MobileBeat Startup Competition: Deadline extended

We’ve gotten over 150 nominations for our MobileBeat 20 Startup Competition, and it’s clear from the submissions that the advent of 4G and superphones is igniting a conflagration of innovation in the startup world. In fact, it’s reminiscent of the early days of Web 2.0, just before the social Cambrian Explosion that gave rise to the likes of Friendster, MySpace, and eventually Facebook and Twitter.

Because there is so much happening in the mobile startup world, we decided to extend the deadline for the competition until June 21. We want to dig our teeth into as many business ideas as possible. That means companies have two more weeks to submit an application for the MobileBeat Startup Competition. Nominations can be submitted here.

Here’s the new timing:

·      On June 21, we’ll cut off the nomination process and the voting, and publish at that time the list of top-40 nominees (keeping in mind that some companies will be nominated as stealth companies, and so won’t be on that list).

·      On June 28, our internal MobileBeat committee will select the 20 finalists (using the reader nominations as a major factor, and filtering which companies have a new feature to release, etc).

·      On July 12 from 5-6pm, the 20 finalists will present onstage at MobileBeat at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. The audience will vote on the overall winner and recipient of the coveted Tesla Award, named in honor of Nikola Tesla, the scientist who discovered early mobile communication.

And, by way of reminder, here’s the criteria for the competition:

The goal of this year’s startup competition is to showcase the top 20 companies with the coolest mobile ideas for the coming 4G world. If you have a startup or product that’s going to shake up the mobile ecosystem around 4G, this is the perfect opportunity to make your pitch to over 500 mobile industry executives, investors, journalists and fellow entrepreneurs.

We want to showcase companies with new, exciting products to launch. Obviously, some companies will be stealth, and we’ll let those companies nominate themselves here. We’ll reserve up to half of the 20 spots for companies that are still in stealth.

However, we’d like you, our readers, to help us nominate existing cool mobile companies too. The top 20 finalists will be invited to present at the conference on July 12-13.  Please vote for the company you think has the best idea, but keep in mind that we also want the idea to be a viable business. In other words, we’re interested in companies with great technology, but also that have a realistic chance to be a marketplace grand-slam.

This year, we have two categories: 1) applications, and 2) infrastructure/services. Ten finalists will be picked for each category.

We’re looking forward to sifting through the nominees and picking the 20 coolest new ideas in mobile.