Competition

I'm learning here how valuable conferencing and networking are in the start-up world. One of the more interesting ones is called The Unreasonable Institute. It's certainly an interesting model, especially the fundraising mechanism.

Basically, in order to show that the venture is actually promising, all the projects are placed in a marketplace and anyone can vote for them (shouldn't be too hard to find my project if you feel so inclined; I had a hand in some of those answers, so I'd love to hear what people think of the company). I like the need to prove yourself to the world. But I also worry. I'm pretty sure that a lot of the US companies can just reach out to their friends and family and get the funding, even if they don't have the best project (of course, there was a selection process to reach the marketplace) while a bunch of the ones based in Africa, Latin America and South Asia are at a slight disadvantage. Looking at the totals on the board, it's nice to see that some of the funded projects are from those regions, but I worry that there are others that don't have the connections. We shall see.

I've also heard some skepticism about their target ventures. They are looking for projects that are going to reach 1,000,000 people. There are lots of fantastic projects that work with a single community or region and won't reach anywhere close to 1,000,000 people. But they can have a much greater impact than a lot of projects that reach a million people. That's not the point. This conference is looking at dissemination strategies. They are selecting based on a criteria (ambitions for scale), which eliminates a lot of good projects, but it also encompasses a lot of good projects. There are plenty of conferences on ICT4D (information and communication technologies for development), and those are probably excluding some really cool development projects on housing in urban slums. But having that focus allows them to accomplish more and there are plenty of other conferences for each different niche. I'd love a lively comment page on this issue.

I am skeptical about a few of the points, but to be honest, I haven't gone through the details too closely. Overall, I would describe my feelings as cautiously optimistic. I am certainly hoping for a wild success, and it seems like they have the team to accomplish it. Should be interesting.