Competitions include the Casual VR Startup Contest, Gear Indie Contest and G-Startup Worldwide

If you're a startup seeking opportunities to get funded, educated or connected, startup competitions are a great resource.

Vator has been holding its own competitions, using VatorX, to find and filter for the best startups. We've had some very successful and notable winners in the past that have gone on to raise big funding rounds including Thumbtack, DogVacay, Pokitdok, Grovo, Udemy and Apartment List, to name a few.

Anyone can list their program as VatorX is one of the most comprehensive listing guides to startup competitions, challenges, accelerators and programs. Click here to list your program!

As part of our weekly series, we'll look at top competitions with big cash prizes, as well as competitions that have teed up the most promising startups, to finding popular startup competitions you need to know about. 

Here are some of the startup competitions that are focused on the virtual reality space:

 

• Women Startup Challenge VR and AI

Description: "Women Who Tech is on a mission to fund women-led startups. Through our Women Startup Challenges, which have been held in Washington, D.C. at 1776, New York at Microsoft and Google, and San Francisco at LinkedIn, we have brought together the best early-stage, women-led startups using tech to rapidly scale and innovate. What’s next?"

Prize: Top prize is $50,000, and $15,000 in legal services from Paul Hastings. Second place winners hget $10,000 in legal services and three hours in consulting from 1843 Capital. Third place gets $10,000 in legal services.

Previous winners: Didimo, Spirit AI, Addicaid

 

• GTC VR Showcase

Description:"Every industry, from automotive, to medical, to architecture, to art, to gaming, will be changed by virtual reality.

Connect with experts and developers from a wide range of industries doing amazing things in virtual and augmented reality. See recordings of 50+ dedicated VR sessions, including panels led by industry visionaries."

Prize: $30,000 in cash and prizes

Previous winners: Nurulize

 

• Casual VR Startup Contest

Description: "Casual VR Startup Contest is an open competition for indie development teams, who work on their own VR/AR, Gaming and Mobile projects and seeks the way to present them to the world."

Prize: Not specified

Previous winners: Catle Wars VR

 

• Gear Indie Contest

Description: "In effort to showcase the high quality content being created by VR filmmakers, Samsung launched Gear Indie for Samsung Milk VR in August of 2015. This distribution channel has been an overwhelming success with new videos being posted weekly.

Now Samsung is rolling-out a series of content creation contests to ignite and reward the independent content creators. The first challenge is called, 'There in 60 Seconds.'"

Prize: $10,000

Previous winners: Double Eye Productions, RYOT

 

• SXSW Accelerator Pitch Event

Description: "2018 SXSW Accelerator Pitch Event will feature 50 Interactive technology companies from 10 different categories. These companies will dazzle a live audience with their company pitch and Q&A with our panel of judges."

Investment amount: The winning prizes include two (2) Interactive badges for the 2019 SXSW Interactive event, various SXSW Accelerator sponsor gifts and, most importantly, the opportunity to receive exposure to the SXSW audience looking out for the latest in cutting-edge technology. Additional prizes will be announced as the event date approaches.

Previous winners: Lampix

 

• The Vision Tank

Description: "The Vision Tank is the Embedded Vision Summit’s exciting start-up competition, in which five computer vision start-up companies present their innovations to a panel of investors and industry experts!"

Prize: $5,000 grand prize

Previous winners: LucidVR

 

• Sportscouncil SV Startup Competition

Description: "How VR/AR combined with sensors and AI will change the nature of the game, especially the sports fans experience."

Prize: Not specified

Previous winners: RecoverX, Virtually Live, Myontec

 

• G-Startup Worldwide

Description: "G-Startup Worldwide is a global startup competition held around the world to find high potential, early stage startups, invest in them, support them with a global network and enable them to change the world. The G-Startup Worldwide program invests over $1,000,000 in startups annually."

Prize: Regional Winner: $50,000 investment prize; 1 Year G-Network Membership; 3 Day Mentorship Bootcamp at Google’s headquarters; Complimentary trip to Silicon Valley (up to $1000 flight + 3 nights hotel) to pitch at the Global Final Competition

Grand Prize Winner: Additional $250,000 investment ($300,000 total) Speaking opportunities at GMIC 2018

Previous winners: Donde Fashion, Aros