socalTECH

JUNE 24, 2016

The IBM Watson AI XPRIZE , the $5M competition being run by Los Angeles-based XPRIZE , has opened up registrations to teams, and has published guidelines for the artificial intelligence competition. According to the XPRIZE foundation, the idea is to demonstrate how "AI can be used as a tool for good." READ MORE>>.

IBM

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 4, 2022

He lived the philosophy that companies must be paranoid in order to survive, and continually disrupt their own markets to prevent overrun by competition. New blood and new ideas are keys to agility. Make sure you are fostering people development to their full potential, for them and for your business.

Competition

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 25, 2021

As a business mentor, I sometimes feel besieged by people begging for my view and support of their latest idea. In reality, I like most ideas, but I have to tell them that the real challenge is taking the inspiration from a dream to a business reality. Now you see why no one should judge business success potential by the idea alone.

Ideas

SoCal CTO

APRIL 25, 2017

I'm working on a start up idea in the XXX market with my partner and we are currently looking for full stack developer to join us as a technical co-founder. The way they expressed it "technical co-founder" is code for find someone who will work as an Equity Only Developer. That's not going to be a successful outreach.

Email

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 31, 2013

The core idea behind the event is to tap into the hacker spirit in each community in a way that leverages the latest tech and open data to strengthen our democracy and communities across the country. Tech leaders from NASA JPL, to the Census Bureau will share inspiration and ideas. Not a coder? Register at [link] eventbrite.com/#.

CTO Coach

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 26, 2021

Every business I know needs to be on a constant lookout for new ideas, both in what they offer to customers, and in their internal operations, to stay competitive. Fortunately, there are ways to nurture the creation and capture of new ideas. Openly ask for new ideas from your team and others.

Ideas

socalTECH

MAY 29, 2013

A local, clean energy business plan competition started by the California Insitute of Technology (Caltech), the University of Southern California (USC), and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has awarded $160,000 in prizes in its latest competition. READ MORE>>.

Draper

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

When Fred Wilson funded Twitter I guarantee you it wasn’t obvious that it was a billion dollar idea. Many questioned whether it could survive under the fail whale, inevitable competition from Facebook, founder fighting, fights with 3rd-party developers let alone become a revolutionary business that could make money.

Funding

socalTECH

MAY 11, 2012

Hawaiian firm eHale also was given a promising idea award for integrating solar cells into indoor and outdoor, home and office furniture.

Technology

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 19, 2013

It’s been a really exciting time for me personally to be able to see a partner come in with the energy, enthusiasm and new ideas that remind me of myself 6 years ago. On the one hand you can view their local stores as a competitive disadvantage because eCommerce companies can sell products with no physical retail stores.

Startup

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 20, 2021

Extreme teams are tightly aligned around the company’s top few priorities, while remaining open to new ideas. These teams are motivated to develop approaches to creatively explore new opportunities for growth. Incent them to focus and always look to the future. For team members, the ongoing challenge is figuring out what not to do.

Class

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 29, 2015

As a business mentor, I sometimes feel besieged by people begging for my view and support of their latest idea. In reality, I like most ideas, but I have to tell them that the real challenge is taking the inspiration from a dream to a business. Now you see why no one should judge business success potential by the idea alone.

Ideas

socalTECH

MAY 23, 2011

The X PRIZE Foundation has named ten finalists in its oil cleanup competition, the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge , the group said this morning. million to develop better ways to clean up oil spills--said that 10 teams will move forward to Phase II field testing of their ideas. The prize--which is offering $1.4

Competition

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 23, 2015

These days, everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, pitching their latest and greatest new idea, and looking for someone to give them money. Talk is cheap, but entrepreneurs who show you a working model of their idea know how to execute. Many ideas I hear sound great, but I have no idea if they can be implemented.

Ideas

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 21, 2021

It can start by setting aside twenty minutes in a weekly meeting to explore new ideas for making things better, and then following through. Carve out unstructured time for team members to focus on ideas. Ideas are the beginning. Design your invisible competitive advantage. Decide what to measure and create metrics.

Develop

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 30, 2011

In the initial phases of any new market you’re developing a product (hopefully with a minimal set of features), getting feedback from customers, refining your product based on user feedback and then re-launching your product. Markets develop for a complex set of factors that are often beyond all of our control. You have a hunch.

Development Team Review

socalTECH

MAY 17, 2012

A San Diego entrepreneur is getting the backing of GE to help develop the "Milk Jug of the Future", after winning a competition launched by product development site Quirky. Apparently, Burns prevailed over 1,500 other submissions for the idea for an intelligent milk carton which can tell you when your milk is going bad.

San Diego

socalTECH

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

We talked with Noah about how the company grew out of a business plan competition at the University of Southern California, his recent funding from the Maverick Angels, as well as how the firm hopes to stand out among a crowded list of comparison shopping sites. We then went out to raise money, and got started on development.

USC

InfoChachkie

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

Design together, the course that introduced the idea for brightblu, they were concurrently taking three other classes: Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Marketing and Art of the CEO. Some of these influential speakers included Kevin O’Connor, founder of FindTheBest.com & DoubleClick and Simon Dixon, CEO of Idea Engineering.

Class

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 4, 2023

In reality, resource constraints should be seen by startups a competitive advantage, by forcing them to develop new markets, and to think differently and act differently than existing players. How entrepreneurs respond to these will become a larger and larger determinant of startup growth, competitive position, and success.

Resource

socalTECH

DECEMBER 6, 2012

AngelHack, the self-proclaimed leader in hackathon competitions, completed its Fall 2012 season this past weekend with contests held simultaneously in five cities: Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Toronto and Paris. In Santa Monica, Hackathon first-timers and veterans all gathered at CrossCampus to hack almost 30 products within 24 hours.

Santa Monica

InfoChachkie

FEBRUARY 20, 2012

Great Startup Ideas Come From Everywhere. "At "At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top – I'm afraid that's not quite right." Bill’s advice reflects Microsoft’s hardnosed culture, which encourages internal competition and a ruthless pursuit of the truth.

Tips

socalTECH

OCTOBER 9, 2019

Los Angeles-based nonprofit XPRIZE --which runs prize competitions to help advance technology and solutions to world problems--said on Tuesday that celebrity Pharrell Williams has won the top prize in its latest "Visioneering 2019" annual gathering. READ MORE>>.

Competition

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2014

Meredith Perry came up with the idea for uBeam while still in college at University of Pennsylvania and like many great inventors won her school’s business plan competition. It turns out that while she had the right idea the materials needed some reworking to come in at the cost structure required to build a business at scale.

Technical Review

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 23, 2020

He succinctly outlines the key behaviors that I believe every business leader must focus on, to drive innovation without waiting for the next competitive crisis: Avoid the assumption that current gifts will keep on giving. They need to regularly listen to a few mavericks and outsiders who routinely generate nonlinear ideas and trends.

Tips

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

He had an idea for a startup that would help consumers better book service jobs and would take on Service Magic, which he believed had a business model that could be disrupted. In the same year they won Business Insider’s Startup competition. ” So Ethan went to work as a product manager at Google Video. Nice sweep!

CTO Coach

Berkonomics

JULY 27, 2017

[Email readers, continue here…] This is not to bend this insight into a claim that a company should wait to develop new, groundbreaking products and services until a customer asks for them. We have explored feature-functionality. Next week we will focus upon product quality and its effects upon the organization.

Customer

socalTECH

MAY 13, 2019

Marina Del Rey-based XPRIZE Foundation , the group which runs competitions to spur innovation in technology to help solve major societal problems or very hard technical problems, says it is going to launch a new prize to spur ideas for wildfire detection and suppression. Diamandis said the prize will be launched by early 2020.

Marina Del Rey

socalTECH

MARCH 14, 2014

Are developers willing to invest their time and energy in building solutions around your products, company, or organization? We caught up with Avi Steinlauf , the CEO of Edmunds.com, to learn how hackathons have worked for Edmunds.com, and to provide some insight to others on the whole idea. It was a great event.

Edmunds

socalTECH

JULY 11, 2012

The two things that are mostly lacking from people's investment experience are the lack of a wide network of people to refine investment ideas with, and the best available content about companies they are considering investing in. There is no social network online which provides authentic ideas about the stock market. READ MORE>>.

Social Network

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

For many businesses you should keep your costs low & your capital raises low until you discover whether you are really on to a big idea where there is market demand. Only … ONLY … if there’s a sense of competition on the deal. But I think it would be naive to completely ignore the market & competition.

Help

Berkonomics

MARCH 15, 2012

A great idea often fails from the inexperience or inability of management to bring the idea to market. Similarly, great management often can manipulate an original idea or business plan into one much more attuned to the market, adding tremendous value that might have been lost sticking to the original plan.

Outsource Development

TechCrunch LA

MARCH 3, 2020

The Grand Challenge series brings together companies developing new transportation or airspace management technologies, the Agency said. The idea is to bring companies to collaborate and also give regulatory agencies a window into the technologies and how they may work in concert to bring air mobility to the masses in the coming years.

Santa Monica

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 14, 2013

If I’m covering a company can I get evidence of what the competition is doing so the story is balanced? The idea is that you put out information with data and a point-of-view and that becomes the story rather than you. Do I have data or facts to present so the story has legs? Final example. They sell accounting services.

Marketing

TechEmpower

JUNE 6, 2018

Most importantly, the community has been contributing some amazing test implementations and demonstrating the fun and utility of some good-natured performance competition. But we have an idea for dealing with Gozer. Expect to hear more about this as the plan develops during Round 17. More on that later. Continuous benchmarking.

Framework

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

One of the readers asked my opinion around sharing your startup concept: My first question has always been - how do you protect your idea while shopping around for feedback, partners, developers, etc.? Especially if the idea could be whipped-up by a few 24-year olds in a few weeks? Lots of thoughts here.

Startup

Berkonomics

MARCH 6, 2014

Imagine the room in which several graduate business school student groups have gathered, tasked with coming up with an idea for a business plan competition. The group starts with a blank sheet, and toils through idea after idea, trying to come up with a product or service that might become the next FedEx.

Startup