This morning, as I flipped open my daily TechCrunch, I found a fascinating story about Travis Kiefer. (http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/03/for-27-this-kid-will-do-whatever-you-want-in-antartica-on-tuesday/) Travis Kiefer is a Stanford student who founded Gumball Capital, a non-profit that gives college students $27, 27 gumballs, and one week to find a way to raise money (The Gumball Challenge). Proceeds from the challenge go to micro-lending organizations to provide funding to entrepreneurs in the third world. In essence, Kiefer is an entrepreneur who encourages entrepreneurship to fund entrepreneurs. Say that ten times fast. And how does he raise money for his non-profit? Well, on Tuesday, he is running a marathon in Antarctica and will do whatever you want there if you donate $27.
The Gumball Challenge (and Kiefer himself) is pretty wacky, but it's a very creative solution to the problem of encouraging entrepreneurship. That is the very problem I'll be seeking to address starting next month, as Vic's successor as President of the Graduate Entrepreneur Club. Currently the GEC has several programs to address it, including Napkin Club, which encourages idea generation through camaraderie in a social setting. What I'm hoping to do going forward is help move students in the direction of action on their ideas.
But what really interests me about the Gumball Challenge is precisely the fact that its wackiness is effective. Last year, 47 teams took up the challenge and managed to raise $2000 for micro-lenders. That means that on average each team raised about $44 in proceeds off of a $27 investment in one week. Not too shabby. The challenge reminds me of a similar project done annually in a class taught by Stanford professor Tina Seelig, where she gives students $5 and two hours to make as much money as possible. In her book, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, she chronicles many of the projects done over the years, including a bicycle-tire-refilling operation that netted the students several hundred dollars. (Watch this for a short presentation on the project.) As she notes, the most successful teams thought beyond the 5-dollar and 2-hour constraints and did something that they could have done with nothing. I think the big lesson here is that the gumballs and the $5 are examples of successful catalysts for entrepreneurial thinking. In other words: Set the stage for the event, give people something a bit wacky, and watch the innovation flow.
