Earlier this week, we shared some information about the Digital London Startup Challenge, a competition that aims to showcase the UK’s best, newest, and most innovative enterprise business ideas. Below, Simon Hill (CEO of Wazoku, the idea management software company behind the initiative) gives a bit more detail about the Challenge and how to get involved…

Here at Wazoku we are delighted to announce the launch of the Digital London Startup Challenge. The challenge is inviting startups to enter their business and showcase their innovative products for enterprise and is running as part of the Digital London summit as a competition to showcase the UK’s best, newest, and most innovative enterprise business ideas.

The Challenge website is now live for entries and votes and the Challenge will run until the 14 March when the winner will be announced at the Digital London summit. As a startup ourselves we know one of the biggest challenges faced when starting out is getting exposure for your business and being seen and found by the right people. This Challenge offers a great opportunity for startups to get themselves in front of some influential judges and to be seen by potential customers at the Digital London event – and to get some great media exposure. The winning entry will also receive over £5,000 worth of prizes for their business.

The Challenge entries are open to public vote and the final short list will be selected by the judging panel before going back out to public vote to select the winner. The influential panel of judges includes Ray Wang, CEO of Constellation Research; Paul Coby, IT Director of John Lewis; Mike Short, VP Public Affairs at Telefonica and Joe Baguley, Chief Cloud Technologist EMEA, VMWare. The judges are also all attendees to Digital London, who are looking for solutions to drive the digitisation of their enterprises and organisations – ensuring competition entrants get exposure to a buying audience.

For us at Wazoku, both the tool and the competition are about finding a business idea that really stands out from the crowd. There are no restrictions as to the type of ideas we are looking for. We believe strongly that the UK needs to look to the future uncovering the best ideas and using the latest technology to lift us from the current economic downturn.

Entries are open until 3 March 2012 and voting will continue until 14 March when the winner will be announced at the Digital London event. We look forward to receiving your entries! To enter the competition or vote for your favourite business and to see further details of the entry criteria, prizes and judging panel visit the Startup Challenge website: https://startupchallenge.wazoku.com/

Simon Hill is CEO and co-founder of Wazoku, an Associate Director with the Venture Capital Firm FindInvestGrow and an active member of the London technology and entrepreneurial community. Simon works as an advisor and mentor to a number of early stage technology business across a range of sectors.