YES 3 is Now Open for Team Registration

Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, June 17, 2010 --(PR.com)-- MoneyTree announced recently that it has opened up the Maybank MoneyTree Young Entrepreneur Startup 3 (YES 3) Challenge for registration. The YES 3 Challenge is aimed at helping aspiring Entrepreneurs aged between 17 to 24 launch their business ideas into profitable ventures.

Unlike conventional business challenges, the nature of YES is to provide participants with a realistic experience of Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneur aspirants would be required to not only generate business ideas that would attract investors, but to also follow through with the implementation of a pilot / prototype version of their ideas.

The YES challenge would span over a 15-week period whereby teams (consisting of 3 – 4 members) are to come up with a commercially viable and scalable business idea and then present their business idea to a panel of judges and advisors.

If the teams’ ideas are judged to be commercially viable and scalable, the teams are then given approval by the judges to solicit funds from a group of investors to bring their business ideas to the market. These investors are made up of cross sections of pre-selected members from private equity, industrialists and venture capitalists. Ultimately, these teams would be channeled to Government Pre-Seed grants which would enable them to bring their ideas to the next level.

MoneyTree Malaysia Director and YES organizing Chairman, Mr UV Wong stated, “After seeing how much the YES 1 and YES 2 teams have grown over the past few months, we are even more convinced that the YES platform not only provides the teams with the necessary skills and mindsets to be more market ready, but it also provides them with the exposure and experience to understand what the market and industry is looking for. We believe this would greatly increase their chances of succeeding as Entrepreneurs or Intrapreneurs in the future.”

To ensure the teams are properly trained with the necessary Entrepreneurial skills and mindsets to succeed in this challenge, these teams would have to go through an intensive 1-Day MoneyTree Entrepreneur Fast Track Program to gain the necessary Entrepreneurial skills and mindsets to succeed in this challenge. This programme is specially designed to set the right expectations and assist the teams in strengthening possible weaknesses.

Incidentally, the MoneyTree Young Entrepreneur Startup (YES) Challenge is the First and Only business challenge in Malaysia that requires the teams to not only come up with business ideas, but to also implement those ideas and turn them into profitable ventures. In the YES Challenge, the teams are dealing with Real Money, Real Investors, and ultimately, participants of the YES Challenge could walk away with a Full-Fledged Business before they graduate from University or College.

The Grand Prize Winner would walk away with RM 20,000 in cash and prizes. Also, selected finalists of the YES 3 Challenge would be brought to road shows of participating Universities and Colleges to speak to, and inspire their peers.

This is in line with the government’s efforts to promote Entrepreneurship in the country and MoneyTree’s bid to encourage Entrepreneurship as a career path to be considered among the youths. The winning teams would also enjoy a good level of basking in the limelight, as they will be featured in prints and other media.

The still on-going YES 2 Challenge sees Cup Chatter, Voila!, Greenergy, Dreamzland and SYCo putting their all into realizing their business ideas. The YES 2 teams have been put through numerous challenges during the BreakThrough, Judging and Big Pitch session, where they have had their business ideas scrutinized by a panel of industry experts and CEOs. YES 2 will conclude in July 2010 during the YES 2 Red Carpet event where the winning team will be announced and the winning team will walk away with RM 20,000 in cash and prizes.

The closing date for registration for the MoneyTree YES 3 Challenge is on the 23rd of July 2010. For further information regarding the YES Challenge or to register for YES 3, please email Jo at jo@moneytree.my or call her at 03-7954 4514.

###