It’s only fitting that Harvard Business School have a Business Plan Contest; a contest so impressive the program’s closer to a short novel, spanning well over 60 pages. Open to all Harvard MBA candidates, the Contest comprises both the for-profit venture track and social venture track, awarding over $150,000 in cash and in-kind services to the winners and runners-up.

Co-sponsored by the university’s Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship and Social Enterprise Initiative, the Contest has three very simple objectives: To educate students in the process of creating and evaluating new business ventures; to prepare students for opportunities in entrepreneurship sometime during their careers; and to harness the unique resources that HBS and its communities offer.

Founders of Rent The Runway, Birchbox, CloudFlare, RelayRides and thredUP have all previously competed in the Contest, kicking off a string of HBS success stories. And this year’s winners look just as promising.

Runner-up of the Social Venture Track was Xinfugo, a company looking to build a disruptive base-of-pyramid retail and distribution platform to deliver safe and effective essential products at a lower cost in rural China. The team won $10,000 in cash, plus in-kind services.

Walking away with first place and $25,000 in cash and in-kind services, however, was eTransitions, a web-based solution that streamlines the transition of patients from the hospital to post-acute care facilities. The team — made up of Lissy Hu, Jessica Hohman, Kira Yugay and Jonathan Helm — said they were blown away, “impressed by the great ideas” present.

“This is so gratifying for us,” Hu said, claiming the win would help them move forward along the social venture track. Through the process of building the company, Hohman remarked they were given the chance to learn about the nuances of the industry “they didn’t even realize were there while [they] were in it.”

The Business Venture Track awarded three of the final four teams with the runner-up title. They included:

RallyPoint — A business aimed at revolutionizing the way military professionals connect, develop and pursue fulfilling opportunities throughout their military careers. RallyPoint claims they do for the military what LinkedIn does for business.

SaferTaxi — Using the SaferTaxi smartphone application, customers in Latin America are allowed to book and pay rate taxis with added convenience, as well as transparency.

Zumper — Zumper allows tenants to search for, and close, annual apartment leases in a much more transparent manner.

Vaxess Technologies walked away the $25,000 winner. The six-person team — comprised of Michael Schrader, Anura Patil, Livio Valenti, Patrick Ho, Kathryn Kosuda and Isa Watson — is working to commercialize a Tufts University technology that stabilizes vaccines into a thin film strip which can be shipped and stored without refrigeration, eliminating the need for the cold-chain.

“We were blown away by the quality of the other teams, so this is a very high compliment” Schrader said. Winning the Contest is what Schrader admitted he hopes is the start of a wave of momentum. Vaxess is also a semi-finalist in the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, as well as Harvard’s President’s Challenge.

Will we be seeing any of these names added to the “success stories” list?

Photo Courtesy of Harvard Business School

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Article source: http://bostinno.com/2012/04/25/harvard-business-schools-business-plan-contest-doles-out-over-150k/

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Article source: http://www2.highpoint.edu/articles/show.php?id=2883

Despite the economic uncertainty and social unrest in Egypt, tech start-up investors are finding plenty of promising options.

By Christopher M. Schroeder

Collaboration at Flat6labs

FORTUNE — It’s been more than a year since Egypt’s former president Hosni Mubarak resigned after the Arab Spring uprising began. Many Egyptians had high hopes for major reforms after the dictator’s 30-year rule, but so far few of them have been realized. But despite the economic turmoil and leadership uncertainty in Egypt, one group is remaining steadfastly optimistic on the country’s future: Entrepreneurs.

“We all know there is political uncertainty as Egypt wrestles decades of infrastructure, cultural, social and religious issues,” says Khaled Ismail, twenty-year veteran of the Egyptian tech scene, who sold his most recent software company to Intel last year, one month after Mubarak resigned. “The pessimists tell me we are about to drive off the cliff – foreign direct investment has dried up, our foreign reserves are impossibly low, political instability will continue. The optimists say there is a year of pent up demand waiting to be met once the political scene is clearer after Presidential elections in May.”

Ismail says a new generation of entrepreneurs is buzzing about opportunities in Egypt and the greater Middle East. He points to Flat6Labs, the first of a crop of tech start-up “accelerators” popping up in Cairo, Alexandria and around the Middle East over the past year, as an example. Like their YCombinator or Dog Patch Labs compatriots in the U.S., Flat6 is a beautiful, open office space where up to seven Egyptian tech start-ups are housed and supported for three months at a time. Flat6Labs provides early seed funding, computers, Internet access, and basic HR, accounting and legal resources. Each week, seasoned professionals, entrepreneurs and business school professors from Egypt and around the world mentor these start-ups one-on-one and offer sessions on various topics, such as entrepreneurship, marketing, user experience, digital advertising, project management and alike.

MORE: Two big crowd-funding questions

Flat6Labs is the brainchild of Egyptian investor Ahmed Alfi, who returned to Egypt five years before Tahrir and after a 40-year absence, much of which he spent in the U.S. investing in tech and media companies. Convinced that Egypt and the Middle East offered great business opportunities for a new generation of entrepreneurs, he and Egyptian investor and investment banker Hany al-Sonbaty launched one of the early venture capital firms in Egypt, Sawari Ventures, in late 2009.

During the past year of instability and revolution, Sawari has invested in a dozen early-stage Egyptian companies in areas ranging from chip design to precision search capabilities to consumer-facing mobile applications. Vimov, one of Sawari’s first investments which started with three iPhone and iPad app developers in Alexandria a year ago, has created the highest-selling paid weather app in the world, now reaching nearly five million users, half of whom are in the U.S.

Sawari was more than happy to donate a floor of its renovated, turn-of-the-20^th century building in the leafy Giza neighborhood right off of the Nile to help launch Flat6Labs. Sonbaty notes with a sense of appropriateness that The American University of Cairo signed on as their partner eleven days before Tahrir Square, and their first entrepreneurs were “birthed” nine months later.

Sawari’s next task was to find someone to lead Flat6. Appropriately, their answer was found on Twitter. Last spring, 27-year old Alexandria University computer science alum, Ramez Mohamed, was enjoying a successful career in website design and usability for businesses and later in mobile applications for one of the largest content and ecommerce portals in Egypt. While he had never heard of a “tech accelerator” until he began to follow Sonbaty’s tweets posting observations about Tahrir Square and entrepreneurship, he tweeted reactions back and eventually they agreed to meet. In preparation Mohamed studied all the accelerator models in the U.S. and came loaded with ideas about what could be done in Egypt. He proposed the three-month cycles Flat6 would adopt, and the rigorous, tenacious competitive vetting of online applications followed by the around-the-clock boot camps to find the best of their generation entrepreneurs. He wanted his companies hyper-focused on their businesses, and established a central tenet: “no religion, no politics.”

MORE: Facebook values itself at nearly $77 billion

The process Mohamed created is as simple as it is Darwinian. Each quarter, a new “cycle” commences where Ramez and his team selects up to seven start-up concepts from hundreds of candidates that apply online. Flat6 seeds each investment with the Egyptian pound equivalent of $10,000 to $15,000 for 10%-15% of the company. The selected teams are hosted in Flat6Labs headquarters, each week presenting their progress internally and at the end of the cycle on “Demo Days” to outside investors, mentors, media and the business community. After each three-month cycle, Sawari invites other investors to fund the best companies — it will co-invest passively. Once a company completes its cycle, it moves out to pursue its destiny — with or without further investment.

Flat6′s first companies cover a wide breadth of concepts including online collaboration tools for businesses and their clients, online video services to offer greater access to on-demand programming, consumer-facing social recommendation engines for restaurants and other local entertainment and needs, among others. In a city and country suffering from significant infrastructure challenges, many of their entrepreneurs see opportunity to solve them.

Wrestling the challenge of job matching among under-employed college graduates, Careerise has introduced one of the first social online job and career management resources in Egypt and the Middle East, allowing companies and job seekers to find their best job fits through their social networks. With over a half million Google searches for doctors in Egypt per month, Ekshef will allow patients to have the most comprehensive interactive guide to physician quality and the ability to book an immediate appointment. As there are no reliable or safe ways to call for cabs in Cairo, Ogra offers mobile phone apps that not only allow a passenger to find the nearest, vetted taxi driver among the chaos of Cairo traffic, but offer GPS tracking to ensure passengers arrive to their destinations safely.

As the local angel investor community continues to develop and expand, Alfi, Sonbaty and Mohammed see a clear path of putting through 100 start-ups a year or more through Flat6 by 2013, and believe other accelerators will do the same.

Can tech ventures and venture investing, however, really make a dent in the vast economic and employment challenges of today’s Egypt? Alfi argues that people who doubt the potential are missing the broader multiplier benefits. In the U.S., according to the National Venture Capital Association, companies that were originally backed by VCs account for 11% of private employment and 21% of GDP.

“Look at the history of economic success in almost any country in recent history, and innovation, venture capital and entrepreneurship are the answer,” notes Alfi. “Egypt needs to rekindle this spirit here. The talent and hunger are here.”

Christopher M. Schroeder is an Internet entrepreneur and US venture and angel investor, having formerly run washingtonpost.newsweek interactive and co-founded the online social and content health platform healthcentral.com, sold in December 2011. He is working on a book on start-ups in the Middle East to be released in February 2013. He can be followed on Twitter @cmschroed.

Article source: http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/04/25/egypt-entrepreneurs/?section=money_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fmoney_topstories+(Top+Stories)

Editor’s Note: UC San Diego released the following announcement April 24, 2012.

Mexico’s most visionary leaders, vibrant culture and extraordinary accomplishments will be on display for the “Mexico Moving Forward” symposium, 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. May 3 at UC San Diego. This year’s symposium, “Charting a Path to Prosperity,” is designed to promote economic development in Mexico.

The hosts of the symposium, the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS), invites the community to engage with visionary business leaders, scholars and social entrepreneurs who will provide diverse perspectives on the current economic challenges in Mexico, what can and is being done to address them, and how these lessons can be applied globally. The panel will address issues pertaining to regulation, human capital, social protection, informal economy, and entrepreneurship.

“Mexico Moving Forward clearly underscores UC San Diego’s expertise in US-Mexico relations,” said Peter Cowhey, dean of UC San Diego’s School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. “The university’s proximity to the border and the internationally renowned faculty at IR/PS, perfectly positions us to produce transformative research with societal impact on Asia and the –Mexico is a focus area of the school because the economic, strategic and human ties between Mexico and the U.S. have never been closer than they are today.”

The speakers will include Joel Suárez Aldana, CEO of GRUMA, the most globalized food company in Mexico and the worldwide leader in corn flour and tortilla production; architect Victor Legorreta, partner of an internationally renowned firm whose recent work includes projects in South Korea, Qatar, Greece, Egypt, the U.S. and Mexico; and Francesco Piazzesi, the founder and CEO of a firm that provides sustainable community development and winner of the award for Social Entrepreneur of the Year by the Latin America World Economic Forum.

“We are inviting the community to hear from businessmen who have succeeded against all odds in sectors that you wouldn’t expect,” said Alberto Díaz-Cayeros, director of the Center of U.S. Mexican Studies. “We hope to promote a vision to create companies that sell commodities, that while being profitable, also have a positive societal impact.”

In addition to the symposium, guests will be able to enjoy the “Mexico Street Fair” in the IR/PS Robinson Complex plaza. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the public is invited to enjoy musical performances, learn about exciting destinations in Baja California and check out displays on academic work and social involvement by UC San Diego students. In addition, free food will be served from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.

At ­ 5:30 p.m., guests are invited to join the symposium participants at the “Best of Baja” reception highlighting the culture and food of Baja California. This event, free and open to the public, is sponsored by the government of Baja California and will take place at the International House’s Great Hall.

The symposium on May 3 features the following speakers: 

• Margarita Barney Almeida is the founder and director of GRUPEDSAC, a non-governmental organization honored with the Intel Environment Award for Technology, for its work promoting education and the development of sustainable communities.
• Carlos Danel is the founder and CEO of Banco Compartamos, Latin America’s largest for-profit microfinance bank and the first institution of its kind to issue an Initial Public Offering (IPO) valued at nearly $2 billion.
• Gabriela Enrigue González is founder of Prospera, a company developing innovative ways to help female-led micro-enterprises grow to increase equality, diversity, and fairness.
• Gordon Hanson is a professor of economics and director of the Center on Emerging and Pacific Economies at UC San Diego. A prolific scholar and author of “Why Isn’t Mexico Rich?,” the article on which the theme of this year’s symposium is based.
• Gabriel Lagos is general director of Fundación GEO, a company committed to developing sustainable communities with features that promote social well-being and improved quality of life of individuals. 
• Victor Legorreta is partner of Legorreta + Legorreta, an internationally renowned firm that creates architecture dedicated to building better cities. Recent work includes projects in South Korea, Qatar, Greece, Egypt, the U.S. and Mexico.
• Santiago Levy Algazi is the vice-president for Sectors and Knowledge at the Inter-American Development Bank and the main architect of Progresa-Oportunidades in Mexico, which has become the model of anti-poverty programs worldwide.
• Francesco Piazzesi is the founder and CEO of ¡Échale! a tu casa, a firm that provides sustainable community development through social housing production. He recently won the award for Social Entrepreneur of the Year at the Latin America World Economic Forum.
• Joel Suárez Aldana is CEO of GRUMA, the most globalized food company in Mexico and the worldwide leader in corn flour and tortilla production.
• Mónica Tapia is founder of Alternativas y Capacidades, a capacity building organization that aims to improve the ties between civil society organizations and their private donors to maximize the impact of their philanthropic work.

The presenting sponsor of Mexico Moving Forward is Sempra Energy. For more information and to register, visit usmex.ucsd.edu/events/mmf/.

Article source: http://lajolla.patch.com/articles/mexico-moving-forward-symposium-meeting-at-ucsd

Moore County Partners in Progress has hired Forward Communities to conduct a feasibility study to determine if a multi-faceted social entrepreneurship initiative can be launched in the county.

“They’re going to tell us if this concept can work here,” said Pat Corso, executive director of Partners in Progress. “In essence, we’re buying the template from them.”

Forward Communities is a subsidiary of Bull City Forward (BCF), a Durham-based nonprofit focused on catalyzing sustainable enterprises. BCF was founded in spring 2010 and served as the model for last fall’s launch of Queen City Forward in Charlotte.

BCF builds pipelines for future entrepreneurs through school and university partnerships, recruitment of outside talent and retaining existing talent, among other methods.

It provides a strong environment to incubate and accelerate new ideas through physical space for co-working, a comprehensive assistance network and access to critical support resources, including financial capital.

“This a perfect scenario for us,” Corso said. “If the concept is validated, then we could enter into an agreement with Bull City Forward to run the program or train someone here to do it.”

Christopher Gergen, founding executive director of BCF, addressed Partners’ board of directors last January, telling them that social entrepreneurship “takes a lot of cross-pollination.”

“You basically have to partner and collaborate with everyone you can to make this work,” Gergen said then.

He noted that social enterprises are often more difficult to successfully operate than traditional businesses because one has to monitor a “double bottom line,” viewing profit as a tool to achieve social good, and there is often no existing path cleared by those who have gone before you.

Partners raised $15,000 to pay for the study at its inaugural Partners Cup golf tournament last month.

“I didn’t have any money in the budget to do it, so the tournament had a purpose,” Corso said. “Now, we’re ready to tee up the study and get moving on it.”

Partners has established a steering committee that will hold a kick-off meeting May 2 with Forward Communities. Committee members include Andi Korte, David Woronoff, Tom McPherson, Matt West, Patrick Coughlin, Anita Holt and Jeremy Reynolds.

Coughlin, president and CEO of the Moore County Chamber of Commerce, said he looks forward to understanding how the concept can best be applied in Moore County.

“I think this is a viable sector for economic development,” Coughlin said. “First, you have a rising tide of social entrepreneurism in this region. Secondly, Moore County is full of nonprofit organizations that are focused on the greater social good. And I think there’s a greater awareness in corporations, on the whole, that social responsibility is an important part of their business plan.

“You put those three things together, you’ve got opportunity for social entrepreneurs to work with traditional businesses.”

The study, which is scheduled to be completed this summer, will include a comprehensive asset map and a needs/opportunity analysis, as well as suggested next steps with a proposed budget.

“The focus will be on the opportunities to create new business in Moore County,” Corso said. “What shape this thing takes in the end? I don’t know.”

The study will also assess whether office space is available in Pinehurst, Southern Pines and Aberdeen to host specialty incubators, such as technology, health care and military contracting.

“The key is that they need to be in downtown locations,” Corso said. “We’re hoping for a ripple effect that will create synergy with existing and future businesses in the downtowns.”

Contact Ted M. Natt Jr. at (910) 693-2474 or tnatt@thepilot.com.

Article source: http://www.thepilot.com/news/2012/apr/25/social-entrepreneurship-concept-studied/