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Friday, October 03, 2008

3 Cool Startups at the Babson Forum for Entrepreneurs

Ok, I can't say I was terribly impressed with what I saw from 6p-9p at the Babson Forum for Entrepreneurs. But I was slightly impressed by a couple things, three to be exact.

The first was Canditto.com, the winner of the Business Plan contest, who received $30k for an event-centric, digital media kiosk.



It allowed everyone taking digital photographs at an event (wedding, anniversary, birthday, etc), to upload their digital media to a photograph storage website while AT the event and you will receive all the pictures on memory stick or CD before the night is over. It solves the problem of having friends and family taking great pictures that one might, otherwise, never see. This way, people can get their pictures to one main site immediately rather than bring them home to lazily fumble with them or forget about them. Impressed mostly by the simplicity and ease-of-use in solving a very common problem.

The second was a company called IdeaBlob.com.



I'll let "them" explain what it is they do but in a nutshell, you give away one of those dusty, unfulfilled, genius ideas you've been carrying around in your head for far too long in exchange for both a chance to win $10,000 towards fulfilling it and to get advice from IdeaBlob community members:

ideablob.com is where entrepreneurs and small business owners can share and grow their business ideas – and have a chance to win $10,000 towards fulfilling them.

Great ideas are generated every day by people all across the country, and now these ideas have a place to live and grow. Eligible individuals can submit their business idea to ideablob.com, and based on votes from the ideablob.com online community – which includes other innovators as well as friends, family, colleagues, associates, teachers and mentors – one idea every month will win $10,000.

Personally, I just have a problem with giving my ideas away like that. It reeks of desperation, however, for some people, that's all they have... and, some people are going to win, so choose wisely. Don't give away your golden idea if you really feel you have a shot of making it happen without telling the world first.

The third startup was Flameup.com, which holds a special place in my heart:

flameup.com, flameup, rants,free speech

At first glance, it APPEARS to be "just another site trying to do the Digg thing" but, in actuality, it's a site that invites you to speak your mind about pretty much anything without fear of censorship -- it just use a Digg like voting system which is perfectly fine. To be clear, Flameup.com doesn't allow disgustingly, blatant nonsense such as racism and hate speech, but if you want to bitch or even get into a flame war with someone, your chance of being censored are slim to none -- which, all free speech advocates know leads to some of the best, heated, passionate, interesting exchanges to be found anywhere.

Have something crazy to say and hate it when lesser beings censor you? Then FlameUp!

Sam Freedom"s Internet Marketing Controversy Blog

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3 comments:

HP0-J18 braindumps said...

Getting free from dominating bosses and the possibility to make your own decisions is one of the lures of starting your own business. As attractive as it looks, not everyone is suited for self-employment. Before you go ahead with any plan to start a business it is important to take a close look at yourself and ask yourself some important questions. like is this idea suits to me. and you have knowledge of it.

pyjamas said...

quite simply a post that is filled with useful and helpful information.

Jim said...

Well I guess it shows the failure rate among startups and just how difficult it is to do something that really takes hold: None of these sites exists any more.