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

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Village Capital and the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance’s (NCIIA) Venture Well have joined to offer early stage IT and cleantech entrepreneurs the opportunity to win $100,000 in seed money. Teams selected from across the nation will take part in a two and a half month competition beginning with a conference for selectees the weekend of November 29, 2012 in Boston. The competition’s opening weekend will include intensive workshops and offer participants the opportunity to engage leading entrepreneurs and experts in their respective business sectors. After the conference, participants will be required to share their progress and receive coaching sessions during weekly conference calls. The competition will conclude in Boston the weekend of January 30, 2013 with each enterprise presenting their proposed innovation to their peers and challenge sponsors. The cohort will select two enterprises as the winners, each of which will receive $50,000 in convertible debt to launch their proposed innovations.

The selection committee is accepting applications from university-based enterprise teams nationwide for proposed innovations that meet the following criteria: 1) must have a for-profit, commercially scalable business model; 2) must demonstrate customer validation and market potential; and 3) must address IT, energy/environmental sustainability, or a combination of both. The committee will accept IT proposals related to enterprise and mobile solutions, ideally focused on serving low resource populations in the U.S. or emerging markets. Energy or environmental sustainability technology solutions must be capital efficient and appealing to current or future global markets.