New York, 16 December 2009

Social problem-solving platform hypios has been awarded Club 600’s 2009 Entrepreneurship Award at a ceremony in New York.

The Entrepreneurship Award is dedicated to helping promising French companies penetrate the American marketplace.

“What swayed my vote in favor of hypios was its great potential for a global impact,” stated Club 600 jury member JC Goldenstein.

Founded by 23 year-old Oussama Ammar in 2008, and launched in beta just last June, hypios caters itself to problem-solvers — dubbed “Solvers” in the company vernacular — with diverse backgrounds and disciplines, including chemistry, philosophy, mechanical engineering and pharmacology, for the purpose of helping companies solve difficult R&D problems.

The network now includes over 120,000 Solvers from around the world. As of December 2009, about 30% of them held a PhD. hypios also has relationships with a number of “Seekers” — businesses that hope to resolve complex challenges with the company’s help.

“We believe that for many problems, some version of the solution is already out there. Thus the competition over knowledge will not be won by those who have the right people to innovate, but those who have the right tools to find the person that already has the solution,” expounded Co-Founder Klaus-Peter Speidel, who delivered the winning presentation to the Club 600 committee.

“With its innovative semantic web technologies, hypios is poised to lead the field.”

Networking and business development group Club 600 was established in 1985. It created the Entrepreneurship Award to provide substantial support to young French firms aiming to establish a significant presence in the US market. Such prizes are part of a long history of French-American innovation challenges: Lindbergh’s famed transatlantic flight, for instance, was sponsored by French New York hotelier Ray Orteig.

In addition to a cash prize of $10,000, the Entrepreneurship Award grants winners one year of consulting services and office space in Manhattan. hypios will also be inducted into the Club 600, giving it the ability to access the insights of other members.

VP-Business Development Stéphane Chong of hypios, currently based at MIT in Cambridge, has been selected to head the New York office. “The substantial help from an established community of successful business leaders will really help us to grow our presence in the US. And, of course, we hope to be able to contribute to the community and fund of expertise in the future,” Chong stated.

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Hypios combines intelligent crowdsourcing, competency discovery technology, and human outreach to deliver an optimal open problem-solving service. “Seekers” post R&D problems to the network and select a deadline and a price for the successful “Solver.” Hypios, which draws from a network of 950,000 experts across the world, has been solving R&D problems for global companies since 2008.

Press Contact

Hypios
Saman Musacchio
smusacchio(at)hypios(dot)com
Tel+33 1 77 13 67 79

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