StartupRealities

StartupRealities No 84 SparringWithExtroverts is a coaching and task management company which provides extrovert executives a "sparring partner" to discuss and talk through work projects. The conversations help the executives move forward in thinking and acting on the projects in a disciplined and timely way. CEO QUOTE "Without someone to talk through issues, extroverts struggle to maintain a steady work pace. This is particularly true of 'bitty' projects that contain multiple small tasks to perform and many small decisions to make. Both introverts and extroverts benefit from going into a 'flow' mode of deep concentration for a long period of uninterrupted focus on an important task. However, for tasks that involve frequent interruptions, extroverts benefit from this type of 'sparring conversation partner'. Of course, the sparring partner is not needed every day of the week: we help our clients segment their project work so that the appropri...

StartupRealities No 83 MoonDust is a space technology and memorabilia company which plans to launch a single uncrewed mission to the surface of the Moon to bring moon dust back to Earth in 2023. The company is taking pre-orders in a crowdfunding campaign and plans to retrieve one tonne of moon material with a retail price of USD 10 billion. STATISTICS Limited amounts of lunar samples (moon soil / moon rock) have ever been brought back to Earth. NASA has 382 kg of moon material brought back in the Apollo 11 to Apollo 17 missions (1969-1972) but none of this is for sale. The former Soviet Union has less than a kilogram, collected with robotic probes in missions in 1970-1976. PRICE NASA estimated in 2003 that its cost of retrieval of the lunar samples was USD 50,800 per gram (in 1973 dollars), which would equal USD 308,000 per gram in 2020 dollars. According to a 2018  article in The Washington Post, 0.2 grams of Soviet lunar soil were sold at auction in 1993 at a price of US...

StartupRealities No 82 TrumpScientific is a research company that explores scientific and business ideas based on guidance from US President Donald Trump. The company is currently researching whether injecting disinfectant or exposure to UV light can have positive health effects on mice recovering from a viral infection (as suggested by Donald Trump in April 2020), in the hope that this can lead to human trials at the next stage. TrumpScientific does not have any insider connections to the US President and only uses ideas that the US President has broadcast to the public in his tweets or press conferences. CEO QUOTE "President Trump is much maligned by the mainstream media. However, many of his 'maverick' ideas contain seeds of divergent thinking that, if implemented, may lead to novel businesses or scientific discoveries. The fact that this has not yet happened does not discourage us. Moonshots take time and shooting at the moon is not for the faint-hearted," sa...

StartupRealities No 81 StoryFinder is a crowdsourcing and AI company that collects interesting stories for use in education, government, politics and the media. The company's AI bot trawls Wikipedia, news websites and school textbooks for interesting stories that can be repurposed and used in different ways. StoryFinder also crowdsources stories from the public in the format of various competitions and entertainment games. The company publishes a series of popular books called "100 Stories on ...". CEO QUOTE "Stories are fascinating education and learning tools. No one can resist a speaker who starts with 'Let me tell you a story.' What if the entire school curriculum could be put in 10,000 stories? Would so many children still reject formal education then?" - asked company founder and CEO Stormy Finn. Storyteller (image source: Wikipedia )

StartupRealities No 80 ScienceTransfer is a technology transfer and entrepreneurship promotion company that pairs up scientists, computer programmers and business people and encourages them to set up science-based startups. The company serves as an accelerator for such startups: it first identifies feasible scientific ideas through a range of competitions held around the world; then it matches the scientists and researchers with IT- and business-savvy co-founders to form a founding team; and then it helps the team scale up the idea into a business. CEO QUOTE "We match scientists with three types of people: hackers, hipsters and hustlers. Hackers are the coders, also known as computer programmers. The hipsters are the design people: those who tinker with user experience. And the hustlers are startup founders skilled in sales and marketing. Our motto is simple: SHHH! This stands for Scientists, Hackers, Hipsters, Hustlers," said ScienceTransfer founder and CEO Scirocco T...

StartupRealities No 79 WiFiExtension is a technology company which helps neighbours connect to each other's home WiFi networks. The company maintains an online "matching" database of the wifi networks of people who have entered their wifi code and those of their neighbours. When the database detects an overlap of the same network entered by two people (the owner and a neighbour), it connects the two and allows them to exchange their wifi passwords securely. The access that people receive to a neighbour's wifi network is always secondary and with a limited capacity when the owner of the network is using their wifi. CEO QUOTE "Your neighbour's router may be closer to your garden than your own router, so why not share their bandwidth once in a while, especially when they are not using their internet. Some people worry that their neighbours will take advantage of their wifi and do heavy downloads but our system makes this impossible. We set a limit on second...

StartupRealities No 78 MakeXGreat  is a foundation which operates in every country under a localised name, e.g. MakeAmericaGreat or MakeFranceGreat, and which funds 3 projects per year that glorify the country. The foundation is very successful in raising funding locally within the country in order to finance the three annual projects. Its activities often include: - the construction of giant monuments, monumental buildings or tall towers; - organising continent-wide expat communities or reunions; - brand and trademark registration and protection; - expeditions for the discovery of new biological species that are named after the country; - scientific projects whose results may carry the name of the country; - founding universities or hospitals. CEO QUOTE "MakeXGreat is an emotive organisation, almost like the National Lottery. And the fact that we only pick 3 projects per year helps to focus minds and bring together hearts. We create landmarks and we mark lands," s...