A Startup Is Having An Investment Idea Tournament With $160,000 In Cash Prizes

Start thinking now. SumZero, an online community for investment professional to exchange ideas, is partnering with FactSet for an investment idea tournament with $160,000 up for grabs.

It all starts on June 9th. Every three months there will be a new theme Best Short idea, Best Credit/Fixed Income idea, and Best Mid-Cap/Large-Cap idea.

"Fund professionals are inherently competitive. It makes perfect sense to harness that energy by constructing a competition full of the types of rewards that people in the industry truly value," said SumZero CEO Divya Narendra. "Our mission is to create the most powerful ecosystem in the world for actionable investment ideas, and to do that it's important to make sure that the necessary incentives exist to reward outstanding efforts that go above and beyond the typical pitch you might find on Wall Street. That's what this Tournament is designed to do."

1st, 2nd and 3rd place finishers of the four, themed contests will be awarded first- round cash prizes worth $15,000, $6,000, and $2,500, respectively. At the end of the year, an additional round of $5,000 cash prizes will be awarded to participants based completely on their performance.

The two, best all-around ideas, across all contests, as determined by an additional level of judge assessment, performance, liquidity, and peer-review, will receive the Grand Prizes, worth an additional $36,000 and $10,000, respectively.

That means a single idea can be awarded as much as $56,000. Plus you can enter as many ideas as you want and win as many as you can.

The judges are all investment pros - Mohnish Pabrai (Pabrai Investment Funds), James Montier (GMO), Glenn Tongue (Deerhaven Capital Management), Guy Spier(Aquamarine Fund), Zeke Ashton (Centaur Capital Partners), as well as senior professionals from asset allocation firms like the Virginia Tech Foundation, the MITInvestment Company, the Cook Children's Health Care System, and the UCLA Investment Company.

To submit, you have to work at a private equity firm, hedge fund or mutual fund and be a member of the SumZero website. Oh, and your idea has to have at least a $500 million market cap.

In addition to the cash prizes, winners will get to pitch their ideas on CNBC's Fast Money Halftime Report and at the 10th Annual New York Value Investing Congress.

"There are many guys and girls in the fund community that are phenomenal investors, but don't have everyday access to broad distribution platforms more commonly available to the Bill Ackmans, the Warren Buffetts, and the John Paulsons of the world," said Narendra. "We love identifying under-the-radar talent and elevating it. Hopefully, performing well in this contest opens the runway just enough for talented up-and-comers to take off and become the investing greats of tomorrow."

Like we said, start thinking.