1 Million Cups (1MC) is a simple way to engage entrepreneurs in communities around the world. Each week, the 1MC program offers two local entrepreneurs an opportunity to present their startups to a diverse audience of mentors, advisors, and entrepreneurs. Presenters prepare a 6 minute educational presentation and engage in 20 minutes of feedback and questioning after they present.

Entrepreneurs gain insight into possible ways they can improve their businesses, gather realtime feedback, connect with a community that truly cares about their progress, and walk away feeling like they have advanced their business. The audience also learns a great deal from the presentations. Whether this is through passively listening or deeply engaging with the entrepreneurs, there is much to learn every week from these dynamic and diverse communities. Below is a list of some of the most interesting, engaging, and inspiring ideas from the 1MC collection of presentations.

Minddrive

MINDDRIVE’S mission is to inspire students to learn, expand their vision of the future, and to have a positive impact on urban workforce development. The program is funded through the national sponsorships of Bridgestone, Hertz Corporation, SONIC®, America’s Drive-In®, KCP&L, American Society of Mechanical Engineers Foundation (ASME), Automobile Dealers Association of Greater Kansas City, and VML, as well as through local foundations and individual contributors. MINDDRIVE serves 40 students from the urban core of Kansas City, currently working with over 5 area schools; there are 28 students participating in Automotive Design Studio and 12 in Contemporary Communications. The students choose their course and also are given the freedom to align with the particular aspect of the project that gets them the most jazzed. Mentors play a huge role in finding what that spark is for each student, then figuring out a way to inspire them in that direction.

Panacea

Every Ticket Gives

Easy Event Ticketing. Contributing to a Better World. We provide an easy way for you to sell event tickets online, and we give a portion of our fees – $0.50 for every ticket — to the charity of your choice. The Big Vision — Conscience Driven Capitalism. EveryEventGives is one example of a much larger movement, a movement that starts with EveryEventGives. “Conscience Driven Capitalism” is a whole new level of corporate giving. It means so much more than just having a charitable budget or allowing workers to volunteer. It means integrating conscience into every business transaction. It means that making the world a better place is part of the fiber of everything we do.

BetaVersity

Change the way students and teachers approach education. From passive learning to active learners. Studies show that creating learning by doing environments and teaching others are the most effective way to learn, yet most money is spent on lectures. We create environments that facilitate deep learning while also improving STEM retention, making student recruitment easier, and helping to give students more relevant real-world experiences. Increase accessibility. Provide collaborative prototyping facilities to organizations that wouldn’t have otherwise had access to it. K-12, underserved populations, remote locations, etc. We do this through innovating at every level – from the design of equipment itself to distribution of space as a service.

Unite For Literacy

Unite For Literacy is a for profit-for social good publisher and content marketing platform whose business model provides FREE unlimited access to its picture book digital library of over 100 books currently narrated in over 17 languages through partnerships with brands and big business who mutually drive engagement with families of young children globally to eradicate the book scarcity epidemic and create life long learners who learn to love reading at an early age.

Mantis Digital Arts

Bella Minds

We live in a world where it is increasingly possible to control your own career, balance your time, build things and stay creative. The internet makes learning possible regardless of where you live. Marketplaces like Etsy make it easy to sell. Paypal and Square make it easy to accept payments.  LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest make it easy to communicate to your network and beyond. But you need to know that tools exist and how to use them. For many mid-career women, digital literacy is not a given, but great ideas are. Bella Minds empowers women to take advantage of the digital age to take control of their careers.

JobPact

Airbitz

Rarewire & Leap.it

The world of app development is becoming more and more saturated, but RareWire cuts through all the noise by providing one of the strongest platforms on the market today. We offer true cross-platform native apps built in our flexible WIRE language. The App Creation Studio doesn’t require XCode, Eclipse, or any complicated IDEs. Developers don’t need to know Objective-C, Java, or any advanced programming languages. No other app building tools can claim this ease of use, combined with such a powerful language. The RareWire App Creation Studio makes it substantially easier to build native apps for iOS and Android devices. RareWire has built an engine that requires the base skill set of a web designer, not a developer. While most apps take developers weeks to build, RareWire apps can be built in a matter of days. Follow them here.