Idea Cafe Grant Registration Closes, What’s Next?

The registration deadline for the Eighth Idea Café Small Business Grant is now behind us. The selection process has started, in order to finish in a couple of weeks, when we'll announce our semi-finalists.

Almost one thousand small business owners registered for the grant competition. The line-up of applicants is outstanding, and, as always, worthy of note and praise. What I can share with you at this point is that in the coming month you, our regulars, will have the chance to meet with a great variety of business ideas revealing the ingenuity and spirit of small business owners in time of economic difficulty.

In order to ensure that only the most inspiring business ideas make it to the semi-final round, we will take two weeks to prepare and publish the list of semi-finalists. In the selection process, the team at Idea Cafe will take into consideration several factors: how viable or interesting the business idea is; how well the entrepreneur describes her plans for the future; and what she is willing to give back to the local community.

We will select 40 semi-finalists who will have the opportunity to present themselves and their business on the Idea Cafe blog. In an online battle of viewpoints and business approaches, they will compete for your vote.

Those five of the semi-finalists who received the highest numbers of votes from Idea Cafe Regulars will make it to the final round and eventually contend for the cash prize.

We hope this way to make the grant campaign more interesting and allow for more opportunities for interaction and fun, in the true spirit of Idea Cafe: The Small Business Gathering Place®.

Stay tuned and check back regularly. The competition promises to be extremely exciting.