This is pretty interesting. Imagine, if you had 760 sq ft of shop space at Clarke Quay, what would you do with it? That’s exactly what Martell, along with their partners INSEAD and Standard Chartered wish to hear from you. Welcome to the Ultimate Startup Space!

Martell, INSEAD and Standard Chartered have joined forces and come up with an innovative startup competition that will award the winning idea with 760 sq feet of shop space, smack in the middle of The Cannery at Clarke Quay. Winners will also get an executive education program from INSEAD, “entrepreneur coaching” from Standard Chartered and once in a lifetime opportunity to represent Martell VSOP as their rising personality. We don’t usually cover non-web technology startup related news and events and I can’t even remember when was the last time we actually did that. But this event struck me, as I was very impressed with simplicity of the event’s concept and the type of awards/prizes that were given out.

Simplicity of the Event’s Concept
The idea behind the competition is simple; if you had a space in the middle of a busy area, what would you do with it. You submit your pitch in the form of a 60sec video; no executive summaries, no financials, no boring old business plans, just one plain video pitch and you’re done. The inertia to take part has to be tremendously reduced, especially when you know that you don’t have to prepare a whole set of documents that will end up getting scrutinized from every possible angle. The pitch and the idea gets personal because you’re the one pitching it, hence your idea isn’t subject to interpretation by someone reading an executive summary that you have written. And the best part is the whole social element around it and how your friends get to vote for your ideas and share it. It’s really about your support network and your fans pushing you to get working on the idea and get it started.

Type of Awards/Prizes
Too many startup related events these days provide large cash prizes to the winners ($20,000 is giving for renovating the shop though, but that’s it). Most of the time, the competition does not dictate what the winners have to do with the prizes. Interestingly for this one, the focus is on education instead of money. While startup essentials can’t exactly be taught, I believe that the lessons learned from INSEAD will go a long way in the founders current business, as well as any future startup he/she may wish to venture in. I know I am being pessimistic here but there’s a high chance that the winning idea may fail, just like every other startup venture. But the knowledge gained from INSEAD and Standard Chartered, together with the real world experience of running a business will definitely help the founder in his/her future ventures. It is an event/competition that is definitely worth supporting.

What would you do if you had the space? Submit you ideas now!