Entrepreneurs gear for Demo Day of MIT-GSL Challenge 2014
Thursday, 24 July 2014 00:00
-
- {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Lankan Angel Network to lend support for Demo Day as potential mentors and investors
Seven promising start-ups incubated by the MIT Global Startup Labs (GSL) Sri Lanka program are now preparing for Demo Day – the finale of the seven-month program - on 30 July.
On Demo Day, several young entrepreneurs will pitch their innovative ideas and seek for seed money and advisors to help them take their start-ups to the next stage.
Seven investors from the Lankan Angel Network (LAN) will comprise the panel of judges for this year’s MIT-GSL Demo Day. Apart from the panel of judges, other members of LAN will also attend the event as potential mentors and investors to witness the start-ups being pitched.
The goal of LAN is to bring together the Sri Lankan investor and mentor community and to scale the start-up ecosystem here in Sri Lanka.
Supporting early-stage, promising start-ups incubated by MIT Global Startup Labs with seed money and mentorship aligns well with the overall goals of LAN.
In its fourth year now, the MIT Global Startup Labs program has partnered with Brandix and the Sri Lanka Association of Software and Service Companies (SLASSCOM) and expanded to a seven-month, national program this year in Sri Lanka.
The GSL program consists of three phases.
The top 75 applicants from a pool of around 380 applications from all over the country were selected to participate in Phase 1 – ideation and team formation.
During this phase, participants met with experts from several industry verticals, went through ideation and formed 15 start-up teams.
At the end of Phase 1, the start-ups pitched their ideas to a panel of industry experts and 10 teams went ahead to Phase 2 – conceptualisation.
During this phase, the teams continued to work on conceptualizing their ideas and attended workshops on finance, project management and IP.
Five teams thereafter proceeded to Phase 3 – refining and fine-tuning business models.
Three new start-ups that were already in the concept stage also joined the program in Phase 3.
During this phase, teams focused on customer validation and go-to-market strategy.
The teams also had guest lectures on several topics ranging from ‘structuring start-ups’ and ‘valuation’ to ‘executing lean start-ups’.
