do that than host entrepreneur contests?

Ideablob spokeswoman, Jennifer Sherlock says,”We have five winners who started new businesses, and we have five winners who used the money for their existing businesses.”

And Danny Urquia, a spokesman for American Express, says, “We’ve got 40 women in Micro to Millions right now. The goal is to get them to $250,000 in 18-24 months, and since we only started in March of ’07 we don’t have any numbers on success yet.

In comparison, we have awarded [funds to] 140 women through the Make Mine Million $ Business program and one-third have already crossed the million-dollar revenue barrier. The entire program’s ultimate goal is to have one million women declare their intent to build million-dollar enterprises by 2010.”

Photo by Advanta/American Express.

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Tags: Competition, Entrepreneurial Lifestyle