Pitching a business idea to former President Bill Clinton as well as
microfinance guru and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus is
daunting, to say the least. But how confident can you be in a concept
unless it first passes the rigors of a real-world test and possibly even
an incubator program?
Last year, a team of four students from New York
University's Abu
Dhabi campus and I presented in front of a panel of judges at the Hult Prize,
which awards $1 million in seed funding to innovative startup ideas
that address a global social challenge. While we wound up winning along
with two other teams out of a pool of more than 4,000 applicants, none
of us had actually produced clean energy, fixed a significant element of
the education system or tested a solution to the housing crisis.
Tonight, in New York City, things will be different.
Hult Prize finalists piloted their startup projects
in developing countries this past summer. Tonight, one team will win $1
million to grow their venture.
Image credit: Hult Prize
The 2013 Hult Prize, which kicks off the
Clinton Global Initiative's
annual meeting for heads of state and leaders of businesses and
nonprofits, will award $1 million to the sole startup idea that best
secures food for undernourished communities -- particularly for the 200
million people who live in urban slums. And each of the six teams of
budding social entrepreneurs, who range in age from 22 to 32 and come
from business schools from around the world, have already test piloted
programs in developing countries.
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