Startup aims to bring Call of Duty-like tech to live paintball games(venturebeat.com) |
Startup aims to bring Call of Duty-like tech to live paintball games(venturebeat.com) |
Trust me when I say that isn't snark. In the US and elsewhere we have a large diaspora of people who held a certain kind of job for a long time, which has since been made redundant by either the economics of the business their employer was in, or the skill set they used was replaced by automation. These people nearly always have high school degrees, many have college degrees. And we hear stories about how they have sent their resume out hundreds or thousands of times without a response.
How can we motivate them to throw out the idea that they are going to find their old job at a new place, and replace it with they can create value by using their experience to solve new problems? We need folks like Venturebeat finding those people who have re-invented themselves, and made a startup in their 'grey' years to inspire these people.
We have stories of people who have been out of work since 2009, that is 5 years now this March. You can get an entirely new undergraduate degree in 5 years, especially if you skip the 'general ed' requirements. How do we motivate these people to engage?
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The average age on our list of founders at founding is 34. Yes, the founders of Facebook were on average 20 when it was founded; but the founders of LinkedIn, the second-most valuable company on our list, were 36 on average; and the founders of Workday, the third-most valuable, were 52 years old on average.
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http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/02/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club...
If you are asking why, people who has spent the last 10 years of their life on a job that is not obsolete aren't starting startups, its probably because starting a company requires a certain amount of skill and risk that they probably don't have. This 17 year old kid, might have been hacking with computers since he was 13 - which is 5 years of exposure, on his parents dime. I can't say that others have that luxury.
I've watched over the years what sometimes seems like a concerted effort to convince people that their votes don't count and they can't get elected to office if they aren't rich or connected. Neither of these things are true but as the 'meme' takes hold people start believing it. They go passive in the face of terrible representatives.
I would hate for the same sort of effect to occur in the startup world, where people were 'trained' to believe that it was impossible for the common person to create a new business, and even trying to do so makes you look stupid for trying to do something so clearly impossible.
One way to counter this effect is to highlight people who start businesses who might be related to by someone who is reading/watching/listening to the story.
It used a series of technologies in the loader to track a user, their rate of fire, the guns fps and track its location.
I have a Non-disclosure agreement with them around this technology that would be up for expiring August 2014 (it was signed August 2009 and was a 5 year agreement).
Granted this implementation varies from mine, it sounds all too familiar. I was using a series of directional antennas to triangulate the players location on a field, instead of GPS because GPS's resolution is roughly 10m.
It is safe to say 2 things: 1) This implementation will never work as they are selling it. 2) There is an eerie connection to my conversation with JT Sports and this (the paintball world is very small).
Perhaps it begs resurrecting -- if this industry can get some $$ from VC and crowd funding, my biggest problem starting up (capital) might not be an issue anymore.
Seems like it could be an expensive game of paintball if you're putting your phone at risk of getting annihilated. Are they planning on making their own components eventually or are they set on the "app" status of it?
Pretty cool idea though.
Could see this being a huge hit, though. Paintball 2.0.