Thursday, July 9, 2009

Amazon Launches Start-Up Challenge

Seattle-based Amazon Web Services, the web services arm of Amazon.com, said today that it has launched its third "Amazon Web Services Start-Up Challenge," the firm's annual contest which pits startups and entrepreneurs against each other for $100,000 in prizes. The competition challenges developers to create applications using Amazon's various web services offerings. The prize is split between $50,000 in cash plus $50,000 in services credits on AWS. According to Amazon, the deadline this year for the competition is August 26th. Amazon said the challenge is only available to companies based in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Germany, or Israel, and that entrants cannot have generated more than $5M in annual revenues.