The winners of the Harvard Business School’s 2005 Business Plan Contest were announced in early May. The winner was a plan for a bra business, a company called Uplift, founded by Karen Grajwer, an MBA student in the class of 2005. You can read the details in this interview. The interview shows how much effort and sweat goes into a research for a business plan, if you want to deliver a winning plan.

This also triggered me to google “business plan contest” to see how much is going on out there, and I found 23,900 results with the exact phrase match. Very encouraging. And the good news is that it’s not just the business schools and universities that hold business plan contests (many with strict qualifying criteria). The trend seems to be spreading far beyond the educational world and sponsors are plenty: the Wisconsin Governor’s business plan contest, BEST (Building Entrepreneurial Success Today) Business Plan contest sponsored by Ford Motor company, WPI Venture Forum’s contest, the Canadian Small Business BP Contest, and many others. The top prizes range from $10,000 to $50,000, and up to $25,000 for runners-up on some. You can get a list of all kinds of business plan contests from this directory.

If you are an entrepreneur in the “concept” stage, the business plan contest prizes can be a great resource to get you going, turning your concept into a business and bringing it to the next stage. Moreover, the money is not the only benefit these contests provide. The top ranking (or three) also serves as a great validation of your concept and of the quality of your business plan, and will help you during your pitches and to open many doors.

Many entrepreneurs work with “finders” who promise to help them attract investors, usually in exchange for a large monthly retainer and a percentage of the capital raised. More often than not, finders are not properly licensed as a securities broker, and are operating in violation of federal (and often state) securities laws.

Why should you care? Among other things, your investors can demand a return of their capital (and possibly hold you personally liable) if you use an unlicensed broker to raise capital on your behalf. And there are many stories of finders who simply disappear as soon as you hand them a big fat retainer check.

For additional details, read the The Secret World of Finders in the March 2005 edition of Inc. Magazine.

Bottom line: Retain a good corporate/securities attorney well before you start looking for capital, and follow their advice very carefully. If you do choose to hire a finder, check with the National Association of Securities Dealers and with your state’s securities regulators to verify that your finder is properly licensed and to see if there are any recent complaints against them.