The city of Buffalo is trying to ramp up some interest in its city by hosting a 43North competition and giving away up to $5m USD to startups to come and work on your startup there in the incubator.

You will get a chance at $1 million prize for first place, $650k for the second place, $550k for third place, and five $500,000 prizes.

Canadians are not strangers to Buffalo and 43North. Toronto’s strtup Formarum won $500k in the last competition. They were pretty happy about it:

Today we are sharing a big news. After months of intense competition where hundreds of companies competed for a chance to win a share of $5 MILLION in prizes as part of the 43North competition, Formarum has been selected as one of the 8 Winners. We have won a $500,000 USD cash prize to help us launch our first product, Dive Smart Sanitizer.

“We could not be more grateful today. The funding we will receive from this award will help accelerate our product launch. We are extremely excited and looking forward to an incredible year to expand our operations to United States, grow our company, and start delivering an amazing product to our customers”, said Moe Dini , Formarum’s Product Manager .

“This is a fantastic news and opportunity that has come as a result of years of working on our core technology. I want to thank everyone who has helped us get to this point, especially our past and present employees without whom we would not be able to achieve this milestone”, said Seyed Nourbakhsh, Formarum’s CEO and Founder.

 

Here is how 43North describes itself on its website:

We award $5 million in cash prizes, including a top prize of $1 million, to innovative startups from around the globe. And that’s not all – our winners also receive mentorship, incubator space, marketing exposure and tax breaks. We operate through the support of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Buffalo Billion initiative and the New York Power Authority.

With $5 MILLION in prizes, 43North is a competition that’s in a league of its own. But it’s more than that. For winners, it’s an amazing staff and dedicated mentors. And free incubator space. And healthy tax-breaks. And some fierce ping pong. Click here for all the details on our 2017 competition.

Founded in 2014, 43North is an unprecedented program, made possible by Governor Andrew Cuomo’s historic Buffalo Billion initiative, with support from the New York Power Authority.

Our winners are helping to fuel a remarkable story that’s well under way – the renaissance of a great American city. BUFFALO, NY is poised to show the world what a 21st century city looks like, and that it’s a fertile ground for visionaries, pioneers, dreamers, and doers.

Make sure you have your passport up to date as you would need to pitch your startup to a panel of judges in Buffalo, New York (about 1.5 hours away from Toronto or Waterloo).

You can apply on their website until May 24, 2017:  https://apply.43north.org/register