When the annual San Diego Startup Week begins June 14, one of the new companies that will be especially visible and apropos is Ideator. The year-old company has developed an online platform to connect entrepreneurs anywhere with the resources they need to successfully build a business, and is one of the sponsors of Startup Week. Times of San Diego spoke with Ideator’s Co-Founder Jeremy Sanders about his company and what he sees as San Diego’s vibrant and diverse startup community.
Why did you start Ideator?
People have great ideas, but often lack the resources to turn their ideas into products and businesses. Business incubators and accelerators have programs to help people develop and commercialize their ideas, but they typically face barriers of geography, industry, idea stage, program capacity, and others. We started Ideator as a global platform to democratize business incubation, so that more people have the opportunity to become successful innovators and entrepreneurs.
You’ve created a unique online resource for entrepreneurs. How does it work?
First, you create a unique profile and add your idea on Ideator. Then you develop your idea by explaining the problem it solves, how it solves the problem and more. Your idea is kept private until you are ready to make it public, and you can invite people to your team any time, create and manage goals and tasks, and collaborate on your idea. When you’re ready, you can launch your business and continue the innovation and commercialization processes on Ideator throughout your business’s life cycle.
What other services does Ideator provide to budding startups?
We are developing a marketplace so that Ideators — people with ideas, startups, and developing businesses — can more easily get the help they need. This includes access to legal services, online marketing, and more. Ideator is providing advisory services to select startups and has a fund so that when we see immense potential, we can invite select Ideators to receive funding.
Ideator launched in the Bay Area. How does San Diego’s startup culture compare?
I live in San Diego, as does Vice President Thomas Schutz, but Co-Founder Charlie Smith and many of our advisers live in the Bay Area, which is where most of our team meetings are held. While we operate virtually and call San Francisco home, much of our early focus has been on the San Diego startup community, our other home.
While the startup culture in the Bay Area is thriving and very tech-focused, we see San Diego’s startup culture growing more vibrantly and being more diverse. Forbes magazine seems to agree, having ranked San Diego first among the best places to launch a startup in 2014. Tom and Jeremy were recently named co-directors for the San Diego chapter of Startup Grind, and are looking forward to helping grow San Diego’s startup culture in other ways, too.
Is there an international market for Ideator, whether across the border in Baja California or overseas?
Ideator is a global business incubation platform, and there are already people on the platform from countries including Georgia, Switzerland, Germany, Pakistan, India and Mexico. The startup ecosystem is more developed in some countries than it is in others, but great ideas have no borders. We hope that Ideator will help the world come together a bit more, not just through collaborating to create the next great products and startups, but by helping us all to have fun in the process.
Times of San Diego, a startup itself, regularly writes about startups in technology, biotech and other sectors of local business. If you are a startup in the San Diego area and want to tell your story, please contact news@timesofsandiego.com.
