By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Ankur: Another cool story is [about] a friend of ours, Ben Lewis. Ben is a student at the University of Pennsylvania, and he started a company called Give Water, or PurBlu Beverages, [with] one of their products being Give Water.
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold John: If we’re able to bring in outside dollars in support of one our companies, that’s a validation. Somebody else evaluated and decided to put his chips down on the opportunity that we cultivated and developed; that is a validation that we’re doing good. So, that’s one
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Irina: What are the benefits of being a Kairos Society fellow? Ankur: For example, one of the most exciting things we did, this past September, was we took 50 of our fellows to China with Alibaba.com. We took them to look at U.S.–China trade opportunities.
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold John: We help to organize a network of angel investors in this rural area. We provide them with a professional fund manager and help them to determine their offering to each other, the agreements they have, and the processes by which they will evaluate companies and invest
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Ankur: The goal to take some of these students who would have otherwise gone the traditional corporate route and get them to embrace this idea that with a community of like-minded peers, knowing they have the support and guidance of top mentors from around the world, [they
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold John: One of the things about the kinds of companies that we uncover and work with is that they are in need of a great deal of help. Rather than a large, urban, metropolitan area where a company that is very early stage may come with a
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold Ankur: Today, in this interconnected world, you can have a Chinese entrepreneur start a company with an American entrepreneur. You can take the best of both countries to create a single company that’s inherently multinational and multicultural. This product can be, from day one, sold in two
By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold John: Another example might be developing a prototype or, in the case of a really early stage company, protecting the intellectual property through obtaining patent assistance. So, all of those are things that are needed to take risk out of an opportunity. They require resources that often