Disruption occurs when you take something expected and do the unexpected.
Entrepreneurial accelerators are picking up pace around the world and many have been modelled on the premier Y Combinator Program in the Silicon Valley. People have since thought of more unique ways to put entrepreneurs together to spur relationships, ideas and of course new ventures. One good example is 500Startups organized Geeks on a Plane, which is an invite-only tour for startups, investors, and executives to learn about burgeoning technology markets worldwide. But the people at Unreasonableatsea have taken things to a new level, or should I say sea level by putting entrepreneurs on a ship to sail around the world.
According to their website, “Unreasonable at Sea is a radical experiment in global entrepreneurship.” With nowhere to escape besides jumping ship literally, 11 tech startups companies will sail around the world and visit 13 countries for 100 days to be mentored by 20 high calibre world-class serial entrepreneurs and innovators.” The goal is to build start-ups that will solve some of the greatest world in the areas of energy, education, healthcare and logistics etc. Some of the mentors are the best in the business and even include Nobel Prize Laureate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
The inspiration for the experiment comes from a belief that technology and entrepreneurs “will help solve these grand [world] challenges and it is our impatience that leads to a belief we cannot help them do so fast enough.” With 2 billion people still live on less than 2 dollars a day, there is a lot of problems to solve.
Starting in San Diego in and ending in Barcelona, the ship will also pass by Shanghai and Hong Kong. So if you are in the area, perhaps you can check them out. You can see the itinerary here.
The brilliant minds behind this are Daniel Epstein, the founder of the Unreasonable Institute and George Kembel, the co-founder & Executive Director of Stanford’s d.school have teamed up with Semester at Sea, the only global shipboard education program of its type in the world, to launch this program: An experiment in transnational entrepreneurship that will set sail in January 2013.
If you believe in the vision and want to support Unreasonableatsea, you can even fund them on Kickstarter. They are looking to raise $50,000 and have so far raised over $3,000.
I am anticipating the next accelerator to be on a space ship. No joke.