We’re Seeking New Mentors & Partners
Meet The BRANDSPRING Mentors & Guest Advisors
About The BRANDSPRING® Program
Turn Your Idea Into A ProductGetting traction with your idea can be one of the most daunting tasks for a new start-up. Have you asked yourself any of these: How to protect your idea? When to find a business partner? Where can I get investment? How do you quickly validate an idea without going broke? These are all questions we will cover in this four week boot camp for ideas. Come to BRANDSPRING with what you have and leave with something worthy of being on store shelves.
What Next? After You Graduate The Program?
Be A Program MentorA program mentor is someone who has a passion for startup businesses and products. BrandSpring® Mentorship is exactly what it sounds like. You have an active, hands on role with the participants and are willing to use your industry acumen or resources to lead them.
- Industrial Designers, Engineers, Distributors, Lawyers, Investors and Business Leaders are all great candidates for mentors.
- Currently we are scheduled for June and October 2012 and January 2013. As a mentor you may choose which months to participate or elect out of.
- We offer monetary compensation to our mentors for their time and services. Each mentor may also have the opportunity to acquire equity in each new company or product they mentor.
Be A Guest Advisor or SpeakerHave something that a startup needs to know about? Branding, Patents, Manufacturing, Prototyping, Fund Raising, Social Media, Web Development, Banking Practices, Tax Law or anything else a business owner should know? Great, lets hear it. We would love to have you speak at BrandSpring®.
- As a speaker or guest advisor you have the option of speaking at a session only once or every quarter.
- Guest advisors are required to deliver a keynote lasting between 15-30 minutes. The keynote will include resources, advice, tools or examples regarding your industry and experience.
- All advisors will be filmed, published and posted live on our website and their affiliated company will be featured in our partners and sponsor wall..
Partner With BrandSpring® You have an idea for a product, mobile application, non-profit or other business and want to jump start it into motion. We have many of the branding, legal, strategy and engineering partners to help you make that happen.
Meet The BRANDSPRING Mentors & Guest Advisors
About The BRANDSPRING® Program
Have that idea you’ve been working on for years or one that you just haven’t started?
Get ready for 4 weeks of hands on, fast paced sessions designed to develop, test and validate your idea. For the next 30 days, you’ll be turning your idea into a viable business venture while, industry experts lead you over a few major start-up hurdles.
1Kick Start Big Ideas You have an idea for a product, mobile application, non-profit or other business and want to jump start it into motion. We have many of the branding, legal, strategy and engineering partners to help you make that happen.
2Keep Your Day Job We know you have a day job, family, classes and other daytime commitments to keep you from building your dream full-time. That’s OK. Don’t quit your day job, work with us nights and weekends to develop your idea!
3Test & Prove Ideas You may have the best idea since the energy drink, but will it work? Will it sell? In 4 weeks we will refine your idea, rapidly prototype it and complete market validation so you are staged for series A funding or commercialization.
Design Thinking & IdeationYou will be stretching, molding, expanding and pushing your idea to the limits. You’ll learn how to detach emotionally from your idea in order to creatively find the best possible solutions.
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Patents, Trademarks & Legal StuffOur legal partners explain when and how to protect your idea, registering the right type of business, licensing or selling your product, how shares/stock work and setting up partnerships.
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Branding & Customer DevelopmentGet familiar with the branding process. Utilize previous weeks design thinking and trademark knowledge to define your product to potential customers. Begin logo and visual elements design.
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Publicity, Social Media & MarketingEven with the best possible idea, customers don’t just line up to buy it. Learn where to get free publicity, how to successfully exploit social media and how to engage potential customers.
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Final Presentations & PitchesThis is not a typical week. You will spend most of your time creating a presentation, finalizing your most recent prototype iteration and preparing all your results from the program for a live pitch.
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What goes on when your not in session?You’re connecting with our development partners to create early iterations of your idea, running focused street trials with potential customers and applying our sessions in actual settings.
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What Next? After You Graduate The Program?
What You Leave With :
- In four weeks you will have been immersed in nearly every aspect of basic start-up practices and rapid product validation. You will leave with a proper strategy to use as a guide as you move forward beyond this program.
- Your idea is now a validated beta prototype. The prototype is still just a proof of concept used to demonstrate to investors, manufacturer and other business development channels. You will still need refinement, industrial design and possibly engineering before it is production ready.
- Your idea is no longer a “whacha-ma-gig thing”, it has a name, an audience, a brand personality and voice.
- Through the weeks you have worked with teams of industry savants, been introduced to expert mentors who are willing to help and learned where to find specific resource that can will further grow your new venture.
Where Do I Go Next? :
- Don’t loose steam. Just because the program is over does not mean slow down. You need to be persistent and aggressive develop your start-up. Continue building a team, network and vendor chain that will work along side you as you grow.
- Most of our mentors run businesses dedicated to their specific field. Depending on the stage you are at, connecting with them on a professional level will be highly beneficial to your success.
- Every session, The Collide Factory core team selects a few of the most promising new ideas to strategically develop beyond the programs. Those companies typically partner with us through the entire commercialization and distribution process. Not all ideas qualify for this long-term development program.
