This year, the Start-Up Challenge is being run a bit differently. In the past, we have awarded $50,000 at our Grand Finale in April to the winning team voted on by the judges, and over $10,000 in other prizes. However, this year our goals are slightly different, as we want the Start-Up Challenge to be a place that students can go for advice and feedback from judges as well as one where they can create a business from their idea. As a result, our Grand Finale will not be taking place in April, but rather we will be having a Demo Day on February 19 where the top teams get to showcase their ideas and raise funding to work on their ideas over the summer. We believe that working in the start-up world provides an opportunity for students to not only see their idea to fruition, but to gain invaluable experience. While the curriculum at Duke is undoubtedly unbelievable, the opportunities Duke provides off campus make the years on campus that much more valuable. The Start-Up Challenge offers plentiful resources to participants to help them get real world experience, to help them sell their products, and to help bring out the great ideas in the great minds of our Duke students.
In order to provide an opportunity for start-ups to raise money for their summers, we have partnered with Indiegogo, a crowd-funding website that helps our participants raise money while showcasing their ideas and allowing early adopters to get some great perks in response for their support. Indiegogo enables anyone, anywhere to achieve their dreams and fund what matters to them. Founded in 2008 by two students at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and one of their peers, Indiegogo was the first and is now the largest global crowd-funding company. It has enabled people from almost 190 countries and territories to post and fund campaigns. It facilitates millions of dollars a week and sees more than 9M unique visitors a month. In addition to enabling start-ups to raise funds, crowd-funding enables entrepreneurs to identify their early markets, test their messaging and inform their business model in their earliest days. Indiegogo has worked with many start-ups, from the $800,000+
This month, Indiegogo is excited to partner with Duke to enable second round students in the Duke Start-up Challenge to share and move forward their start-ups with the support of their community and larger crowd. You can see the participating campaigns that went live on the Duke Partner Page. Indiegogo is an egalitarian company, and promotes the campaigns on its site with the highest gogofactor, its proprietary measure of social engagement. Find, support and share the campaigns that you most care about today so that Duke students can make the most of this exciting partnership!
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