Many Many Applications

Today was the cutoff day for notifying the Innovators to whom who we are going to make an offer. We have received hundreds of applications and the process hasn't been easy.

Since the key to our program is having something that can be built or prototyped within 3 or 4 months, we first sorted the applications into those we felt could do that and those we didn't think were possible. Next, we looked at the teams to see if they had the right mix of people to pull it off. In a best case scenario, there would be a team of two to four people with at least one individual to focus on the business side and one, if not two, people who could build the technology.

From there, we focused on the business idea. If we felt it could be done quickly and the team could pull it off, the next real question was whether there was enough of a market need and whether the market was big enough. For this, we not only evaluated the applications ourselves but also sent the applications out to "domain experts" that we had lined up. It is one thing for us to react to something in a very specialized area; it is another to have someone who knows that area inside and out give a thumbs up or down as well.

After going through these steps, we narrowed the applications again down to our favorite 50 or so. From here, we sent an email asking for more information, made phone calls and set up meetings. After getting feedback, we narrowed the list down to about 20 that we met with either in person or by video conference.

We ultimately invited in 12 teams. One dropped out and we now have 11 participating in the program.