HBS Announces Winners of Student Start-Up Funding

HBS’ Rock Center for Entrepreneurship has made its first selection of student start-ups that will receive funding from their Minimum Viable Product Fund. From the Harbus:

Proposed by first-year MBA students Dan Rumennik, Jess Bloomgarden, and Andrew Rosenthal, and funded by the Rock Center, the MVP Fund is based on the premise of the Lean Startup methodology, which focuses on rapid prototyping, a process that brings products to market as quickly as possible. This methodology has been advanced and popularized by Eric Ries, an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at HBS this academic year advising students and collaborating with faculty members on research and course development.

Eighty-eight teams, each with at least one current Harvard MBA student, submitted entries. Written proposals were due at the end of January, and finalists presented their ideas to the MVP selection committee in mid-February.Funded teams are required to meet with a mentor on a monthly basis, attend a monthly gathering of other MVP teams, and present lessons learned from the MVP program and process at the end of the semester.

9 teams were awarded funds. Here is a sample of the winnings teams (you can read about all of them at Harbus):

Adiply (Omar Restom, HBS 2012):
A self-serve tool that executes online advertising direct deals (that is, instances in which an advertiser works directly with a publisher–the Web site selling ad space) to buy ad inventory on that site.

AfterSteps (Jessica Bloomgarden, Alex Stratoudakis, and Emma Taylor, all HBS 2012):
An online end-of-life planning platform with educational resources and tools to create a plan, store it, and transfer it to designated beneficiaries.

Children’s Stories for American Muslims (Mohammed Aaser, HBS 2012):
A children’s entertainment and education brand for the underserved North American Muslim population. The business will start as a subscription service delivering monthly stories and will later expand into toys, books, games, videos, and licensing.

Read about the rest at the link below.

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