Amazon is launching AWS Start-Up Challenge, a competition that should entice developers to present their best applications that use Amazon’s Computing Services. The best application will win a $50K cash prize, plus another $50K in Amazon Web Services credits (developers get charged an amount every time their apps use AWS). There are also four second-place prizes in the amount of $5000 in cash. Apart from the prizes, the winner also gets investment capital from Amazon, under the condition that the company is US based with less than $10M in annual revenue. The investment is to be deemed as start-up aid for further development, not as acquisition.

If you are going to participate you have to sign-up and fill an application by October 28, 2007. Finalists will be announced in November. Amazon will produce a video of each finalist whcih will be posted on aws.amazon.com, where the community can vote for their favorite.

Amazon execs feel this to be a move in the right direction, judging applications based on AWS to be a significant source of income for the company in the coming times. The company aims to develop an environment of third-party tools, a model used already by more traditional companies using developer-tools.

So, do you feel lucky?

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