Introduction

Ever wondered what it means to be part of UNICEF Venture’s investment cohort? Read on to learn more about our recent workshop for our blockchain cohort.

In December 2018, UNICEF Ventures announced investments into six early-stage blockchain startups from five different countries. To kick start the investment period, the startups came together in New York City in January 2019. The jammed packed week included meeting the UNICEF team that will be supporting them throughout the year, one-on-one mentoring sessions with business, open source, communication and blockchain specialists, learning from one-another and collectively identifying areas of potential collaboration.

The start-ups

The startups in attendance at the workshop were Atix Labs (Argentina), OS City (Mexico), Utopixar (Tunisia), StaTwig (India), Prescrypto (Mexico), and W3 Engineers (Bangladesh). While all startups are working on some type of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), there is great diversity in terms of their use cases, which range from digital prescriptions, to community currency. To learn more on each of the startups, visit the investment announcement and their blogs here.

The agenda

There were four distinct themes the startups and mentors focused on. These included: product development, business model, technical elements (particularly blockchain), and open source. These various topics were presented by our mentors and the UNICEF team, after which startups were given time to have one-on-one conversations with the mentors as they solved existing challenges and evaluated new product features. Other topics throughout the week included diversity and inclusion and media training, crucial components when building sustainable ventures.

• Day 1 - Learning about each other/open source/product development

• Day 2 - Technical deep dive / mentoring with blockchain experts

• Day 3 - Business mentoring, business canvas/one-on-one mentoring

• Day 4 - Diversity & inclusion / media training / wrap up

Our mentors

In order to push the thinking of each of these startups, the UNICEF Ventures team curated a list of mentors to guide the startups on various topics. Our special thanks to these outstanding mentors, that came to share their expertise:

• Aya Miyaguchi - Executive Director, Ethereum Foundation

• Galia Benartzi - Co-founder, Bancor

• Tayfun Ugur - Business Consultant

• Qusai Jouda - Blockchain Specialist

• Ariana Fowler -  Blockchain Specialist

• Nathalia Scherer - Ecosystem Development, DAO stack

• Justin Flory - Open Source Specialist, Rochester Institute of Technology

• Stephen Jacobs - Open Source Professor, Rochester Institute of Technology

• Ellen Cowan - Executive & Innovation Lead, Avanade

• Sanju Sunny - Product Development Director, Avanade

• Jenny Wrobel - Experience Design, Avanade

• Dana Geller, Senior Vice President, Digital and Social Strategy, RXMOSAIC

• Anne Cummings, Media Influence Strategist, RXMOSAIC

• Chantal Yang, Diversity Specialist, The Medici Group

What’s next 

All six companies will be part of the UNICEF Innovation Fund portfolio of companies for the next year. Throughout this time, the UNICEF team will be supporting the companies as they strengthen their minimum viable products. This includes using human-centered design to help the startups identify challenges and opportunities at the product level and guiding them as they licence their technology as open source. The Fund will also provide business and technical support from our in-house blockchain specialists, fund team and external mentors.