The LAUNCH Festival taking place March 7 & 8 has now made history: over a quarter of a million dollars in prizes!

Charles River Ventures is putting up a $100k investment in one of the 10 award winners at the LAUNCH Festival, bringing the total prize money to over a quarter of a million ($269k to be exact).

The investment will be in the form of a convertible note without a discount or cap (similar to the notes provided to Y Combinator companies), and be for a whopping $100k. Most importantly it comes with my good friend George Zachary as an advisor (he's aces).

I've co-invested with CRV a couple of times now, and I can tell you it is a great, great firm -- its investments include Twitter, Yammer, Scribd and Zendesk. Any startup raising money should make CRV one of their first stops in the Valley.

CRV will pick the winner from the award winners at LAUNCH. To recap, we have two competitions (1.0 and 2.0), and five prizes in each (Overall Winner/Best in Show, Best Technology, Best Design, Best Business Model and Best Presentation).

After the Grand Jury selects those 10, the team at CRV will select its winner.

This is the third announced prize for the LAUNCH Festival. The first two were:

1. TechStars accepting one of the 40 companies into its next semester (valued at $118k).
2. Venture51 providing a $51k investment into the winner of the 1.0 competition.

If CRV were to select the winner of the 1.0 competition, and that company joined TechStars, it would have $269k in total investment. However, I'm guessing (hoping?) the three prizes will be split across the 10 winners.

I'm blown away by the graciousness and support of our partners. This event would not exist without the huge support of a collection of people who believe startups should have a free, merit-based event to LAUNCH their innovations to the world.

Our presenting sponsors this year are Bing and Symantec, and our partners are Sequoia Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, CRV, TechStars, Venture51, Zelkova Ventures, Tagged, Yammer, News Corp, Xtreme Labs and MailChimp.

On behalf of the 40 startups on stage, and the 100+ in the Demo Pit, I thank them!

all the best, @Jason

PS - If you're a broke startup founder who is looking for a break and you have something amazing to share with the world, apply for a free ticket. We try and make room for folks trying to change the world and who can't afford the event.

PPS - If you're a venture firm, law firm, recruiter, etc. who wants to support our mission to provide a free, powerful platform for startups, email me jason@launch.is. We sure could use your support.