The Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School has helped fund numerous start-up ideas over the last year through their Minimum Viable Product Fund, and today is no different. The Center has announced seven winners for the first round of MVP Funding for the 2011-2012 academic year, offering a total of $50,000 in awards to student entrepreneurs.
Based on the Lean Startup methodology, the MVP Fund was designed to help students push their ideas forward in the most effective, time efficient way possible. Popularized by Eric Ries, the Lean Startup methodology focuses on rapid prototyping, a process that quickly brings products to market. Ries, who recently published The Lean Startup, is an Entreprenuer-in-Residence at Harvard Business School, who advises students and collaborates with faculty members on research and course development.
During this academic year, two rounds of MVP Funding will be awarded. Forty-eight teams submitted for round one, while submissions for the second round of funding, open to both first-year and second-year students, is due January 20, 2012. All teams that receive funding are required to meet with a mentor on a monthly basis, attend gatherings with other MVP teams and present the lessons they learned from the program at the end of the semester.
The seven winning entries, and their founders, include --
- BeautyX (Jamira Cotton, HBS 2012): A social shopping site where women of color can discover beauty products based on user photos and reviews.
- Colectivo (Jeremy Doutte, HBS 2012, Antoine Bonnier and Antonin Blanc): An online group purchasing organization that allows small and medium-sized businesses to leverage their joint purchasing power to benefit from large discounts.
- CPGlink.com (Benn Manning, HBS 2012): An online business-to-business service platform that connects small- to mid-size domestic manufacturers with independent sales representatives and other companies that support the consumer packaged goods industry.
- Eksis (David Sokoler, HBS 2012): An online platform that utilizes Facebook's social networking technology to connect job seekers and employers in Indonesia.
- Excelegrade (Jason Brein and Lauren Miller, both HBS 2012): An online software platform that allows K-12 teachers to design standards-based assessments, administer tests on mobile devices, automatically track student performance, conduct rigorous data analyses and create individualized progress reports.
- FeedBx (Maya Farah and George Audi, both HBS 2012): A new sampling channel for small and medium manufacturers in the food and beverage industry.
- Tenth & Taylor (Cynthia Samanian, HBS 2012): An online home decor platform that efficiently bridges the gap between design inspiration and product purchase for consumers.
“In last year’s pilot of the MVP Fund program, we were impressed by the number and quality of entries we received,” said Tom Eisenmann, the Howard H. Stevenson professor of business administration in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School. “We are pleased to be able to double the size of the fund to $100,000 and offer two rounds of awards this academic year, to support more of the extraordinary entrepreneurial ideas our students are generating.”
