MassChallenge at Kairos Society Global Summit
Here at MassChallenge we are strong believers that Boston is the global center for entrepreneurship and innovation. This past weekend, however, we took a trip to New York City to take part in the Kairos Society's Global Summit. The Kairos Society is an exclusive group of college entrepreneurs from universities in all corners of the world. Over 350 hand picked student fellows and 150 VIP guests converged on the United Nations and the New York Stock Exchange to network with each other and pursue a common mission of making the world a better place through innovation.
The most impressive part of this weekend's summit for us was the "Unveiling of the 50 Most Innovative Student Ventures" located on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. We felt at home with so many amazing young entrepreneurs all in one location pitching their hearts out. The student ventures ranged in industries from recreation to fashion to technology and marketing and everything in between. MassChallenge was excited to have some of our own talent represented in the unveiling with our very own ThinkLite LLC. ThinkLite provides custom tailored lighting solutions to businesses with a business model that allows businesses to go green without the upfront costs of getting there. Even more exciting then having them exhibit, was when Intelius founder and CEO, Naveen Jain, awarded ThinkLite with their Entrepreneurship Award for Sustainability.
The Babson crew behind ThinkLite was not the only New England winner of the Intelius Entrepreneurship Awards this weekend, though. They were joined by the Harvard and MIT crew behind DxTura, a medical diagnostics venture, and the Brown University Team at WaterWalla, a social enterprise focusing on clean water technologies.
All the New England talent at Kairos confirmed to us that Boston really is the world’s hub for entrepreneurship. With MassChallenge right at the center of all of this innovation it means that this years accelerator is going to be bigger and better then anyone can imagine.
Our application is kicking off in just under a week and we hope to see some of the “50 Most Innovative Student Ventures” and hundreds of other innovative ideas from all around the world apply to take part in the 2011 MassChallenge Startup Competition. For more information on this years competition take a look at the 2011 Competition Page or once the application launched on March 7th, enter the completion!
We would like to thank the Kairos Society for allowing us to take part in the 2011 Global Summit. More information about Kairos can be found online at www.kairossociety.org.
