Welcome Clean Tech Entrepreneurs!

The Rocky Mountain Clean Tech Open (RMCTO) is both a business plan competition for early stage clean tech startups, and a thriving community of clean tech entrepreneurship. The competition enables entrepreneurs to turn clean technology ideas into thriving businesses. Events and workshops build a vibrant network of clean tech companies and supporters in the Rocky Mountain region which is comprised of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and Montana.
We are a group of dedicated volunteers, working to nurture solutions for our world’s pressing environmental concerns and growing energy needs. We are representatives from Cleantech 2010, the South Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce and other Colorado organizations who came together in early 2008 to become the first expansion group of the national Clean Tech Open, which started in California in 2005. We have enlisted a volunteer group of leading entrepreneurs, academics, investors and companies, working together to accelerate the development of a new class of environmentally-sound technologies.
Our Mission; To discover, nurture, assist and reward early-stage clean technology startups and to help them grow into viable, sustainable businesses. As an innovation catalyst, we will help transform the Rocky Mountain region into a clean technology powerhouse.
In 2009, we hope to entice 40 startup company teams to submit an executive summary of their clean technology business idea. About twenty teams will be vetted to become Finalists, where they will receive Business Plan guidance and then will pitch their plan to a judging panel. First, Second and Third prize winners will be announced in October.
Winners receive “Startup-in-a-Box” packages of cash and services up to $100,000 and donated by high-profile sponsors. Packages include: cash, office space, legal services, accounting, insurance, public relations, recruiting, software, and other business essentials.
Who Donates the Prizes? Cash and in-kind service sponsors will be donated by major corporations, institutions and individuals from the region.
The RMCTO focuses on clean technology, seeking entries from entrepreneurs, scientists, and students. Judges select teams prepared to take their innovations to market by building and sustaining a company. RMCTO prizes go above and beyond other awards typically available to early-stage start-ups and include mentoring services and extensive practical business workshops for all finalists throughout the summer. The RMCTO has also established a symbiotic relationship with the Renewable Energy Incubator that will further support the scaling of these award winning commercial ideas. The RMCTO is directly affiliated with the successful California Clean Tech Open. Those Alumni companies, of which 84% are still viable after three years, have raised over $115 million in venture capital funding.