The Unreasonable Institute
Posted by Dan Matutina | 15-02-2010 16:59 | Category: Education
Thirty‐four young entrepreneurs, hailing from 16 countries and targeting issues ranging from the rehabilitation of former child soldiers in Liberia to the use of agricultural waste to produce energy in Bangladesh, will vie for twenty‐five spots in a ten‐week Boulderbased incubator called the Unreasonable Institute. The mentor‐intensive Institute has developed an unusual way to involve the world in selecting its twenty‐five entrepreneurs while admitting them free of charge, testing their entrepreneurial ability, and covering its costs of operations. It’s an online platform called the Unreasonable Finalist Marketplace, where the 34 finalists in the Unreasonable Institute’s selection process showcase their ventures to the world.
People from around the world vote with their dollars on the most viable ventures for creating social and environmental impact. The first twenty‐five ventures to raise $6,500 on this marketplace are the ones selected to attend the Unreasonable Institute. These 25 entrepreneurs will attend the Unreasonable Institute’s inaugural incubation program between May 28 and August 7, 2010 in Boulder, Colorado, USA. They’ll receive ten weeks of rigorous entrepreneurial skill training, access to seed capital, opportunities to pitch to over 200 investors and philanthropists, and mentorship from 50 proven entrepreneurs and investors like the former head of global brand marketing at Coca Cola and the Co‐Founder of Google.org. This incubation program, including room and board, costs the Unreasonable Institute $6,500 per entrepreneur. “We have applicants from New York to Nigeria and we know $6,500 is not affordable to both demographics,” explains Founding President Daniel Epstein. To ensure the programs affordability while recovering costs, the Unreasonable Institute team turned to the idea of “crowd‐sourcing” as modeled by Kickstarter. Kickstarter is an online platform for enterprising artists to raise funds for their early‐stage projects by soliciting small contributions from hundreds of sponsors. Adopting this model enables the Unreasonable Institute to have its cake and eat it too. “We charge our entrepreneurs $6,500 without allowing them to pay it,” says Epstein. “We instead ask them to demonstrate their entrepreneurial ability by galvanizing the financial support of hundreds of people through the Marketplace.”
While ensuring free admittance and testing entrepreneurial mettle, the marketplace appears to favor those with connections to affluent relatives. “We call this the ‘Rich Uncle Problem,’” says Tyler Hartung, Epstein’s teammate and fellow Unreasonable Institute Co‐Founder. “A finalist from the United States with a wealthy uncle would be apt to convince him to donate the full $6,500 to her the day the marketplace opens,” explains Hartung. “Her Ugandan competition probably doesn’t have the same luxury.” To solve this problem, the Unreasonable Institute regulates how much a sponsor can give each week. Currently, the maximum $100 and will continue to increase each week until, in the last two weeks, there is no maximum. “Not only does this marketplace level the playing field by making the Institute affordable to anyone, but we also believe it is the ultimate vetting process for our entrepreneurs.”
The world weighs in on which 25 entrepreneurs the Unreasonable Institute will incubate as they launch globally‐scalable ventures that could improve the lives of millions of people at
www.unreasonablefinalists.org.
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