Mar 16, 2015Last week, we announced that we will hold an RFID Journal Startup Challenge as part of our RFID Journal LIVE! conference and exhibition, being held on Apr. 15-17 in San Diego, Calif. (see RFID Journal Announces New RFID Startup Challenge to Be Held at LIVE! 2015). The idea is to have promising RFID startups pitch a panel that will include me, Paul Prince, RFID Journal's executive editor, and Sonja Valenta, our VP of marketing, on their product and business strategy. We will choose one winner from up to 10 participating companies, and that firm will receive $100,000 in promotional services throughout the following 12 months.
I came up with the idea while I was working on my recent column RFID Goes Into the Shark Tank. One of the great things about the show Shark Tank is that you get to see the mistakes people make in running their business and marketing their products (not to mention pitching their business to potential investors). I thought it would be good if we could do something that would highlight what startups are doing right and reveal what some are doing wrong.
So our goal in running this challenge is, first and foremost, to try to educate startups. Another aim is to provide some additional information for attendees at the event. The startups will likely be unknown to most end users, so highlighting these small companies offering new or interesting products or services could be of benefit to the attendees.
I hope, too, that we are able to help our readers not at the event to find the products of the contest's winner. One hundred thousand dollars goes a long way, and will greatly increase the startup's visibility, so if the winner has a product or service that appeals to a lot of readers, that startup could help those readers address their business issues.
I don't know if the Startup Challenge will be a success. It will depend on whether we get good, qualified entries. I also don't know if it will be well attended at our LIVE! event. That's part of innovating—you never know if new ideas will work. But I think it's worth a try, and if it proves popular, we'll make it a regular feature at our LIVE! conference in the future.
Mark Roberti is the founder and editor of RFID Journal. If you would like to comment on this article, click on the link below. To read more of Mark's opinions, visit the RFID Journal Blog, the Editor's Note archive or RFID Connect.
