I'm in the process of launching a side project called "Clean Economies" and need your help selecting the final logo. We've crowdsourced the design on 99designs.com and its been a fun and interesting experience to see how the model works. Over 3 days, we received nearly 300 logo submissions from 33 different designers! All we did was launch a competition on the site and provided a prize of $295 to the winning designer.

I'll be writing several posts on best practices and lessons learned in the process later. But, in the meantime, we need your help choosing the winning design. We haven't fully conceptualized and solidified the pitch, but here is the start of it to keep in mind before voting below.

Clean Economies will predominantly be an online forum, blog, and monthly event that discusses how we can re-engineer and build more sustainable economies. It's not only about reducing our carbon footprint, its about making sure the entire world has sufficient access to clean water(over 1 billion people currently don't), utilizing resources more effectively by matching supply and demand through crowdsourcing, producing better software and products through open source methodologies, enhancing collaboration and bringing different layers of socioeconomic classes together, building sustainable architecture that's self sufficient and designed to work with the environment, fostering entrepreneurship, creating better healthcare systems, commercializing technology, and ultimately focusing on new models that not only aid businesses, but aid the general well being of society and environment.

Each event will focus on a panel discussion with industry experts, investors, entrepreneurs, and related leaders in emerging fields. We're considering doing our first event on water purification and the need for ecosystems to bring clean water to a billion people who don't have sufficient access.

Anyway, please vote on your favorite design below. We'd appreciate your vote and any feedback you may have in the comments.

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We may well discover that the business failure we avoid and the business success we strive for do not lead us to personal success at all. Most of us have inherited notions of ‘success’ from someone else or have arrived at these notions by facing a seemingly endless line of hurdles extending from grade school through college and into our careers. We constantly judge ourselves against criteria that others have set and rank ourselves against others in their game. Randy Komisar

As we profiled before, Babson's Summer Venture Program produced 17 undergrad startups and 6 MBA startups. With the growing trend of college startups and entrepreneurs, it begs the question; why are these students starting companies?Continue Reading...

Here are some interesting articles from around the web worth reading:

Harvard Professor Slows The Speed of Light to 38 MPH!

Lene Hau has already shaken scientists' beliefs about the nature of things. Albert Einstein and just about every other physicist insisted that light travels 186,000 miles a second in free space, and that it can't be speeded-up or slowed down. But in 1998, Hau, for the first time in history, slowed light to 38 miles an hour, about the speed of rush-hour traffic.

Two years later, she brought light to a complete halt in a cloud of ultracold atoms. Next, she restarted the stalled light without changing any of its characteristics, and sent it on its way. These highly successful experiments brought her a tenured professorship at Harvard University and a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation award to spend as she pleased.

[Via: Harvard Gazette]

Eco-Docks Designed to Float in NYC's Nasty Rivers

A professor and student team have designed a network of modular floating docks to harness clean energy for New York City.

The eco-docks would generate the energy by harnessing tidal power from the city’s rivers; they should also help to add much needed green space above the dirty waters.

[Via: CleanTechnica]

Startup Bets That Social Networking Will Spur Carpool Craze

A free Facebook application launched by a pair of entrepreneurs to help college students bum rides at Cornell University has expanded into a viable Silicon Valley startup, counting as clients more than 30 college campuses, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Cigna Corp.

Zimride's business is simple: It connects drivers with riders looking to carpool to class or work. More broadly, it tries to capitalize on a social-networking niche at Palo Alto-based Facebook Inc. to help avoid greenhouse gas emissions and get cars off the road.

[Via: Inernational Herald Tribune]

The Little Secret of Web Startups

Consumer startups are tough. You have two basic choices: A paid offering or a free offering (or freemium). If you charge people a penny, you’ll turn off the bulk of your visitors. If you offer free services, you might grow to be the next YouTube, Wordpress or Facebook. Most entrepreneurs are not risk-averse and the dream of being big is just too appealing and the majority of us take the “free-route”.

Read on for lessons learned as Marcelo Calbucci, founder of Sampa, shuts down its doors.

[Via: TechCrunch]
 

We just posted a competition for the undergrad Babson College entrepreneurs from the Venture Summer Program. Here is a list of the graduate students and their startups. Vote in the poll at the bottom for the startup you think has the most potential. We'll give the winner 3 months of free advertising on College Mogul.

Here are 6 MBA startups from the program:  Continue Reading...

The following are 17 undergrad startups from Babson College's Summer Venture Program who presented on Demo day last Wednesday to venture capitalists, angel investors, and friends. The 10 week program helps undergrad and MBA students develop their companies by providing mentorship, shared resources, and campus housing.

Below are brief summaries of all the companies from the undergrad entrepreneurs. I've set up a poll at the bottom for everyone to vote on what startup they think has the most potential. I'll give the winner (with the most votes) 3 months of free advertising space on College Mogul.

Vote on the following Babson Startups: Continue Reading...

The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) at Georgia Tech, is one of the better known university technology accelerators and has helped launch more than 120 startups. Combined, these companies have raised over a billion dollars in outside funding and produced millions in revenues. However, it's not the only incubator that's seen success at Georgia Tech. The Georgia Tech VentureLab also helps companies spinout of the university and commercialize cutting-edge research. They've launched over 150 more Georgia-based startups that utilize university IP.

There is clearly a trend here. Incubators that are built on campuses produce an ideal breeding ground for companies because it's surrounding ecosystem contains many of the resources required to start a company; technology, industry experts, scientists, researchers, business minds, young energetic entrepreneurs, research grants, and legal advice from tech transfer offices.

Are these university incubators becoming micro Silicon Valleys? Continue Reading...

The second meetup of Ultra Light Startups Boston, the "Economics of Cleantech" went very well and we attracted around 100 attendees. The panel included 4 panelists from Resolute Marine Energy, GreatPoint Ventures, SunPoint, and the Northeastern University Centure for Renewable Energy Technology.

Here is some advice they offered for entrepreneurs and the cleantech industry:

Ben Jabbawy
Associate, GreatPoint Ventures

1. "Assemble a gold plated management team who are able to vet the technology and facilitate quick adoption." Commercializing new technologies is difficult, so its important to bring in industry experts, scientists, and engineers to gain feedback and understand how the business model will fit into the larger ecosystem.

2. "Start with a need in the marketplace opposed to finding a technology and then finding a need later." They took this approach with one of their recent portfolio companies, AltaRock. While doing research, the GPV team discovered that drilling oil holes is very expensive. Each one costs about $10 million and takes 4 months to drill. "There's gotta be a better way to do that." Explained, Ben. They discovered a solveable problem first and then went to universities and researchers to see if anyone was working on a new technology that could be applied to reduce costs.

3. "Always choose experience over attitude when building your team." Although, GPV works with young entrepreneurs, too. They primarily strive to build teams of experts that have many years of experience in the field or market that the startup is entering. Young entrepreneurs usually have a positive and strong attitude in terms of persistance and work ethic, but they should always look to bring on team members that have experience to balance the equation.

4. "Find an investor who is really going to help you with your first company." Continue Reading...

The car might weigh less than some people at a meager 240 pounds, but it has a range of 1,336 miles on one tank of hydrogen fuel. The car, called SAHIMO, was developed by Turkish students at the Sakarya University Advanced Technologies Implementation Group (SAITEM). They're now working on a goal of raising their record from 568 kilometers on one liter of hydrogen to a full 1,000 kilometers. SAHIMO is predominantly made out of carbon fiber and cost the group $170k to make.

Although they've managed to squeeze an extraordinarily high number of miles out of a gall, it wasn't enough for taking first place at Shell. Instead, the SAHIMO won third place in Europe's 26th Shell Eco Marathon. According to Shell's website, the goal of the Eco-marathon is to "challenge students around the world to design, build, and test vehicles that travel further using less energy. It's an educational platform that encourages innovation, reinforces conservation and fosters the development of leading technology for greater energy efficiency." These types of competitions that engage students to engineer solutions to company challenges are becoming more popular.

Their next challenge is tackling the "Global Green Challenge," which is a "platform and testing ground for the next generation of vehicle technology. These competitions are similar to the concept of crowdsourcing because they put problems out in the open market for engineers, students, or general hobbiest to solve. Another interesting one is Local Motors, which we've written about several times. Their using the concept of crowdsourcing and competitions to design various parts of the car through submissions and community based voting.

Here is a video of how they built the car:  Continue Reading...

What if you had the ability to designate where a small portion of your tax dollars were spent instead of giving 100 percent of your income tax to incompetent politicians?  What if government agencies could compete directly for a small piece of your federal income tax returns for special initiatives? The crowdfunding model that is being tested in journalism could also help spur innovation and transparency in government by making agencies compete for money using social media and a good, old-fashioned charm offensive. Let's call this new tax regime 'Flex Filing.'

Part of the democratic process is electing leaders who are responsible for spending public money, but in many ways, it's like throwing your money into a black box.  In 2008 the U.S. Government spent over $3.16 trillion on the military, forests, education, health care, roads, bridges, tunnels and a million other things. Some of the government's priorities I agree with, such as investing money in scientific research, while others I oppose, such as two wars and domestic spying. 'Flex Filing' would enable you track your tax dollars and follow the results from start to finish.Continue Reading...