Harvard Business School (HBS) earlier this month announced nine winners of a new pilot program that will award $50,000 to student entrepreneurs working on projects during the school’s winter term.
Called the Minimum Viable Project (MVP) Fund, the new program is based on the Lean Startup methodology, which stresses rapid prototyping designed to bring products to market as quickly as possible. The program was proposed by three HBS first-year students and is funded by the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship. The Lean Startup methodology has been popularized by Eric Ries, who is serving as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence this year at HBS.
The program drew written proposals from 88 teams, each with at least one current Harvard MBA student. Finalists presented their ideas to the MVP selection committee in mid-February.
“The number and quality of the business and product ideas submitted for consideration were outstanding,” said Dan Rumennik, one of the first-year students who proposed the program. He added that the willingness of HBS alumni and others in the entrepreneurial and technology communities to serve as mentors and advisors has also been impressive. “This response, in addition to that of the recently admitted MBA students who are already expressing interest in the program, shows there is a major appetite for entrepreneurship at HBS,” Rumennik said.
The nine winning entries included an online end-of-life planning platform to help people create, store and transfer their plan for what should happen when they die to designated beneficiaries; a children’s entertainment and education brand for the underserved North American Muslim population, and a web application that lets women keep track of data related to their period and fertility monitoring.
The winning teams will share $50,000 in funding from the Rock Center. 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.
For more on the MVP Fund or a complete list of winning entries, click here.
Read the full article: Harvard Business School Announces Winners of New Pilot Entrepreneurship Program