MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Sept. 28, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — Singularity University (SU), a global community with a mission to educate, inspire, and empower leaders to apply exponential technologies to address humanity’s grand challenges, today announced SU Ventures, a new program designed for the unique and more long-term needs of impact-focused startups. In order for these startups to become high-growth, sustainable businesses, they need early and ongoing funding, rapid and iterative customer testing to inform product development, as well as connections to a global network of domain experts and potential partners.

The emphasis on sustained engagement is critical. These entrepreneurs are tackling humanity’s greatest challenges surrounding water, food, disaster resilience, climate, health, and education, to name a few, by using rapidly evolving, exponential technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, digital biology, and nanotechnology. The difficulty of their missions is of a different order of magnitude to the traditional entrepreneurial effort, which is often focused on bringing the next generation of existing solutions to market. Rather, these social impact creators are striving to solve big problems that could favorably impact a billion people within ten years with their moonshot initiatives.

“SU Ventures is the first and only program developed to encourage more, successful impact entrepreneurs to solve humanity’s challenges,” said Monique Giggy, Managing Director of SU Ventures. “SU has the global network of corporates, development organizations, and experts to open doors to early customers and partnerships. We also have an arsenal of boot camps, sprints, retreats, labs, summits, and other tools to ensure these startups deliver impactful breakthroughs. We go well beyond traditional accelerators and incubators to give them an ‘all-you-can-engage’ format for the lifetime of the startup.”

“We believe Singularity University has one of the few well-positioned startup programs with solid management to execute the operations and help companies reach their goals,” said Paul Mahal, CEO of Stanford Ventures, LLC.

SU Ventures Tools for Social Entrepreneurs Bringing Abundance to the World

Capital

SU provides bootcamps focused on teaching founders how to raise and leverage the various types of capital they need to create growth, scale, and sustainability. SU teaches them how to raise and blend sources of early seed capital from government grants and philanthropy, to angels, VCs, and social impact investors.

Customers

SU helps startups design field-trial pilots to test their innovations and get real-world feedback. Being able to set clear metrics and get fast, iterative feedback accelerates the startup’s product development lifecycle and time to market. SU brings others from its global network to ensure these trials are successful, including corporations, other startups, and development organizations in its Impact Partners program.

Connections

SU has a community that is 200,000-strong across all regions of the world. The community includes impact investors; corporations; industry, market, and technology domain experts; government agencies and NGOs; foundations; SU Country Partners and Chapter representatives; and SU alumni and faculty. From this community network, SU Ventures curates mentors to help participants address specific challenges, scale their impact, and understand product market fit. SU also curates unique Boards of Advisors with relevant domain experience to support founders on their journey.  

To learn more about what the second Incubator class participating in SU Ventures is doing to solve global grand challenges for climate and the environment, go to the SU press release also distributed today entitled, Social Entrepreneurs Showcase 15 Innovations for Global Good to Impact Investors at Third Singularity University Ventures Demo Faire.

ABOUT SINGULARITY UNIVERSITY

Singularity University (SU) is a global learning and innovation community using exponential technologies to tackle the world’s biggest challenges and build an abundant future for all. SU’s collaborative platform empowers individuals and organizations across the globe to learn, connect, and innovate breakthrough solutions using accelerating technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, and digital biology. A certified benefit corporation headquartered at NASA Research Park in Silicon Valley, SU was founded in 2008 by renowned innovators Ray Kurzweil and Dr. Peter H. Diamandis with program funding from leading organizations including Google, Deloitte, and UNICEF. To learn more, visit SU.org, join us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter @SingularityU, and download the SingularityU Hub mobile app.

Media Contact:

Jessica Kersey, jessica.kersey@su.org

650-868-9295

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SOURCE Singularity University