I'd consider submitting an application, except that the deal-breaker seems to be, "The Amazon judges' panel will review all applications and choose five finalis

I'd consider submitting an application, except that the deal-breaker seems to be, "The Amazon judges' panel will review all applications and choose five finalists, based on ... implementation of pay-as-you-use Amazon Web Services." We'll certainly might use AWS in the future, but in prototype building mode, it seems like AWS would be a premature optimization. By the way, I wonder if they are looking particularly for startups that use AWS in novel ways, as opposed to promising startups that just happen to use it on the backhand for scalability.