Wanted: “Clean, Green” Businesses For Start-Up With SBDC
The Small Business Development Center, a division of the Belize Trade and Investment Service, last year pioneered the “Startup Weekend” as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week. It was intended to provide a forum for budding entrepreneurs to get guidance and opportunities for presenting their planned businesses to an important audience. The SBDC is repeating the event this year, with a singular focus: emerging “green, clean” technology. There’s two thousand dollars at stake for the businessman or woman who can successfully present their idea to potential investors in a “Startup Boot Camp.” We spoke with the SBDC’s Business Advisor, Monique Usher.
Monique Usher
Monique Usher, Business Advisor, SBDC
“This year we are partnering with the Caribbean Climate Innovation Center, and this year’s theme will be focused on clean, green technology; and so we are extending invitations to entrepreneurs out there who have ideas around that theme. So when we are looking at that, we are looking at renewable energy, energy efficient, water waste management, and ideas around that theme. So we are extending invitation for participation and we are hoping to get positive feedback. This is an event that has been done in the Caribbean, and Belize is also participating in the Startup Boot Camp. We are actually requesting that persons interested apply because we are doing a pre-selection. So you submit your application, we vet and review it; on the day of the Startup BootCamp, you actually come, pitch your idea to other peers attending and try to have them buy in to your idea to develop during the Start-Up Boot Camp.”
Reporter
“Any cost to applying?”
Monique Usher
“There is a seventy-five dollars fee for the registration of the Start Up Boot Camp. I’d just like to mention that it covers catering, so you get breakfast, lunch, supper; you get access to network with persons who can propel your business, so we’re encouraging participants to sign up, and you also get a t-shirt, which you sport during the last day of the Start-Up Boot Camp, when you actually pitch your idea to a panel.”
The event takes place from November eleventh to thirteenth at the ITVET grounds in Belize City.
