Need Start-Up Inspiration? Take a Peek at Harvard MBA Product Ideas

Serial entrepreneurs are always on the hunt for their next business idea or or trend, so I thought I would share with you a list of nine promising product ideas that recently received small funding awards from Harvard Business School.

These nine teams beat out 79 others to receive an average $5,000 from the Minimum Viable Product Fund, administered by the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship. These are awarded to the most promising ideas that follow the lean start-up methodology.

The winning entries were incredibly wide ranging in scope, from a product that helps users plan their deaths to a service that allows wine lovers to order wine and follow it through the production process. Here were the winners.

1. Adiply: An automated self-serve tool that executes online advertising direct deals.
2. AfterSteps: An online end-of-life planning platform with educational resources and tools to create a plan, store it, and transfer it to designated beneficiaries.
3. Children's Stories for American Muslims: A children's entertainment and education brand for the underserved North American Muslim population. The business will start as a subscription service delivering monthly stories and will later expand into toys, books, games, videos, and licensing.
4. MatchLend: A tool to improve loan underwriting accuracy by incorporating data often missed by traditional methods.
5. MyDayz: A web application that allows women to keep track of their health data, focusing on period and fertility monitoring.
6. Rewardly: A rewards program that works with the customers' existing credit cards wherever they make purchases.
7. UpStart: A program that seeks to do for entrepreneurship what Teach for America did for teaching by creating a well-branded path for young talent to work at promising startups and learn entrepreneurial skills.
8. Vinamea: A platform that allows people to rent a portion of a vineyard, follow an online wine production process from grape to bottle, and ultimately receive their share of the year's vintage in a customized package.
9. Zumper: An online real estate market in which students and others can bid on and secure properties in a more efficient and transparent manner.

(Photo of Harvard Business School's Baker Library by Patricia Drury, CC 2.0)