Entrepreneurs Take to the Seas for Inspiration
By Eric Tyler, New America Foundation
What happens when you mix 11 budding startups with Google executives, Stanford professors, a Nobel Peace Laureate and 600 college students and put them on a ship to circumnavigate the world?
An experiment launched this month called Unreasonable at Sea hopes that this eclectic group will unleash global entrepreneurship.
A 590-foot ocean liner has become the incubator for this experiment, attracting aboard both multinational companies and international foundations, venture capitalists and environmental philanthropists, even a Saudi Arabian prince and the founder of WordPress. All want to take part in fostering the entrepreneurial efforts of those on the ship.
From Hawaii, the program will visit a range of developed markets from Japan to Spain as well as developing markets from Burma (also known as Myanmar) to Ghana. This allows for a crucial opportunity to not just tweak business models but more importantly test products in local contexts.
For many of the founders, who come from countries around the world, this is their first voyage on a ship. As such, seasickness on the choppy waters of the Pacific has been a recurring struggle, but it has not deterred the entrepreneurs from diving head first into the business workshops, one-on-one meetings and pitch events.
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