MarketingExperiments.com Announces First ‘Back of a Napkin’ Business Plan Competition

ATLANTIC BEACH, Fla. – February 6, 2006 – MarketingExperiments.com, an online marketing research laboratory, today announced it is hosting the first ‘Back of a Napkin’ business plan competition, where entrepreneurs vie for a prize valued at $100,000, but are limited to submitting their business plans succinctly on a 5x7 index card.

“During the past two decades there have been numerous stories of businesses that raised their initial funding based upon an idea they initially sketched out on the back of a napkin,” said Flint McGlaughlin, director of MEC Labs. “That is where the idea for our business plan competition stems from and what sets us apart from other similar competitions. We aren’t looking for 10, 30 or 100 pages of writing to back up a good idea. If the business idea is good, we believe the heart of it should be expressible in the space provided on a 5- x 7-inch file card. And if the idea is sound and supported by reliable core principles, then it is something we are interested in supporting because it will most likely be very successful.”

The winner of MEC’s business plan competition will receive a “business jump-start package” worth approximately $100,000 which will include a six-month marketing research partnership with MEC, a three-month public relations campaign with Politis Communications (http://www.politis.com/), a chance to pitch the business idea to multiple leading venture capital firms and possible office space and administrative services in MEC’s Florida-based research and incubation facility.

Finalists will be judged based on the clarity of their plan, the strength of their management team, the force of their value proposition and possible marketing opportunities. Ten finalists will be chosen by February 28, 2006 and each will be asked to submit additional information. Each finalist will also be featured in the Marketing Experiments Journal, an online publication with hundreds of pages of marketing research and reports about online marketing techniques. The winner of the business plan competition will be announced by March 31.

Entries must be submitted no later than February 25, 2006.

Those interested in finding out more about MEC’s “Back of a Napkin” business competition can visit: http://www.marketingexperiments.com/napkin1-005.asp

About MarketingExperiments.com
MarketingExperiments.Com (MEC) is an online marketing research laboratory dedicated to discovering “what really works” in Internet marketing. MEC engages in primary and secondary research and publishes results in The Marketing Experiments Journal. To conduct relevant, practical experiments, MEC partners with clients such as the New York Times, Reuters News Service LLC, and USA Health Care. MarketingExperiments.com is a member of the MEC Labs Group and a division of Digital Trust, Inc. For more information, please visit www.MarketingExperiments.com.

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