RebelBase

We need an army of people equipped to use digital tools to launch local experiments. In fact, people close to problems have the drive to do so—but lack the platform. RebelBase gets to the root cause by providing that platform: using tech to empower people close to problems with tool kit, a pathway, and a community working shoulder to shoulder.

Take the example of three regions we actively serve. In Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan, and South Africa, a pronounced discrepancy persists in providing individuals with the foundational digital skills and knowledge imperative for thriving within their respective communities and navigating the complexities of the modern world. According to recent reports, over 60% of adults in Bangladesh lack basic digital literacy skills, hindering their ability to access information, job opportunities, and essential services. Similarly, in Kyrgyzstan, approximately 40% of the population faces challenges in effectively utilizing digital tools due to limited access to training and resources, exacerbating socioeconomic disparities.

In South Africa, where the digital divide remains stark, particularly in rural and underserved urban areas, the situation is equally concerning. Studies indicate that only 30% of South Africans have access to the internet, with significant discrepancies in digital literacy rates between urban and rural populations. Moreover, a substantial portion of the population lacks proficiency in using digital technologies for tasks such as online communication, job searches, and accessing educational resources.

These disparities not only impede individual progress but also hinder broader societal development and economic growth. For instance, in Bangladesh, where the garment industry is a significant contributor to the economy, workers with limited digital skills struggle to adapt to technological advancements in manufacturing processes, thereby limiting their employment opportunities and earning potential. In Kyrgyzstan, a lack of digital literacy among youth and marginalized communities restricts their access to online learning platforms, impeding their educational attainment and future prospects.

In addressing these challenges, RebelBase aims to bridge the digital divide not just for using digital tools, but for learning by doing to solve real problems and build skills along the way. By offering self-paced learning modules, mentorship opportunities, and community engagement spaces, we empower individuals to enhance their digital proficiency while fostering essential social-emotional competencies. Through targeted interventions and collaborative efforts between governments, private sector entities, and civil society organizations, it is possible to narrow the digital skills gap and pave the way for inclusive growth and sustainable development in these regions.

RebelBase democratizes climate innovation and social innovation through a scalable model for combining globally connected project-based learning with local educational capacity. It equips those who understand problems to remake the way things work. To date, we have empowered 6000+ users in 20+ countries to create 2700 projects. We did this by equipping organizations to empower otherwise excluded innovators, providing them with the building blocks and training to identify problems and develop innovative solutions that meet their needs. This enables community members to identify problems and develop innovative solutions that meet their needs. 

We plan to work with MIT Solve to develop a new international program, building on the successful programs our team members have developed for the EU’s SPINteams and the Open Society University Network, or OSUN. We call this program “Digital Lift. “ (Read more here about the OSUN program and here about SPINteams.)

As in these existing programs that have run on RebelBase, we will use the SOLVE opportunity to create a program with 5 selected partner organizations and engage their communities. Through globally accessible courses, participants will delve into topics such as emotional competencies, digital community building, and digital literacy around AI tools. Emphasis will be placed on understanding the ethical usage of AI and fostering a supportive online environment for learning and collaboration. We will work with experts and develop AI-related modules, in precisely the way we have developed the 40 modules on key topics in our growing library. 

As in previous programs, participants will engage in immersive learning experiences centered on social and environmental change. As they work throughout the modules, participants will develop critical thinking skills and learn to apply digital solutions to real-world challenges.

Through mentorship and guidance from experts, participants refine their ideas and develop actionable plans to address local issues using digital technology. They will also connect with individuals, groups, and communities to embark on project development and pitching. This program aims to equip participants with the tools needed to thrive in a rapidly evolving digital landscape while fostering personal growth and community development. This is the first step in equipping a global army of young people to identify pressing problems and confront them with solutions of their own.

No amount of energizing convening gets a business built or a product launched. You need a structure for collaborating, piloting solutions, and refining from there. Before RebelBase, no guided space led any student, employee, or community member to innovate step-by-step, breaking down everything they needed to know. Others promote those most polished; we show teams how. And we do it by providing asymmetric organizations everywhere with the building blocks. Each one works like a flexible mini-course, not the kind where you sit and listen to a lecture, but one that shows you how to build the next component, learning as you go. Our method threads interaction into the emerging project, enabling mentors, peers, and experts to provide constructive criticism and evaluate the results.

Our cofounder Tuba Erbil often observes that it wasn’t common where she grew up to dream of launching something better, but we need those dreams, and we need to make it normal for people to make them real. 

RebelBase directly and meaningfully addresses this need, by jumpstarting the capability of schools, universities, community programs, and others to enable their problem solvers in regions such as the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. These communities are currently underserved in terms of access to essential digital skills and social competencies, leaving them at a disadvantage in today's digital-centric world.

The key point is that we’ve built and proven an infrastructure  for enabling undeserved innovators. Our CEO makes this point clear in a recent piece in Wired Magazine, sponsored by the Zayed Prize and featuring Solver Sebastian Groh: 

What we need instead is to “go back to making those one-car garages possible around the world, where there’s a space to experiment, [because] we’re going to need a lot more experiments.”

Through RebelBase, participants gain access to comprehensive resources and learning opportunities tailored to their needs. We serve users by working with university groups like Parami and UPOS and community engagement organizations such as StreetBiz (which offers the “Be a Nelson” program, described above).

The way this works is best shown through an example. South Africa’s “Be A Nelson” uses RebelBase to equip people in the townships as they develop, prove out, and make the case for their projects, and work towards a global certificate. Coaches provide feedback, and platform interactions facilitate connection and growth. By design, RebelBase requires neither prior knowledge nor consistent broadband. This radically democratizes the opportunity to build solutions – breaking down barriers to innovation, and enabling historically marginalized groups to co-create solutions.

As our CEO recounted in a recent article drawing on interviews with Be a Nelson participants and the program founder: “Through the RebelBase platform, the Nelsons collaborate each week to complete the course modules that are required for the certificate. These modules also guide participants through each step of their project development. Participants publish their work in each module, then revise it in response to questions and feedback from peers and experts from around the world. The result is a completed experiment in solving a pressing problem.” 

The point of this solution is not just the projects themselves but the capacity users build as they learn by doing to create real-world solutions. 85% learn to collaborate on diverse teams. 84% come out prepared to recognize opportunities where others might see barriers. 

Thus RebelBase enables organizations to guide the most talented innovators to launch and scale solutions, supported by an accessible platform. Drawing on this model for enabling diverse organizations to empower people to build new climate solutions, we now plan to scale this to 25,000 projects over the next five years. We’ve shown that we can enable a diverse set of organizations to equip teams to create real-world experiments to replace failing systems around them.

In 2016, our CEO, Alejandro, co-created a youth program near where he went to high school. The mission was deeply personal. As he has said, “Growing up as a nerd of mixed roots in the inner city, I converted my otherness to fuel. I became obsessed with enabling outsiders like me with a space to discover our powers and learn to use them.” He then recruited a multidimensional team to make this happen from a team of coders, data experts and UX designers with a common mission: to make reinventing obsolete systems the new normal.

Alejandro Crawford, CEO, and a professor of entrepreneurship and global head of social entrepreneurship at OSUN. He brings 20+ years experience as a consultant, educator, and entrepreneur developing programs, tools and methodology that bring bottom-up innovation to companies, schools, and communities. Tuba Erbil, COO, brings 10+ years experience driving software and data teams from Morgan Stanley to FreshDirect, where she honed her systematic approach to operations and data analytics for integrated technology teams. Kapila Ramji, lead developer, began his career at RebelBase, building our platform from the ground up. A brilliant programmer, he created the software that powers users around the world and leads the team developing scalable code for new product releases. Tomás Mora, head of experiential learning, brings 10+ years designing and leading experiential learning programs, as a nonprofit founder, coordinator for EU programs, and educator serving youth in challenging environments. Nicholas Calabia, UX lead, poured his lifelong obsession with games of discovery, to design UX that turns innovation into a collaborative adventure. 

It’s not just the RebelBase team that’s relevant, but the facilitators around the world whose work it enables. Facilitators using RebelBase to expand access have built a growing global community of practice. (For a glimpse of how that community thinks, see this panel featuring facilitators in Bishkek, Bogotá, and Dhaka). As this community grows, we collaborate to evolve our practice for enabling innovators in their ecosystems. This practice is supported with extensive research and analysis by our data team (see here).

As mentioned in our solution description above, we have empowered 6000+ users in 20+ countries to create 2700 projects. We equipped universities, chambers of commerce, community organizations, and even employers to launch the climate innovators in their midst. We then analyzed the skills and mindset built by users of these tools. We will have complete the 2023 analysis soon; meanwhile the 2022 report is available at this link.

Key highlights from the data are as follows:

• Findings from this year reinforce data from the last two years showing competency growth in all three domains, and an increase in confidence in entrepreneurial knowledge and skills.

• Ninety-three percent (93%) of OSUN students reported either sustained strong confidence or an increase in their confidence after the course in 2022, as compared to 90% of students 2021.

• Eighty-four percent (84%) of students agreed or strongly agreed that the program taught them about launching a startup or new initiative in 2022, a result comparable to last year’s.

• In terms of entrepreneurial competencies, students reported gains ranging from 65% (calculated risk taking) to 49% (collaboration). In all cases, across the competency framework, increases were greater in 2022 than they were in 2021. For example, the increase in Flexibility is 17 points higher than last year, and that for Critical Thinking and Perseverance is 13 points higher.  

• Ninety-five percent (95%) of respondents demonstrated an increase in at least one of the entrepreneurial competencies.

• In addition, the top three knowledge gains reported were in (1) surveying the competitive landscape, (2) creating a marketing strategy, or (3) developing a social impact model.

We achieved this by developing and delivering eight key items to these users:

1. Modules or “Building Blocks:” RebelBase breaks down the steps for launching an innovation into modules. We call these modules “building blocks” because as teams complete them, they build out innovation projects. The building blocks guide teams through crucial challenges along the way, such as refining brand messaging, finding product market fit, and measuring impact. This lets users generate fully formed projects, learning as they go, and engaging a network of supporters. RebelBase’s building blocks channel accessible tools from subject matter experts through our team’s extensive experience enabling entrepreneurial “rebels” to discover their powers to create new solutions. 

1. Worksheets and Workshops: Within each building block, workshops and RebelMaps that guide and streamline the process of testing and developing each aspect of their social venture or initiative. These accessible, visual workshops enable users to develop common structures for diverse solutions, even if those teams are remote. They also facilitate the critique of diverse innovations by providing a common framework for comparing key elements of each project.

1. Digital Collaboration Space: Users post results from the workshops and worksheets (found within each building block) to their project profiles for feedback and evaluation. This common structure enables participants to engage in rich interaction with peers and mentors as they develop their projects. It also allows peers, experts, and partners within the network to function as a “brain trust” as participants refine their project components.

1. Groups and Cohort Management: Facilitators, whether administrators, instructors, or coaches, can select which project building block modules to include for a given cohort. They then use cohort management capabilities to manage milestones and feedback for each accelerator cohort.

1. Events and Demo Days: RebelBases delivers digital demo day functionality to enable accelerator participants to showcase their end project results.

1. Evaluation: In-platform assessment and rubric customization allows the evaluation of participant projects. All members of the ecosystem — from alumni, clients, supporters, to innovators — get tools for working together as they collaborate to refine emerging ideas.

2. Ideation Boards: Ideas get good as they come face-to-face with reality. Using ideation boards, participants can trade ideas and enable members of the global community to elaborate on it, poke holes in it, and pledge their talents to it.

3. Profile as Portfolio: As participants use the platform to accelerate their projects, they build profiles for their innovations and for themselves, as they complete building blocks and demonstrate mastery over vital skills. These sharable profiles help rebels collaborate to progressively improve their projects and serve to give coaches, partners, investors and hiring managers a merit- based way to assess user aptitude built through experiential learning.

• RebelBase combines an interactive textbook with a platform for building and instructor / peer evaluation of entrepreneurial projects, and an engine for collaboration between teams, facilitators, and innovation ecosystems.

• The platform’s “building block” modules walk teams through each part of the process of conceiving, launching, and growing a business

• Teams focus on activities specific to their stage—like piloting or prototyping a solution, mapping out the competitive landscape, learning how to build out impact metrics, and making the case to skills providers, partners and funders

• Teams also gain access to real-world examples of these concepts and exclusive access to our RebelMap worksheets.

• Instructors are enabled to take a systematic approach to guiding and supporting entrepreneurs teaching entrepreneurship and innovation based on an experiential learning paradigm. 

• Platform equips users to select learning sequences specific to their curricula, supported by interactive learning modules that culminate in accessible project outputs.

Finally, we have been leading thought and practice around this solution. For example, our CEO’s recent TEDx on the topic has already garnered more than 50,000 views, and he has launched the What if Instead podcast, interviewing leading thinkers and practitioners focused on our topic around the world. Each of these interviewers brings both audience and case studies. Five of the first six interviews which have now begun airing, feature active users of RebelBase in their regions:

• Andy Ayiku, a professor and practice leader in Ghana who appears frequently on radio and in print in West Africa; 

• Bermet Suitbekova, who leads the Social Innovation Lab Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia

• Nico de Klerk, recent recipient of the Edward de Bono award and founder of South Africa’s StreetBiz foundation, 

• Sebastian Groh, Solver and SOLshare founder, who leads the work on RebelBase in Bangladesh 

• Dalia Najjar, who leads the work using RebelBase to empower social innovators in the Middle East. 

For the next phase in the climb, we need the network and resources of MIT Solve, combined with the mission-alignment around enabling underrepresented innovators and entrepreneurs. 

We also learned what it would take to bring it to scale – and the need is extensive. For this reason, we aim to 10x the number of projects to 25,000 over the next five years. If that sounds ambitious or diffuse, it’s time to revise our assumptions. RebelBase currently enables underrepresented founders in 20+ countries. We have measurable results that show the impact this has, but also know the demand is far wider. To meet it, we need the network and resources of MIT Solve. Though we’re proud of what we’ve pulled off through goodwill, sweat equity, and the support of a few impact investors, this is the time to go beyond that. The recognition and resources provided to solvers can help us bring the solution to new populations.

We believe that the Solve network can help us reach and serve more people. As more and more businesses, NGOs, and governments adopt net-zero mandates, there will now be mounting pressure across industries and regions to figure out how to meet them. The failures of global forums from Davos to the COPs to transition our economies from fossil fuels are now tangible, and a rising generation of leaders is having none of it. Against this backdrop, a generation that demands purpose in work is crying out for new ways of thinking – along with fresh frameworks and practical new approaches they can apply. 

As a Solver, we are particularly excited about the opportunity to receive leadership coaching and strategic advice from experts in the Solve and MIT networks. We believe that this advice will be invaluable in helping us overcome any barriers that we may encounter, and in developing the skills and knowledge necessary to achieve our goals. 

Finally, we believe that Solve's platform can help us gain visibility in the media and at conferences. This visibility will be critical in raising awareness of our platform and reaching new users. RebelBase is a method and a vision, not just a tool, and we feel responsible for leading with that vision.

That’s just the beginning. Becoming a part of the Solve network will enable us to connect with potential partners and supporters, as we build a reality in which anyone facing broken systems has the tools and the community to launch experiments to replace the way we do things today. 

RebelBase has cracked the code for democratizing innovation:

• Proven scalable model can reach 25,000 participants in 5 years. In-depth, rigorous training yields real-world results, and long-run impact. 

• Learning-by-doing platform combines cutting-edge courseware with a growing innovation network,  supporting worldwide collaboration to find solutions.

• Not a typical “online” program. Combines the global reach of MOOCs with high-touch, personalized instruction in local cohorts. Scalability and capacity-building are enabled by a powerful train-the-trainer approach.

Our patent-pending (Patent Pub. # 20220044582) building block modules guide innovators as they create new solutions to meet urgent social and environmental needs. Users control to whom they publish each part of their solution: from team members through cohorts all the way through to the public, through a unique URL. Modules are written in accessible language and integrated with worksheets and workshops; a digital collaboration space; groups and cohort management: event and demo day functionality; facilitator views; ideation boards; and project profiles that function as portfolios for users. 

And that’s just the tech. Our proven model and method enables local organizations to launch the next wave of climate innovators among those closest to the problems at hand. This represents a radical departure from our current, failed model of betting on big innovations developed in one (privileged) part of the world, in hopes that they can be applied everywhere and rescue us all. By contrast, RebelBase equips hidden innovators to develop viable innovations, using an innovation-enabling tool kit and methodology to democratize access, combined with a train-the-trainer model for organizations using the platform. 

Unlike platforms that cater to people who already know how to innovate, RebelBase provides step-by-step guidance, breaking down the entire innovation process and ensuring that every team member has access to the resources and knowledge they need to succeed. 

We regularly draw new contributors who create modules. These experts make their methodology available on RebelBase to make their practices accessible in the rebel way, which means easy for users to learn as they build. Each module is designed to address a specific aspect of creating a solution, like testing a prototype or figuring out how to reach the people you serve. Organizations that use RebelBase choose which modules to offer for each program.

This flexible system enables us to garner continuous feedback from our users, which we leverage to improve our platform over time. By fostering a sense of community among our user base, we encourage active participation and commitment, which drives engagement and ultimately helps us to build a global network of problem solvers. Through this network, we work to catalyze innovation and entrepreneurship on a large scale, creating positive impacts for individuals, communities, and societies worldwide.

As Eban Goodstein, whose organization subscribes to RebelBase, puts it: "What RebelBase does is it take you through the framework, the rigorous framework that you need to take an idea from an idea to something that has meat on the bones, and can be evaluated as a potential business. There's nothing like it in the world."

RebelBase aims to address the critical need for essential digital skills and social competencies among underserved communities. The theory of change underlying this solution is based on a series of logical links between activities, outputs, and outcomes, ultimately leading to positive impacts on the target population. 

Inputs:

• Learning Modules and Resources: RebelBase will provide self-paced expert mentor-supervised learning modules covering a range of topics, including digital literacy, AI understanding, ethical usage, problem-solving skills, and entrepreneurship mindset. Participants will have access to a wealth of resources, including online courses, webinars, interactive workshops, and learning materials.

Activities:

• Recruitment and Engagement: The program will actively recruit participants through universities, nonprofit organizations, and employers, with a focus on traditionally excluded potential innovators in West and South Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Central Asia, South, and Southeast Asia. Engagement efforts will include partnerships with educational institutions, community organizations, and businesses to reach the target population effectively.

• Project-Based Learning: RebelBase will offer opportunities for project-based learning, where participants can apply their newly acquired skills and knowledge to real-world challenges. Expert mentorship will guide participants through the project development process, fostering creativity, innovation, and critical thinking.

• Community Building and Networking: The program will facilitate global engagement spaces for community building, networking, and peer-to-peer support. Participants will have opportunities to connect with like-minded individuals, share experiences, collaborate on projects, and build supportive networks within and across communities.

Outputs:

The solution will address their needs by providing a range of benefits:

• Development of problem-solving skills, fostering a mindset of innovation and resilience in the face of challenges.

• Cultivation of entrepreneurship mindset and abilities, enabling participants to pursue ventures and initiatives that contribute to economic growth and community development.

• Increased opportunities for employment, entrepreneurship, and personal development, leading to enhanced economic prospects and social mobility.

• Expanded community building and networking opportunities, fostering collaboration and support networks within and across communities.

• Practiced digital problem-solving skills, including not only basic digital literacy, but problem-solving abilities in the digital realm and the ethical usage of AI tools.

• Enhanced social-emotional competencies such as emotional intelligence, communication skills, teamwork, resilience, and adaptability. 

Outcomes:

• Improved Economic Prospects: By equipping participants with essential digital skills and social competencies, RebelBase will increase their opportunities for employment, entrepreneurship, and economic empowerment. Participants will be better positioned to secure job opportunities, start their own ventures, and contribute to economic growth in their communities.

• Social Inclusion and Empowerment: RebelBase will foster a sense of belonging, agency, and empowerment among participants, particularly in marginalized communities. By providing access to education, resources, and support networks, the program will empower individuals to take control of their futures and advocate for positive change in their communities.

By addressing these key areas, RebelBase seeks to empower individuals in underserved communities to thrive in the digital age, unlocking new opportunities for growth, prosperity, and social inclusion. We aim to create lasting impacts on their lives, communities, and societies as a whole.

We empower individuals from underserved communities in the Global South to transform their mindset and capabilities as they tackle real-world problems and drive positive change in their communities. This is no pie in the sky: already, as our CEO noted in a recent op-ed: “Our survey of participants in the Open Society University Network’s Certificate in Sustainability and Social Enterprise found that over two years: 

• 93% reported strong or increased confidence launching a new solution; 
• 95% reported an increase in at least one entrepreneurial competency, such as surveying a competitive landscape, creating a marketing strategy, or developing a social impact model; 
• 65% reported greater understanding of calculated risks; 
• Participants described significant gains in collaboration skills, flexibility, critical thinking, and perseverance.” 

Over the next year, we aim to reach a diverse range of participants, including high school students, university students, adults, and marginalized groups, by providing them with access to the RebelBase platform, to achieve:

• Mindset Transformation: The program will enable individuals to shift from being passive consumers of technology to active creators and problem solvers. We aim to measure this transformation through user surveys and data analytics, tracking changes in mindset indicators such as confidence, critical thinking, calculated risk-taking, and collaboration abilities.

• Skills Development: Wewill equip participants with essential digital skills and social competencies, including digital literacy, AI understanding, ethical usage, problem-solving, entrepreneurship mindset, and emotional intelligence. We will assess skill development through user feedback, platform usage data, and evaluations of project outcomes.

• Project Launches: We will facilitate the launch of thousands of fully-developed projects by participants, addressing real-world challenges in their communities and industries. We will measure project launches and outcomes through platform analytics, case studies, and documentary evidence showcasing user projects and their impact.

Our long-term goals include:

• Global Access: We aim to make the RebelBase platform available everywhere, enabling 25,000 experiments and projects around the world within five years. We will work with governments, employers, schools, chambers of commerce, and other stakeholders to broaden access to the platform and integrate entrepreneurship education into existing programs and curricula.

• Equitable Opportunities: We seek to create a more equitable and innovative society by providing individuals with the resources and support they need to thrive in the digital age. Our goal is to empower people from diverse backgrounds to participate in entrepreneurship, problem-solving, and social innovation, regardless of their socio-economic status or geographical location.

Measuring Progress: We measure progress towards our impact goals through a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, including user surveys, data analytics, case studies, and documentary evidence. Specific indicators we use to measure progress include:

• User feedback on mindset transformation, skill development, and platform satisfaction.

• Platform usage data, such as user engagement, completion rates, and project launches.

• Evaluations of project outcomes, including the impact on communities and industries.

• Collaborative learning experiences and knowledge sharing among users across regions.

• Documentary evidence showcasing user projects and their real-world impact, as highlighted in recent documentaries and case studies.

Unlike legacy solutions, our innovation-enabling platform guides teams each step of the way, with plug-and-play functionality and ease of expansion. The modular system lets subscribers start simple, then mix, match, and modify modules for groups within the organization. We have filed our first patent (Pub. # 20220044582) for Systems and Methods for Launching Innovation. 

The tech we use in the frontend is ReactJS and for the backend we use Phoenix Framework as well as .NET. ReactJS and .NET are widely used.

Phoenix Framework, which is in Elixir, is an emerging technology and it excels at building concurrent applications.

For the database we use PostgreSQL.

All our services are hosted using Amazon Web Services.

We mainly use EC2 and Lambda services, among others.

2 full-time, 2 part-time, 3 contractors

Combined 50+ years of experience. 

When we break wide open who gets to experiment, we gain an extraordinary advantage: what our CEO calls the “outsider’s edge.” 

Everywhere we need to equip people beyond the usual suspects to launch innovation. In the US just 18% of Latinx people say they’re unconcerned about climate change, compared to a whopping 32% of non-Latinx Americans (Pew). In Bangladesh an EV revolution means millions of rickshaws, where they’re parked and how they’re charged. A civic innovator from Kyrgyzstan, who recently won a prize with the project she built on RebelBase, created a project called Not a Shame, about eliminating the stigma of teen pregnancy. The project was deeply rooted in her culture, but it drew collaborators from all over the world. ( https://rebelbase.co/bard-central-asia-university-and-bard-student-team-creates-game-changer-for-teen-pregnancy/). 

At RebelBase, we serve, and are, rebels: people who turn the outsider’s edge into a tool for fashioning something new and better. The company is women-owned, minority-owned, and led by a Muslim-American immigrant woman and a chicano man. Our management team is majority BIPOC. We believe that the tools and the community needed for building real-world solutions should be accessible to all, regardless of background, education, or financial resources. But we must go further than that. We must create a globally accessible infrastructure that makes it possible for people facing the toughest situations to imagine and build something better. 

We work with partners who can bring RebelBase to these populations. As our facilitator at a Belarussian university in exile puts it: “The fewer opportunities our students in Belarus have, the more insulated the regime becomes—and the easier it gets to build self-perpetuating repressive mechanisms that rob the country of any viable future.”

Next, we’re working with partners to develop a climate tech accelerator for women from the global south, that will run on the platform. As our CEO asked it in a recent speech:

The way we do things today is already history. The only question is who gets to replace it with what they dream.

What if we used the tools of the digital age to create a modern circulatory system of talent and ideas? 

I can tell you one thing for sure: unless we change the access equation for who gets to envision the way things work and try their hand at making it real, we won’t make the leap. No chance.

Maybe she’s sitting in a cubicle or working on a job site. Or in some classroom taking notes on the words of a guy who talks the way I do, because she’ll be tested on how he thinks things ought to work. 

If we are ever really going to set the world rightside up, she needs the chance to rebuild it the way she envisions. She’s gotta have a well-designed playground to fashion and test alternatives. She needs talent and partners and resource-providers at every stage. She needs tools for digging and building, for modeling a different way of doing business or of organizing society. 

That’s why we built RebelBase.

The RebelBase software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform equips subscribing organizations with a turn-key solution for both teaching these innovation skills and for administering forums, incubators, competitions and innovation challenges, courses, workshops and trainings. 

By leveraging our platform, organizations can easily configure programs from short innovation events to yearlong accelerators, using RebelBase to engage talent, build skills, and grow cultures of innovation. 

Subscribing organizations draw on our methodology and functionality for showing teams how to innovate, rather than simply providing a place for people who are already good at developing innovations and making the case. This opens up innovation beyond the usual suspects and unlocks the most underutilized asset in any  organization: people who could collaborate to improve how things are done but may not wake up in the morning knowing how to do so.

The organization, such as a university or company, subscribes to RebelBase to receive a private online space (or “hub”) for their members to convene and work together with access to the learning modules, collaboration tools, and networking functionality. All hubs come with a core set of features, including learning modules, event organizing tools, community forums, and ideation boards. Additional features become available at various subscription levels. 

These customers subscribe to RebelBase to establish hubs that help them build innovation ecosystems that activate people, build community engagement, and launch innovative solutions. Instead of cobbling together incubators, training programs, mentorship initiatives, pitch events, and funding opportunities from scratch, subscribers get an integrated toolset. 

Hub subscribers seek to drive performance at their organizations by training and equipping their members (students, employees, etc.) to be more entrepreneurial. RebelBase provides the tools members need to become entrepreneurial along with a suite of toggles and tools designed to help hub subscribers make the most of their entrepreneurship programs.

RebelBase is designed to be used in a variety of formats, from a single-day workshop to a semester-long course. As they prepare for their programs, hub administrators can select tracks like ideation, validation, and growth — with “builders” that pace employees, students, or community members through each stage of developing an innovation.

The platform also provides add-on services ranging from program design to assessments and analytics that make it easy for rebels, hubs, and alliance members to earn distinction as they launch new solutions, develop entrepreneurial problem-solvers, engage innovative communities, and forge connections within and between hubs. 

RebelBase sells to employers, competitions, and university networks, and chambers of commerce with specific needs in sustainability, social responsibility, and innovation. 

Customers subscribe to make RebelBase’s tools available to users in their communities. All hubs come with a core set of features, including learning modules, event organizing tools, community forums, and ideation boards. Additional features become available at various subscription levels. Analytics add-ons are sold independently and are available to subscribers at any level. 

Our revenue model is B2B subscription. Licenses are charged per organization size and preferences per year on a tier based scale. Standard B2B pricing tiers up from $48K per year, with starter packages available. We charge incrementally for add-on services including advanced analytics and program design. 

Following predecessors from Bloomberg to Qualtrix, RebelBase pursues a strategy that starts with business education and migrates to enterprise. Our initial marketing targets the overlap space where educational institutions invest in the market demand for project-based learning. This includes not only classroom applications but also incubators and accelerators, competitions, technical assistance, and project-based programs for bottom-up innovation within organizations.

As the innovation platform space has heated up, investors have funded early stage rounds for entrants such as OneValley, IdeaWake, Spigit, and Innocentive. There’s a wider $6.2B opportunity to power the future of work and learning, by taking innovation management mainstream. To unlock this opportunity, we need a platform that breaks open who gets to replace yesterday’s solutions. That’s why RebelBase sold subscriptions in each tier before we spent a dime on marketing. 

Potential revenues may well exceed our estimates, given the acceleration of trends that favor our model. A decade ago, the share of companies with incubators and accelerators surged from 2% in 2010 to 44% in 2015, as more look to bottom-up-innovation to survive and thrive. On the education side, colleges faced with preparing students for today’s workplace went from 400 entrepreneurship, education and training programs in 1995 to over 2,000 in 2012. But these growth trends were prior to the global pandemic, the great resignation, the mainstreaming of AI, and the spread of ESG.