Why Young Entrepreneurs Should Enter Competitions They Know They Won’t Win
By Gabriel Rogoff (CAS’19), co-founder, CareerPeak
Over spring break in March 2019, I had the opportunity to participate in the Hult Prize Regional competition round in San Francisco, California. The Hult Prize is an annual collegiate competition that challenges students to propose solutions for some of the world’s toughest problems. In 2018, Boston University, where I attend college, participated for the first time, with seven student teams submitting solutions to the 2018-19 Hult Prize Challenge: “Develop an idea to provide meaningful work for 10,000 young people in the next decade.”
My team and I entered the competition with our idea, CareerPeak. Our pitch was:
Liberal arts students do not know their value in the job market and recruiters do not have an efficient channel to recruit these students. CareerPeek is a career discovery platform that leverages machine learning and human connection to facilitate career discovery for liberal arts students. With CareerPeek students who have no idea what they want to do with their lives can get pointed in the right direction toward opportunities that match their unique skills and interests.
After competing in Boston University’s preliminary round last December, I arrived in San Francisco convinced we had the best idea in the competition. A few days later, I left San Francisco, mesmerized by how impressive everyone else’s ideas were. In the end, we didn’t win the grand prize of a spot in a London summer accelerator, with a chance of $1 million in funding from the United Nations. Instead, I left knowing at least three reasons why you should attend a competition you probably won’t win.