Columbia Engineering Partners with NYC on Entrepreneurship Program
KisiBox, a team of three young entrepreneurs from Germany, has won the fourth annual NYC Next Idea competition, a program sponsored by New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) in partnership with the Engineering School that encourages students and recent alumni from universities around the world to consider New York City as the natural place to start their new venture.
Entrepreneurs from around the world competed at the NYC Next Idea Competition held in Davis Auditorium.
A panel of judges, including prominent entrepreneurs and venture capitalists Fred Wilson, Roger Ehrenberg, Jon Axelrod, and Maria Gotsch, selected KisiBox from a highly competitive and diverse pool of more than 220 applicants submitted from 40 different countries. The winning team will receive $35,000 to help launch its innovative business in the City.
“Entrepreneurship is becoming an increasingly important element of engineering and we are fortunate that New York City is emerging as a hotbed of start-ups and venture activities,” said Fredrik Palm, senior associate dean at the School. “Our emerging footprint in technology entrepreneurship is further bolstered by this partnership with the New York City Economic Development Corporation. The NYC Next Idea competition allows us to showcase the City’s thriving innovation-to-enterprise ecosystem to the hundreds of teams from around the world who applied to be part of this global program.”
The NYC Next Idea competition, which is part of the Bloomberg Administration’s efforts to encourage entrepreneurship within a variety of sectors, is one of several entrepreneurship programs on which the Engineering School is partnering with NYC organizations to further grow the ecosystem of entrepreneurship in the City.