The Yale Entrepreneurial Society (YES) today announced the launch of its Y50K Entrepreneurship Competition.
The business plan competition, to be held in April, will award winners a total of $50,000 in cash and other prizes, including professional services. The competition seeks to enhance Yale’s and New Haven’s attractiveness as places to start a new company.
The first event for the Y50K competition will be a team-building mixer, to be held in the Silliman College common room on Monday, November 8th, at 8:00 p.m. Yale students, faculty and staff are eligible for the competition and welcome to attend the first session.
“You do not need to have an idea to come to the team building session,” said Sean Glass, a Yale undergraduate and founder and president of YES. “Companies need people with different types of skills, so come to the mixer and you never know what you might become involved in. For example, an English major might be needed for a team creating an online publishing company.”
Yale alumni have founded such well-known companies as RealNetworks and Federal Express. The Y50K competition will give the current Yale community encouragement to found the well-known companies of tomorrow.
Established in July 1999, YES is an undergraduate organization that seeks to build the spirit of entrepreneurship at Yale and inNew Haven. YES accomplishes this goal through the Y50K competition, hosting speakers, conducting training sessions, publishing a newsletter and pairing students with successful professional mentors. YES also has an initiative to match students with local start-up companies and not-for-profit organizations that need business help.
The advisory board of YES includes Bruce Alexander, vice president of the Yale Office of New Haven and State Affairs, David Cromwell, professor and former CEO of J.P. Morgan Capital Corporation, and Barry Nalebuff, the Milton Steinbach Professor of Economics at the Yale School of Management.
Additional information is available on the YES Web site, http://www.yale.edu/yes.
* or Sean Glass, (203) 436-1977
** pager 203/867-1188
