Another day, another great set of judges for this year’s Hardware Battlefield set to coincide with CES 2014. We are pleased to announce that Indiegogo’s Slava Rubin, Brady Forrest of Highway 1, and investor Trae Vassallo have all agreed to be judges for the competition. Each will bring their years of experience to bear on what should be an amazing event.
Like Startup Battlefield, this new competition will pit 20 hardware startups against each other. The winner will be chosen by VCs, makers and TechCrunch Editors.
The best thing? The Hardware Battlefield is taking place at CES 2014 in Las Vegas but is open to all comers and you don’t need a conference badge to enter, attend the battlefield events, or simply spectate. Our goal is to find the diamond in the CE rough. We don’t care about Samsung, Sony, and Philips -– we care about you.
It’s free to enter. The competition is open to all hardware companies who are planning to launch (crowdfund or ship) product in a two-week window before or after January 10. You can still be in prototyping stage but you must have a working, usable product by January 7 and be ready to offer pre-orders on that day or soon thereafter. We recommend launching your crowdsourcing page during the event, however, as it will have maximum impact.
RULES At the time of application, companies must have a functional prototype to demo to the selection committee. In selecting final contestants, we will give preference to companies that launch for the first time to the public and press through our competition. We consider new products from existing companies to be significant. Due to the limited number of competition slots, companies launching new feature sets do not qualify. Companies from around the globe are welcome to submit their startups for consideration.
We will pick 15 entrants on November 30th and announce the location, time, and judges closer to the event. The grand prize winner will get $50,000 to go towards research, development, or whatever else your team needs to get by. All projects will be kept confidential until January 7.
We are very excited about this new event and we want to make it the best one ever. Remember to email sponsors@beta.techcrunch.com if you’d like to sponsor the festivities and if you have any questions email john@beta.techcrunch.com. We look forward to seeing what you’re working on and we hope to see you in Vegas!
