Last week there was the official announcement of our $1 Million Dollar Startup Competition – a joint project of Digital Leaders Ventures (DLV) and the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) with support by Enel, Michelin and Julius Baer.

At the FIA booth at the Geneva Motorshow we held a press conference to announce the FIA Smart Cities Initiative and the Global Startup Contest.

At DLV.vc you can find our more about the Global Startup Contest – the FIA Smart Cities Startup – and details about benefits, timing and jury members.

To give you more insights about what was happening at the Press Conference in Geneva and to explain the startup competition, I posted a short #Vlog on YouTube.

Who are the Most successful Smart Cities Startups?

At the DLV startup competition we are looking for companies who are building the smart cities of the future. There are no regional limitation to be part of the challenge, but we are looking for companies who have got previous funding or graduated from an accelerator program. We are open for tech startups in the wide field of topics related to smart cities and road safety: autonomous driving, industrial internet of things, smart infrastructure, machine learning, artificial intelligence and big data as well as digital platforms or services.

The winning company will be officially named as the FIA Smart Cities Startup 2017. The Global Startup Contest is hosted in teamwork with the international Formula E racing series. The startup contest will be held right before the Formula E race weekend and located within the VIP areas of the Formula E hospitality areas, the eMotions CLub.

Why it’s exciting to be part of this startup competition?

We’d like to make change happen – turning our cities into smart cities and increasing road safety dramatically. Besides an investment of 100,000 USD at each pitch event, startups get access to our network of partners and experts. We are working with the MIT Enterprise Forum at MIT University Boston and local startup accelerators to pre-select the most promising companies.

On the pitch day, the top 10 founders will present their company to our jury. The DLV startup jury consist of representatives from DLV, FIA, ENEL, Julius Baer, Michelin and the World Economic Forum. Then we will select the top three finalist who will present to a large audience at the FIA Smart Cities Forum on Friday – right before the Formula E Raceday. And finally we will announce the official FIA Smart Cities Startup.