Funding Garage Inc., a Tucson internet start-up founded on the vision to help automotive enthusiasts raise the money they need for their projects, recently succeeded in helping high school students in Tucson Arizona raise money for its annual Solar Go-Kart Challenge hosted by University of Arizona. Since it’s official launch in 2012, FG has attracted over 1800+ fans on Facebook, 600+ followers on Twitter, and 20,000+ viewers weekly to its facebook fanpage.
Mindy Chen, the Funding Garage writer, had a chance to interview Lin regarding SEMA's announcement of Funding Garage advancing to Final 10 in the 2013 SEMA Launch Pad Competition.
Mindy Chen (MC): Congratulations on making the Final 10.
Dominic Lin (DL): I can't say how excited I was when I received an email from Bryan Harrison, Sr. Manager of the SEMA's YEN Council, telling me that Funding Garage made Final 10. To make Final 10, we had to go through an evaluation and selection process with a panel of five judges representing the industry. Amongst them were Jim Liaw, President of Formula Drift, Doug Evans, Executive VP Group Publisher of Source Interlink, Ronald L. Coleman, President & C.E.O of COMP Performance Group, Greg Adler, President & CEO of Transamerican Auto Parts, and Jeffrey Yapp, Vice President of Global Automotive Engineering and Operations of UPS. To tell you the truth it was a relief for me and a vote of confidence for our company vision.
MC: What does your competition look like and what is your likelihood of winning?
DL: All of the other 9 final candidates have wonderful concept/product/ideas, and I genuinely hope that regardless of who wins this competition that they all become successful down the road. Everyone of these company founders have the passion to innovate, and innovation is the key to progress. Personally, I believe that Funding Garage has the biggest potential impact for the automotive industry, and interestingly our company mission is to help companies like these in the Final 10 with raising funds to support their own agenda. A win for Funding Garage will be measured by how well we can communicate and educate people in the position of influence on the power of a community fundraising platform, help them understand how an effective fundraising mechanism can promote the growth of the innovations pipeline, and motivate those with great ideas to step forward and join in on the Funding Garage Movement.
MC: Can you elaborate on the “Funding Garage Movement?”
DL: In talking with many automotive industry veterans, it is a common belief that innovations happen at the speed of molasses, and often automakers have to look for innovations outside their four walls. Whether this is true or not, I have encountered so many people with great ideas out there that the automakers aren't tapping into, and the traditional ways of gathering ideas (via SAE/DARPA competition, corporate sponsored innovations challenge, college automotive programs, etc) are costly (high barrier to entry) and not very effective in engaging these people (lack of touch points). It is also unfortunate to see automotive programs (high school and college) being closed down due to lack of funding; taking away opportunities for young automotive enthusiasts to further develop their passion and reducing the population of inventors, creators, and game changers for the future. The Funding Garage Movement is a movement to create a robust innovations pipeline for the transportation industry, and I believe that in order to accelerate the speed of innovations we have to evolutionize the way we gather, develop, promote, integrate, and commercialize ideas.
MC: Tell me some of the latest developments happening inside Funding Garage.
DL: We are at an exciting point for Funding Garage because we already have a functional platform, a success story with the Cienega High School Solar Go-Kart club, and many great projects in queue ready to be approved for fundraising. I would say though that the most important development that has happened recently is the recruitment of new Funding Garage Board Members. As the CEO of the company, one of my primary tasks is to seek, downselect, and bring on-board talents that see eye-to-eye with our vision as well as having the means to bring FG to the next level. We now have a diversified Board with automotive journalism, OEM public relations, motorsports championships, car design, and event sponsorship background. Their full bios will be posted shortly on our website, which by the way our website is under the knife for a new user interface to debut by month end.
MC: I wish you the best of luck with the 2013 SEMA Launchpad Competition.
DL: Thank you. To support Funding Garage's vision, people can vote for us at the SEMA Facebook page. You can also check out videos of the other finalists, and if you feel compelled, you can vote for their ideas too.
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