NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, January 4, 2013

Eleven startup companies will bid the United States a farewell on January 7 as its founders set sail to hop from country to country seeking out new global markets for their budding startups. But this batch of entrepreneurs isn’t your typical Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley entrepreneurs launching apps that solve (or add to) our first world problems. Instead they’re tackling world health, global poverty, and space travel by leveraging technology to their advantage.

Unreasonable at Sea is a one-of-a-kind crash course in global entrepreneurship. On paper it’s an accelerator, but at its core it’s a movement.

In one respect these entrepreneurs are a smattering of a new wave of social technology entrepreneurs that are motivated by innovation for innovation’s sake. They’re bound to an idealism that’s rooted within the precepts of Unreasonable at Sea. Like most tech companies today, revenue isn’t the goal. Finding a feasible solution with as little friction as possible in today’s complex politically charged society is the objective.