Announcement
HKUST-Sino One Million Dollar Entrepreneurship Competition 2020
Posted on 4th June, 2020
We are pleased to announce the Online Business Plan Presentation was held successfully on June 3. The competition is concluded with an Online Live Award Announcement and Sharing today. Congratulations to the 13 teams winning a total of one million of cash prize. Click here to see the winning teams.
You may also recap the performance of the teams in the Elevator Pitch (video) and the exciting moments and sharing of the Award Announcement (video) if you didn't get to join the live sessions.
Posted on 29th April, 2020
The Online Live Elevator Pitch was held successfully on Apr 28. After the comprehensive evaluation by the Judging Panel, the top 12 teams have been selected to enter the next round of the competition. Click here to see the list and their brief introduction.
Posted on 15th April, 2020
The online voting started TODAY! You can play a role in deciding the winners of the Best Video Award for the HKUST-Sino One Million Dollar Entrepreneurship Competition 2020 AND get a chance to win AIRPODS PRO!
The videos of Top 50 teams are now ready and it is a time for YOU to vote for your favorite videos.
Click here to vote for your favorite teams!
Posted on 6th March, 2020
We are pleased to announce that the Elevator Pitch session will be resumed on April 28, 2020 via Zoom. The Elevator Pitch session has been held since the first HKUST One Million Dollar Entrepreneurship Competition. Coincides with the 10th year of the competition, we hope to continue providing chances for the participating teams to shine and great opportunities for the HKUST community to engage with the competition.
This Elevator Pitch session will be part of the Round 2 selection. The first part of Round 2 will be the Pre-recorded Video for Product Introduction. Top 50 teams are required to submit a video on April 14, 2020. The second part of Round 2 will be the Online Live Elevator Pitch. Top 24 teams will be selected to participate in this session, which will then decide our final 12 teams going into Round 3. The team with the best pitch will be awarded with the Elevator Pitch Award, one of the long-standing awards in this competition. For details of the Online Live Elevator Pitch, please refer "Judging Process".
Posted on 27th February 2020
An information session was held on 26 February. The presentation slides used in the session has been uploaded online for your download. If you didn't get to join the live session or you want to review it, you may click HERE to watch the recorded video.
Posted on 12th February 2020
In light of the current development of the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak, the following arrangements will be made to the HKUST-Sino One Million Dollar Entrepreneurship Competition 2020 to safeguard the health and safety of our participants:
- Information Session and Mixer
- Application Deadline
- Round 2 Assessment
- Round 3 Assessment
- Support for Overseas Students and HKUST Members
- Awards
The Information Session will be postponed from 12 February to 26 February. It will be conducted online via Zoom. Further information will be emailed to those who have signed up for the session and posted on EC website. Apply for the Information Session to know more about the Competition!
The Mixer will be cancelled for safety reasons. You are encouraged to make use of the Online Matching Platform to find team and members.
The application deadline is extended to 16 March. Don’t miss out the opportunity to win the extraordinary experience and awards. Feel free to contact us at competition@ust.hk if you have any questions.
In order to reduce the potential risk to public health by hosting mass gathering, the Exhibition and Elevator Pitch on 15 April will be replaced by Online Video Presentation to showcase your business idea or introduce your company to the judges and HKUST members. For details, please refer section “Judging Process”.
The Business Plan Evaluation on 3 June will be remained unchanged. Depending on the situation, it may be changed to online or in mixed-mode instead of face-to-face meeting with the judges. Further announcement will be made in May.
Under the new arrangement in Round 2 Assessment, overseas participants no longer need to be physically in Hong Kong to join the Competition. However, we will continue to support overseas participants in Round 3 Assessment if it is a face-to face meeting in Hong Kong. For details, please refer section “Support for Overseas Students and HKUST Members”.
The Exhibition Award and Elevator Pitch Award will be replaced by a newly launched award, the Best Video Award. Top three video presentations will be selected by online voting from HKUST members. For details of awards, please refer section “Awards”.
Posted on 7th January 2020
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology is pleased to announce the HKUST-Sino One Million Dollar Entrepreneurship Competition 2020 (“Competition”) will take place in June 2020. The Competition includes an Exhibition and Elevator Pitch on Apr 15, 2020 (Wednesday) followed by a Business Plan Evaluation held on June 3, 2020 (Wednesday).
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 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 commercialization of their inventions. To encourage teams with plans utilizing HKUST technologies and/or have members from different schools within HKUST, they will be eligible for additional cash awards, if they are winners of the President, Gold, or Silver Awards at the Final Round of judging.
Further to help participants to form a team with those from other local, mainland and international universities and communities, we will continue to provide the Team Forming Platform for participants to find available team and team members with specific skills and build connection with them. We also encourage a more diverse team participations in the competition, and to provide opportunity for overseas talents to explore and develop business in Hong Kong, we will support overseas HKUST alumni and exchanged-out students, as well as overseas university students traveling to Hong Kong to participate in the competition. For details, please refer section “Team Forming Platform” under “Application & Eligibility”and “Support for Overseas Students and HKUST Members”.
To gather more innovative ideas and foster the entrepreneurial atmosphere in HKUST Community, this year the Exhibition is scaled up from 24 to 50 teams.
To encourage participants to get their businesses going, and further reinforce the practical focus of this Competition, we have put together a suite of services for all applicants and awardees including be fast-tracked to the HKSTP Science and Technology Entrepreneur Programme (STEP) for top 12 finalists and other in-kind services. For details, please refer section “In-Kind Awards” under “Awards”.
Additionally, we will continue to have this competition in 7 different regions including this one in our Clear Water Bay Campus. The 3 winning teams will compete with other winning teams from Beijing, Foshan, Guangzhou, Macau, Shenzhen and Zhongshan in the Grand Final, which will be held in August 2020 in Nansha, Guangzhou. And the top 12 teams will all be invited to join the exhibition held during the Grand Final.
Participants: The Competition 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.
Submissions: All submissions will be in English and must be submitted online (https://onemilliondollar.ust.hk), 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: Executive Summary, Exhibition & Elevator Pitch and Full Business Plan Presentation which will take place from March to June 2020. For details of the judging process, please refer to “Judging Process”.
Awards: Winners of the HKUST-Sino One Million Dollar Entrepreneurship Competition 2020 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 and 1-page Executive Summary of their business plan for the Round 1 Assessment on or before March 4, 2020.