Thursday, August 22, 2013

JumpStartFund Takes On Crowdfunding, Advice For Research Startups

A new, Los Angeles area startup launched this morning, hoping to use the power of the crowd to help take ideas to launch. JumpStartFund, which is based in El Segundo, opened up its service this morning to help use the wisdom of the crowd to move ideas, patents, and research from individuals, federal research labs, universities, and research organizations to the market. The startup--headed by Dirk Ahlborn--has created a system which lets the crowd provide feedback, ideas, and even crowdfunding to take ideas and research to market. According to Ahlborn, the idea is to harness the power of the crowd to refine anything from someone's bright idea, to technology licensed from universities, and allow the crowd to benefit as those ideas and technology become real companies. The site combines the crowd-voting aspect with crowd-funding elements, as well. JumpStartFund comes out of the Girvan Institute of Technology, a Los Angeles startup incubator and accelerators for early-stage high-tech companies.

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