Investing in Entrepreneurs in Developing Countries — A Talk Sponsored by The Blum Center
Wednesday, November 14th
6:00pm
Hearst Memorial Mining Building, Room 290, UC Berkeley Campus
Please join The Blum Center for Developing Economies for a talk on:
“Creating an online investment platform for entrepreneurs in developing countries”
Thierry Sanders and Koen Wasmus, Directors of the Business in Development BiD Network Foundation.
A reception and graduate student mixer will follow.
Please RSVP: http://blumcenter.berkeley.edu/events/BID
The mission of the BiD Network Foundation is to contribute to sustainable economic development by stimulating entrepreneurship in developing countries. They achieve this by:
Stimulating small and medium sized entrepreneurship to create jobs and raise income in developing countries.
Engaging professionals, investors and organizations offering them the opportunity to directly contribute to poverty reduction through SME development in developing countries.
Inspiring people that business and poverty reduction can go hand-in hand.
Come hear Thierry Sanders and Koen Wasmus discuss how they have created an online investment platform and community called the BiD Network to tackle the key problems facing investors wanting to help stimulate economic development in emerging markets.
The BiD Network now operates the world’s largest business plan competition for entrepreneurs in developing countries. This year the BiD Network received 3,400 business proposals from over 100 countries. It operates competitions in Kenya, Tanzania, Philippines, India, Argentina, Columbia and Peru. All of this happens online though www.bidnetwork.org In addition to the business plan, over 3,700 active members contribute to the online community to help entrepreneurs in developing countries. In the first year alone the BiD Network assisted the start-up of almost 20 companies in developing countries that help reduce poverty and employ over 500 people.
Speakers Bio:
Thierry Sanders is the Founder of the BiD Challenge, an international business plan competition for developing countries. He has a blended career background in development and business, with a dash of IT, carbon markets and finance.
http://www.bidnetwork.org/person-43-en.html
Koen Wasmus focuses on the internal organization and the roll-out of the local BiD challenges in developing countries. He is a development economist with experience in micro and small finance.
http://www.bidnetwork.org/person-40994-en.htm
