Crowdsourcing Solutions for Humanity and the Planet: Columbia Does It Again!

Last Wednesday at Columbia, hardworking venture teams and early stage investors discussed humanitarian, social, and environmental problems, solutions, and scalable market opportunities to make the biggest impact. A Spring cohort of thirteen startup teams of talented students, researchers, faculty, and alumni in my impact venture incubator course competed for the top seven spots in round 1 judging to pitch live at Demo Day. They were joined by the top seven venture teams of the Fall cohort of sixteen startups. It was impressive to see the traction all of these early ventures have made.

In six weeks of programming, venture teams comprised of people from across Columbia University’s schools, programs, and alumni community validated problems with stakeholders, proposed solutions, created and iterated MVPs, derived go to market strategies, drafted pro forma financials, chose actionable performance metrics, and pitched their ventures to expert mentors and investors. The presentations of their business highlights were met with insightful questions from investors evaluating their offerings.

Our ventures span many sectors: climate impact/environmental sustainability, health and wellness, fintech, proptech/construction, edtech, civtech, safety wearables, journalism/new media, sustainable food, and DEI. Their offerings consist of software solutions, marketplaces, media platforms, and products.