[Jackson, Miss.] The Mississippi Development Authority announced this week that it’s inviting qualified teams to participate in the “Pitch in the V-Quad” competition to be held on Aug. 26. Qualified teams are those that are developing new products or services in the energy and agriculture technology sectors.
Each pitch must include the team’s level of technology readiness, market readiness, team members’ competencies, planned use of funds and business strategy. The competition is limited to 15 teams. MDA will award three teams venture development grants totaling $25,000.
The competition is supported by the Energy Program for Innovation Clusters Prize from the U.S. Department of Energy, which MDA won to highlight the state’s technology-based entrepreneurial ecosystem. Ten teams were selected to participate in the first stage of the V-Quad accelerator program.
V-Quad’s goal is to build an innovative, virtual incubator network to support Mississippi entrepreneurs launching businesses focused on energy- and agriculture-related technologies. V-Quad is a public-private partnership that connects Mississippi’s research universities, industry, government and non-profits into an inclusive, tech-based entrepreneurial network.
The competition is open to teams of high school and college students, university or community college faculty, for-profit businesses, non-profit organizations, public-sector employees or any combination of individuals from these entities.
In addition to traditional energy and agricultural activities, examples of eligible projects include the use of information and communication technology, robotics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, unmanned aerial and terrestrial vehicles and genomics within the energy and agriculture technologies.
The deadline to express intent to “Pitch in the V-Quad” is Friday, Aug. 20. For more information, go to mississippi.org/vquad or email sarora@mississippi.org with the subject line “Pitch in the V-Quad.”
