Eligibility

Eligibility

In order to be eligible for the Competition, a team must satisfy each of the eligibility criteria below at the time of registration. With the exception of the funding criteria, a team must continue to satisfy each of the eligibility criteria throughout the Competition.

Funding
An entrant’s business must be at an early stage with respect to funding as of the registration deadline for the competition:

• No venture capital funding is allowed
• Angel or corporate funding of less than or equal to $250,000 is allowed
• Funding from governmental or quasi-governmental entities (including SBIR/STTR funding) is allowed

Business Area
An entrant’s business must support a technology, product, or service in the clean energy field.

Professional Team Numbers
A team must be comprised of two or more members.

Student Teams
• Each student team must be comprised of at least two-thirds students.
• Students may be full-time or part-time students at any level of education and from any school, as long as they are registered at that school in the current semester of the Competition.

Registration Deadlin
Each entrant must register its team online no later than the deadline (forthcoming for 2009), the same date that business plan executive summaries and 10-slide presentation are due.

Professional Standards Fee
While there is no fee to register for the Competition, each team selected as a semi-finalist must pay a $100 professional standards fee following the announcement of the semi-finalists and on or before the deadline to be specified by the Competition.

This fee will be held in escrow until the team has met its obligations; it will then be refunded.

Legal
By registering for the Competition, each entrant:

• Represents and warrants to the Competition and the MIT Enterprise Forum that the entrant has all right, title and/or interest in any submissions it makes in the course of the Competition, that the information provided by the entrant to the Competition in the registration process and in any submission is true, accurate and complete, and that its submissions do not and will not violate any contract or third party rights, including any patent, copyright, trade secret, proprietary or confidential information, trademark, publicity or privacy right.
• Agrees to participate in all events for which the entrant qualifies, including but not limited to the Semifinals, the Accelerate Event and the Finals.
• Agrees to be available to media upon the request of the Competition
• Proprietary information should not be disclosed to media, but the Competition grows and helps more entrepreneurs primarily through media outreach.
• The Competition organizers reserve the right to interpret the eligibility criteria in their sole discretion and to disqualify any team that in their judgment violates the letter or spirit of the Competition.