Applications Open for Unreasonable Institute (w/ Founder Interview)

One of the more buzzed about new organizations in the social entrepreneurship space is the Unreasonable Institute, a ten week, Boulder, CO-based summer program for global entrepreneurs that includes mentorship, training, and a chance at part of a $150,000 seed fund, sponsored by First Light Ventures.

The program has a few distinct components that make it attractive for aspiring entrepreneurs:

• A curriculum based off of the raved about Transformative Action Institute program
• Mentorship with experienced entrepreneurs (or good fakers, like me)
• An experimental and super interesting approach to funding that gets entrepreneurs making decisions together about who gets what

The Institute is open for both non-profits and for-profits, although they are looking for organizations that can quickly pay for their own operating costs through sustainable revenue. They are targeting 20-30 somethings, although that's not a hard rule. Finally, they want big thinkers.

I asked Teju Ravilochan, one of the founders, three questions about the institute. Here were his answers

NW: #1 What is the single most exciting thing about UI (no equivocating - just one thing!)
TR: The single most exciting thing about the Unreasonable Institute is our sole focus: creating Unreasonable Impact. It's the opportunity to bring the most driven young social entrepreneurs from every corner of the globe and provide them every tool, every mentor, and every ounce of support they require to create social ventures that can not only sustain themselves financially, and not only scale to multiple countries, but measurably improve the lives of millions of people across the planet. For us, it's all about Unreasonable Impact.

NW: #2 Who is the person you most want to apply?
TR: There is no one person who we are looking for. Rather we are looking for 25 of them. We are looking for the world's most unreasonable, bold, brilliant, and relentlessly determined young entrepreneurs - those who are dedicated to meeting the actual needs of millions of people through entrepreneurship - those who will ultimately create the kind of impact that history will recall as having defined progress in our time.

NW: #3 If you had one sentence to try to convince someone to come, what would you say?
TR: "If you want to change the world, what would you rather do than spend 10 weeks living with 24 of the world's hungriest, young social entrepreneurs, learning from some of the best, most proven practitioners and investors in the world, and getting seed capital, legal advice, website development, prototype consulting, and brand recognition for free?"