Ravi Prakash

The Idea Village is a non-profit accelerator founded in 2000 to identify, fund, support, and retain start-up ventures in New Orleans. Since its inception, the organization has provided direct support to over 3,000 New Orleans entrepreneurs by engaging over 2,400 professionals to allocate 72,295 consulting hours and $3.45 million in seed capital. Collectively, its current portfolio generates over $100 million in annual revenue and has created over 2,000 jobs for the New Orleans community. Programs within the Idea Village include the IDEAinstitute (a weekly series of workshops), IDEAsessions (90-minute strategy sessions), IDEAcorps, and IDEAxcelerator. The IDEAxcelerator is an intensive, 11-week, startup-focused program leveraging successful entrepreneurs as mentors for a cohort of 15 early-stage, New Orleans-based ventures. To date, 66 startups have participated in IDEAxcelerator, 83% of which are still in business.