These students took part in a bootcamp on 21 and 22 April on SKEMA’s campus at Raleigh.
The 32 SKEMA students divided into 4 groups were selected from the 240 students of the year after taking part in a competition on entrepreneurship.
Before the contest, the students were given information about key entrepreneurship ideas by professors from NC State University, notably Dr Jeff Pollack (assistant professor in entrepreneurship), Lewis Sheets (NC State Entrepreneurship Clinic director) and Jared Childs (NCSU graduate, coach and entrepreneur at the NC State Entrepreneurship Clinic). They were with Michel Bernasconi, director of SKEMA’s Global Entrepreneurship Initiative, who came from France to facilitate this new initiative, and Dr Scott Cohen, assistant professor of accounting at SKEMA.
The groups were judged by successful entrepreneurs recruited to the ranks of the dynamic Raleigh entrepreneurial community. The competition was tough with 11 participating groups representing a large variety of technologies and start-ups. They had to answer a plethora of questions to check the robustness of their projects.
After the judges’ vote, two groups from NC State finished first and third in the contest. A SKEMA group comprising Arezki Khennache, Simon Prudon, Pierre Pourchair and Florence Alliod, came second with their idea: Local Around. This project that found favour with the judges, uses an Uber type model to recruit local citizens as tourist guides for visitors, with around centres of interest and profiles corresponding to their needs.