SEMA Show Las Vegas 2013 in Pictures - Funding Garage Inc.

SEMA Show 2013 - Las Vegas

Funding Garage Inc.

10/16/2013 - Latest Development in Funding Garage Inc.

Words from the CEO Funding Garage Inc. has been absolutely blessed with the recent support from the automotive community; from signing a MOU with The AutoHarvest Foundation™, engaging in collaborative conversation with BMW iVentures in the Silicon Valley to launch Innovation Invitationals in 2014, and due to everyone's votes, FG has successfully advanced to the final round of the SEMA LaunchPad program and will be featured on live-television at the upcoming2013 SEMA Expo. There's so much our FG Team wants to do, and with every successes (and failures) we cross along the way, it is making the Funding Garage Movement more of a reality each day. We believe that the next best automotive innovation is inside someone's garage, being chatted about amongst friends, or in someone's notebook. We want to speed up the process of helping these disruptive innovation surface to the top and connecting them with resources that will help ideas accelerate to commercialization and adoption. Last but certainly not least, the FG Website has gone through a successful facelift thanks to our Lead Website Developer, Michael Hayes. We've finally come to the 21st century with new features added such as the widescreen information slider, automatic pulling of blogs from our FG Shop Talk, and other UI design updates to make the website a bit more appealing. Join in me spreading the news about Funding Garage and our vision to promote the future of mobility by enabling grassroots innovation. Sincerely, Dominic Lin President, CEO

CEO Dominic Lin to establish Funding Garage as the next SEMA Automotive Innovation Leader

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.

Advancing to Final 10 - Funding Garage closing in on a win at the 2013 SEMA Launch Pad Competition

In a letter from Bryan Harrison, Sr. Manager of Councils at SEMA, today, he brings the following announcement to Funding Garage: After a vigorous evaluation from five judges (represented by your industry peers) you have been chosen to move onto the next round of competition in the SEMA Launch Pad. As the top 10 candidates your videos will be posted on a SEMA’s Facebook page to be voted on starting July 29th Another announcement will be made once the voting period is open. Wish us good luck and please spread the word if you like what Funding Garage is doing for the Automotive Community. Here's SEMA's Facebook page: SEMA Facebook Page Check out the video entry submitted: FG Entry (YouTube Video) The video features the President and CEO, Dominic Lin, addressing how the product works, why does it work, the market analysis, as well as the biggest challenge to date. About SEMA Launch Pad: The SEMA Young Executives Network (YEN) is helping young entrepreneurs by announcing the first-ever “SEMA Launch Pad” competition. This new competition offers executive-level innovators under the age of 40 a platform to showcase their business plans for marketing new automotive products or services. Five finalists will have their business plans reviewed by industry leaders at the 2013 SEMA Show in Las Vegas in front of a live audience. The winning company will be awarded an array of prizes, including a 10x10-ft. booth at the 2014 SEMA Show, an ad in Hot Rod or 4-Wheel & Off-Road magazine, a Family Events sponsorship, web design, graphic design and PR consultation packages and much more.

  

Call for Nominations - Funding Garage Executive Board

Funding Garage has recently launched its search for talented individuals with exceptional background in the Automotive Industry to fill its Executive Board.

Since launch last year, Funding Garage now has a functional platform which recently helped local High School students raise the money they need via crowdfunding to compete in the annual University of Arizona Racing the Sun Solar Go-Kart Challenge. Most recent blog can be read here.

The main goals for the remainder of 2013 is to utilize the potential of this newly formed highly energized Executive Board to kick off initiatives to increase market penetration and platform adoption; the end goal being to position Funding Garage for its first round of seed capital by year end.

All nominations will be accepted via info@fundinggarage.com

Interview with MIL.SPEC co-founder Erik DeLeo

 Funding Garage had the privilege to interview Erik DeLeo, the co-founder of MIL.SPEC, the creator of the 100 Cell Catted Midpipe for the Nissan GT-R and the proprietary fully CNC'd high compression billet pistons.

Funding Garage (FG): Please tell us a little about yourself, your story, and why you're here.
Erik DeLeo (EK): Purchased an Evo. Ended up spending a silly amount of money on the car and decided I needed to figure out a way to make money instead of spending it. I wanted more power for my car, but didn't want to run catless...especially in California. So I sourced some cats to see if I could sell them. I could. Ended up getting kicked off the forums for selling too many cats, and was told to become a vendor. Asked another guy who had been kicked off the forums as well for selling too many parts, and MIL.SPEC was formed.

FG: Can you give us a definition of what you think "crowd-funding" or "crowd-sourcing" is, and could become?
Erik: Crowdfunding is a good way to get the masses to buy into a product. There are no focus groups. There are no VC's or angel inventors to haggle with over business plans or equity. You simply go straight to your target market. And it can work like gangbusters.

FG: What attracted you to crowd-funding?
Erik: It's another option for growing our company because, right now, a lot of our money goes right back into growing the business. There isn't a lot of cash for development work right now.

FG: Have you had any prior experiences, good or bad?
Erik: I have worked on one project, but it never launched.

FG: What do you expect from a successful campaign?
Erik: The ability to show our concept works and to line up real orders from the marketplace.

FG: What do you think of Funding Garage?
Erik: Seems like a brilliant idea. We'll see how things go in the execution phase.

FG: More importantly, what do you think of what we're trying to accomplish here (by building a platform for automotive enthusiasts to fund their dreams)?
Erik: To give smaller companies the opportunity to grow and also to potentially get more people into modding cars and the automotive aftermarket in general.

FG: Why Funding Garage? Or even, why pick a crowd-funding avenue with a niche presence?
Erik: It seems to be the only game in town for this kind of endeavor. For example, Kickstarter does not allow automotive projects on their site.

FG: In your opinion, what benefits does crowd-funding have over traditional forms of capital raising?
Erik: Like I mentioned previously, it's an opportunity to go direct to market avoiding the hassles of VC's, equity firms and angel investors.

FG: If you could build any vehicle (your dream ride), whether it be bike, dragster, hot rod, classic, rally car, you name it, and where budget really was no object; what would it be and why?
Erik:  really love the Ferrari 288 GTO. A brilliant car way ahead of its time. It's a 400hp forced induction V8. What else can you say?

You can find MIL.SPEC's on Funding Garage at http://fundinggarage.com/projects/mil-spec-billet-e85-high-compression-pistons

Cienega High School students setting crowdfunding history

First Vail District School to utilize Crowdfunding to raise funding for University of Arizona Solar Go-Kart Competition Cienega High School reaches 123% of its original crowdfunding goal As the returning Grand Champions of the 2012 "Racing the Sun" Challenge, the students of Cienega high school sets history again by being the first Vail District School to successfully crowdfund their fundraising campaign for the 2013 UA Racing the Sun Challenge. They also set the example for the rest of the automotive community that crowdfunding is a viable model for raising funding for automotive enthusiasts. Please join us in congratulating Josh, Alex, Maria, Tyler, and their coach Mr. Michael Keck on their wonderful accomplishment. About: The University of Arizona - Racing the Sun Challenge The second annual UA sponsored STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) high school solar go-kart competition is back, and 2013 is packed with 4 high school once again competing for two top honors (endurance and speed). High school students are expected to fabricate, test, and race their solar go-karts against other teams. There's still time to contribute! Here's how: Cienega students are offering some pretty sweet perks for contributors ranging from custom team t-shirts to LED lit hat to VIP treatment at race day to personalized plaque with team autographs to private invitation to the celebration Pizza Party after the race. To contribute, click on the link below to take you to their crowdfunding campaign homepage. Please also help spread the word! Contribute to Cienega HS Solar Crowdfunding Campaign here!

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