What is the AWS Start-up Challenge? - The AWS Start-up Challenge is an annual competition designed for young, promising start-ups to get noticed and compete for a chance to win $100,000 in cash and credits. Start-ups that are using the AWS cloud computing platform can submit an application which describes their business plan and their use of AWS.

Why is AWS running this contest? - Since starting Amazon Web Services in 2006, we have always been excited to help new businesses succeed using our reliable, scalable cloud computing infrastructure. The AWS Start-up Challenge is a way for start-ups worldwide to showcase their businesses powered by AWS, gain exposure, and compete for prizes.

Which start-ups can enter?

The contest is open to start-ups located in the eligible countries that are currently using or are in the process of using Amazon Web Services. Entrepreneurs or privately held businesses are invited to apply that have not generated more than $10 million USD in gross annual revenues or outside funding. Detailed contest rules will be posted shortly.

HOW TO ENTER

The entry period begins at 7:00:00 A.M. Pacific Time (“PT”) on August 18, 2010 and ends at 11:59:59 P.M. (PT) on October 31, 2010 (“Entry Period”).

To enter, log onto http://aws.amazon.com/startupchallenge (the “Contest Website”) during the Entry Period, complete the entry form by following the instructions provided, and submit a description of your suggested product, Web site, software application/tool, service, or any other system that substantively uses Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Elastic MapReduce, Amazon Flexible Payments Service (FPS), Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) (collectively, the “Paid Services”) (each description of a product, website, software application/tool, service or other system that uses these Paid Services will be called from now on in these Official Rules a “Business Proposition”).

Each entry form and Business Proposition (collectively, the “Entry”) submitted must be in the English language and the original creation of the entrant. Entries that do not meet the requirements set forth in these Official Rules may be disqualified in our sole discretion. More than one entry may be submitted by any entrant. However, no more than 1 Entry per entrant will be selected as a Regional Semi-Finalist (as defined below). Any Entry submitted by an entrant must be substantially different than any other Entry submitted by that entrant. Entrants are responsible for all costs associated with preparing and submitting their Entries, including applications, and building and testing prototypes. All Entries or Business Propositions that violate any intellectual property, local, state, provincial or federal laws or violate any entrant’s employer’s policies will be deemed ineligible.

Entries must be received no later than 11:59:59 P.M. (PT) on October 31, 2010. Our servers and clock will be deemed the official clock for the Contest and the entrant’s proof of submission does not constitute proof of our receipt. Released Parties (as defined below) are not responsible for lost, misdirected, late, illegible, incomplete, inaccurate, delayed, garbled or unintelligible Entries. Entries will not be returned to the entrants.