I spent the day on Thursday last week in a small classroom on the Georgetown campus reviewing finalists in the SBA’s Accelerator Competition. Announced a few months ago, the Accelerator Competition is a program of the Small Business Administration through which they are awarding $50k to each of 50 accelerators across the country to promote entrepreneurship (that’s $2.5M in total for those of you w/o a calculator handy). For a government program it has surprisingly few strings attached – it’s really an experiment by the SBA to see if they can facilitate entrepreneurship across the country through providing assistance to the various programs that support entrepreneurs around the country. Of several hundred applicants the group last week reviewed the top 99 to come…
Category
Democratization of Entreprenurship
Entrepreneurship behind the wall: A trip to Palestine
If you’ve been a reader of my blog for any time you’ll know that I’m intrigued by (and a big fan of) the notion of The Democratization of Entrepreneurship. It’s not that I think entrepreneurship solves all the world’s challenges, but I deeply believe in the notion of entrepreneurship as a catalyst for positive social change across the globe. It’s a powerful force and we’re seeing more and more examples of entrepreneurs creating real change around the world, community by community. Late last year I had the opportunity to spend a week in Palestine working with entrepreneurs and traveling in the region. It was part of my work as an advisor to Sadara Ventures – the only Palestinian focused venture…