Peace Through Entrepreneurship

Thom Ruhe believes firmly that entrepreneurship is the key to world peace.

"If you think about it," says the Kauffman Foundation's director of entrepreneurship, "if you're giving birth to something--a company--you're adding value in your society, employing people, producing a product that's in demand in the market and contributing to your community. You're less likely to strap a bomb to your body and kill a bunch of people."

That's why Ruhe is particularly delighted about this week's Startup Weekend in Tel Aviv, Israel, arranged by co-organizers Amir Harel and Eddie Reznik. Startup Weekend is a catalyst for startups all over the world. It brings strangers together for one weekend and combines them into teams to plan and build startup businesses in a 54-hour period.

Startup Weekend Tel Aviv began on Wednesday and finished up Friday. During that time, 130 Israelis and 30 Palestinians worked together, aiming to create viable new businesses. Fifty-six ideas were pitched Wednesday, with 16 selected for teams. "Once you enter into the Startup Weekend event, there is no Israeli, Palestinian, or American--there are entrepreneurs, developers, investors, designers working together to build technology and have fun," Harel says.

It isn't easy getting Palestinians and Israelis together, according to Marc Nager, Clint Nelsen and Franck Nouyrigat, directors of the nonprofit Startup Weekend. The organization had to get government approval, hire a bus and lease the Peres Peace House in Jaffa, Israel. Startup Weekend is also providing hotel space for the Palestinians. "It's hands down the most expensive Startup Weekend we've had," Nelsen says.

It's likely not the most difficult to arrange, however. That prize is likely to go to efforts under way now to create a Startup Weekend in Haiti. Nouyrigat says it will take place in December or January.

Startup Weekend Tel Aviv is just one example of a belief in the power of entrepreneurship. The Institute for Economic Empowerment of Women has a program it calls Peace Through Business. That program provides long-term business education to women in Rwanda and Afghanistan, based on the philosophy that an economically sound country has a much greater capacity for peace.

Ruhe celebrates that premise: "We're making the world a better place through entrepreneurship, and to hell with our political differences," he says.

Startup Weekend was founded in Seattle in 2007 by Andrew Hyde as a for-profit business. It was created to prove that sustainable, high-growth companies could be created in a single weekend if you got the right people in the room. Nager and Nelsen purchased it the following year and turned it into a nonprofit. Their primary goal is education. "We want to be the best experiential model for teaching entrepreneurs," Nelsen says.

They are making an effort to bring women to Startup Weekends by partnering with Girls in Tech and Women 2.0. "On a normal weekend, it's definitely a male-dominated room. So we started to make a conscious effort to recruit more women," Nager says. "Having a woman on a team really balances it," he says.

The next initiative is to spread into the university world and get more involved with students, Nelsen says.

How does it work? Typically, participants show up on Friday night to pitch their business ideas. "About a third of the people have an idea they want to present to their peers," Nelsen says. They have 60 seconds to describe a problem, and the solution they have for that dilemma. In a room filled with 100 people, there will be about 40 ideas, he says. People vote for the ideas they like best and narrow the field down to 10 or 15 ideas. Then people "vote with their feet." They gravitate to the idea that grabs them and form teams of five to seven people to develop the model. It's not unusual, by the end of the weekend, to have teams marketing and even selling their products.

To date, more than 100 events have launched more than 560 new startup ventures. More than 10 percent went on to receive funding.

Startup Weekends are featured events associated with Kauffman's Global Entrepreneurship Week, taking place Nov. 16-22 this year. Global Entrepreneurship Week includes 1,000 events in more than 100 countries. "Like any good movement," Ruhe says, "it's taken on a life of its own."

In Ruhe's view, "American entrepreneurship is one of our last great competitive advantages. The rest of the world knows it--and they have an insatiable appetite to learn about it." He points out that more than 50 percent of the traffic on the entrepreneurship.org website is international in nature.

Says Ruhe of Global Entrepreneurship Week, "It's become a child of the world. I hope it grows up to become a decent global citizen."

Next: Ruhe's top tips for starting a business.

via womenentrepreneur.com

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