Guest blogger Teju (and his partners Tyler and Daniel) live, eat and breath social entrepreneurship in their tireless work for the Unreasonable Institute. I think they are completely unreasonable... and a very special part of Colorado's start up scene.
It Takes a Village to Raise an Entrepreneur
A lot of people say that
one person can change the world. I don’t believe that.
History is filled with stories
of individuals who changed the world—Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Gandhi,
Martin Luther King. But what history ignores is that none of these bold
visionaries achieved anything without exceptional teams and without the
hundreds of people who mobilized to provide them support.
My team and I believe that
to change the world, it takes a village.
That’s exactly why we’ve
built the Unreasonable Institute. It’s a place where we bring together 25 world-class entrepreneurs
from every walk of life and put them in one house for six weeks in Boulder,
Colorado with mentors and funders—literally a village of entrepreneurial
support.
[Dinner- fellows from Netherlands, Canada, India & China]
The entrepreneurs who show
up come from many sectors and from all over the world. They range from a
former child soldier from Liberia to a McKinsey consultant from India to MIT
graduates in Pakistan. They’ve secured US Navy contracts, partnerships with
Wal-Mart, HP, and the Indian Government. They’ve landed $1.5 million in funding
from the European Union and recognition from the World Health Organization.
But the chance to live with and work with our 50 mentors helps these
entrepreneurs move faster than ever before. Mentors range from Paul
Polak, whose leadership at International Development Enterprises has enabled
over 19 million farmers out of poverty, to Phil McKinney, the CTO of HP. The
entrepreneurs also live with and build relationships with portfolio managers
from 20 investment funds, including Acumen Fund, First Light, and E+Co, with
the hopes of securing capital.
As Unreasonable 2011 Fellow Nat Koloc said, “I’ve been waiting for
this community for a long time.” It’s
thanks to this convergence of peer support, mentors, and funders, that he says,
“I got more done in six weeks here than I would have in a year.”
We believe that changing
the world is not about entrepreneurs or pioneers working in isolation. It’s
about their aggressive participation in a global movement. In a family of
people who are just unreasonable enough to take on the world’s greatest
challenges!
If you’re an entrepreneur
who believes this, join us. Apply by November 10 to attend our
2012 Institute. Reasonable
entrepreneurs need not apply.
________________________________
Teju Ravilochan is co-founder of the Unreasonable Institute, an acceleration program for entrepreneurs tackling social and environmental problems. Each year, it unites 25 world-class entrepreneurs from across the globe in Boulder for 6 weeks. They live under the same roof, work with 50 mentors, pitch to 100 investors, and build relationships with portfolio managers from 20 investment firms.
2 comments:
I would appreciate answers to the following types of questions be posted on an appropriate website by graduates of the unreasonable institute so I can duplicate their results in Uganda, Haiti, and Colombia
1) How can BOP urban dwellers make a living in a wide variety of fields (not just panhandling or crafts)?
2) Where can I get appropriate training material for BOP farmers and city dwellers so they can make a living? The training material must be in the right language.
3) How do I identify and obtain all the supplies I need to start a successful BOP business and how much will these supplies cost?
4) How do I get the fiscal information I need so that I can evaluate the true cost of starting and running a particular type of BOP business without relying on philanthropy?
5) What are the best crops for BOP farmers to grow in a particular tropical or arid rural area? In particular, what price will I get for the final product?
See http://chrysalisuganda.wordpress.com/ for a sample of what I need
Mr Rigterink raises some good questions. It is conceivable that there would be a lot of ingenuity and talent in the slums of, say Brazil, or in Dharavi in Mumbai. There would be a need to put a group together from these people - in other words, we need an "unreasonable institute" to select people from such a community. Who would better understand the needs of such a community than the members who make it? It would be a great experiment to see what could happen when a "fire" is ignired here! The ideas inherent to theTED talk by Bankur Roy would definitely throw more light on this, as well!
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