Harvard Business School Announces Winners of Student Start-Up Competition
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BOSTON—Harvard Business School's (HBS) Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship has announced nine winners of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Funding, a new pilot program offering $50,000 in total awards to student entrepreneurs working on projects during the School's winter term. 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. "The number and quality of the business and product ideas submitted for consideration were outstanding. Equally impressive has been the intense support we have received from HBS alumni and other individuals in the entrepreneurial and technology communities who have stepped forward to serve as advisors and mentors to the winning teams," said Rumennik. "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. We hope this program can grow in the years ahead to support more students as they strive to get their business ideas off the ground." "The enthusiastic response to this competition from the HBS community shows the magnitude of the entrepreneurial spirit at the School," said Tom Eisenmann, the William J. Abernathy Professor of Business Administration in the HBS Entrepreneurial Management Unit. "We were thoroughly impressed by the nine winning business ideas and look forward to watching these businesses develop with assistance from the MVP Fund." The nine winning entries (with their founders) are:
Among the many HBS graduates who have founded successful business ventures are Marla Malcolm Beck (MBA 1998), founder of bluemercury; Michael Bloomberg (MBA 1963), founder of Bloomberg L.P.; Marc C. Cenedella (MBA 1998), founder, president, and CEO of TheLadders.com; Scott Cook (MBA 1976), chairman and cofounder of Intuit; Jennifer Hyman and Jenny Fleiss (both MBA 2009), cofounders of Rent the Runway; Rajil Kapoor (MBA 1996), cofounder and former chairman and CEO of Snapfish; Alexis Maybank and Alexandra Wilson (both MBA 2004), cofounders of Gilt Groupe; Christopher Michel (MBA 1998), founder of Military.com; Tom Stemberg (MBA 1973), founder of Staples; and Jeremy Stoppelman (MBA 2005), CEO and cofounder of Yelp. Individuals interested in working with the MVP Funded teams as an advisor should contact Dan Rumennik at drumennik@mba2012.hbs.edu. About The Arthur Rock Center: |
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