BYLC holds virtual entrepreneurship bootcamp

Bangladesh Youth Leadership Center (BYLC), under its BYLC Ventures programme, organised a three-day-long virtual bootcamp that ended yesterday.

Around 50 teams participated in the long-training programme, the first-ever virtual bootcamp by BYLC. Participants were selected from over 400 applications for Cohort Two of BYLC's six-month long accelerator programme.

The bootcamp educated participants on various entrepreneurship-related topics in sessions hosted by various luminaries, said a press release.

In the opening speech, BYLC chairperson Akhter Matin Chaudhury said, "Hard work brings with it its own luck. If you work hard, things will come to you."

During his session, Ken Wilcox, emeritus chairman of Silicon Valley Bank, said, "As a leader, you must be the person that you want others to be," according to the press release.

While sharing insights on perseverance and grit, Kamal Quadir, CEO of bKash, said, "Startup founders need to have perseverance to follow through on their idea. Success in a startup is 1% idea and 99% execution."

The bootcamp also served as an assessment for the accelerator programme. From the 50 participants, a jury board will select 25 teams for the final selection round, where an investment committee will select the top 10, who will each receive USD 10,000 seed funding and join the accelerator programme, added the press release.

The bootcamp was supported by IKEA Foundation and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Other partners included BetterStories Limited, LightCastle Partners, and Hatch Global.