Startup Weekend is an innovative concept, where by in one weekend, just a mere 54 hours, you can go from nothing to a viable company.

Anidea Engineering’s owner, Gabriel Goldstein, attended his first Startup Weekend in 2013 in West Palm Beach.  Although not a Startup company, Gabriel knows there is always something to learn. 

It starts with an opening event with a speaker, then attendees start getting down to business: What is your idea?

They make pitches, wait anxiously as their peers choose which pitches seem the most viable, and then, as ideas are weeded out, groups begin to form. Inspirational speakers tell of their entrepreneurial experiences. Then, they get to work.  break for the night. Day 1 is complete. 

Day 2 begins bright and early, with budding entrepreneurs ready to make something happen. They quickly get to work, feeling the pressure as time trickles away, far too quickly for their liking. Day 3, Sunday, they continue working until it is time. The groups present their companies, and a winner is chosen.

Startup Sponsor / Supporter / Mentor

In 2013, Goldstein worked on an app – YO! – that facilitated conversation between bartenders and patrons in a loud, crowded atmosphere. The would-be drinker communicates visually through the app to the bartender, creating an ease-of-ordering that can’t be beat.

Unfortunately, the team did not win. However, Goldstein not only met some great friends but still to this day, is an experienced entrepreneur who avidly supports the startup community.  He was bitten by the ‘Startup Weekend’ bug and his team was featured in a newspaper article about the event.

Being an entrepreneur is not new to Goldstein. After all, he started Anidea Engineering with literally, just an idea. He has since leveraged his experience to become one of the speakers and sponsors at 2014’s Startup Weekend West Palm Beach, and a mentor and sponsor at Startup Weekend Miami-FIU, which took place Friday, Nov. 20-22, 2015.

Mentoring is not new to Goldstein who has worked with various clients for the last 15 years, helping to mold and shape many of their companies. In addition, he is a mentor at FAU’s Tech Runway, a collaborative work space for entrepreneur to house, educate, mentor and fund their companies from inception through venture funding.

Goldstein used his mentoring experience to assist the teams at Startup Weekend.

“I got to work with a lot of different companies,” Goldstein said. “I was a huge fan of it. It is so much fun to see these companies start from nothing and become something.”

 “As a mentor, it was a lot of fun to go around and challenge the teams on their ideas and make them question things. One of the biggest things about Startup Weekend is validation. Everyone thinks they have a good idea, until you go out and test it in the marketplace,” he said.

Testing the ideas led to some of their downfalls, and others readjusted, reevaluated, tweaked their ideas, and came up with something stronger and more viable.

Working with a younger demographic – many of the participants were college students – did not have the same experiences that Goldstein has had, which shaped their projects and approaches. For example, one group learned about credit card processing, and how small transactions do not lend to a profit.

“As a mentor, I was able to bring my entrepreneurial and life experiences to the table to challenge and guide the teams. I’ve had the advantage of seeing technology evolve in the last 20 years that many of the attendees – bright, gifted students – did not,” Goldstein said, explaining that although he has accumulated years, he still has the same energetic, inquisitive, entrepreneurial spirit that helped him create Anidea Engineering.

Goldstein enjoying one of the more entertaining parts of Startup Weekend.

The teams worked hard on their ideas, testing and learning along the way.

“The incredible value of Startup Weekend is that you have the opportunity to go through many of the processes that you would go through in a team format to launch a company, with very little risk involved. It’s a vast learning experience,” he said.

Former attendees have reached out to Goldstein, as a mentor, and a networking connection.

“It’s a really great organization that I highly recommend for anyone who wants to learn about entrepreneurship and starting their own company and to participate in,” he said. “I’ll participate in any one I’m ever invited to, or any other way I can possibly participate.”

To learn more, visit www.anidea-engineering.com or call us at (561) 383-7311. Check us out and see how we can help you. Have an idea? Get Anidea! We’re located at 8020 Belvedere Road, Suite 1 in West Palm Beach Florida. Not local? Call and we can set up a Skype conversation at gabriel.goldstein.anidea.

Kevin Ferguson from Facebook is our winner.  I’ve direct messaged you.  Please contact me for the coupon code to collect your prize!  Thank you to all who entered. 

Original post below from Gabriel Goldstein:

“First, I’m a huge fan of Startup Weekend.  My first time was a few years ago in West Palm Beach at the inaugural event where I attended the first night to see what was going on and to meet people.  Things seemed kind of cool, so I pitched an idea that didn’t get any traction.  I met some guys who seemed very nonchalant about the whole thing.  One of them had this idea for the Yo! App.  It was a way to order drinks in a loud bar.  This seemed like the kind of low impact company that would be fun to explore for 54 hours.  I ended up joining, being a key member of the team, and presenting on Sunday with my team mates.  It was some of the most fun I have ever had, and most of my team mates are still friends today.  My wife will not let me participate for the whole weekend anymore.

The second time I was asked to be a mentor.  The third time I spoke and sponsored.  This time I’m mentoring and sponsoring.  I love the program, it’s a ton of fun, and I’m proud to be a part of it.

So, this year I have two tickets I am giving away to help spread the word about Anidea and Startup Weekend.  Here is what to do:

• Share this or any other content from our website.
• Like us on Facebook or Follow us on Twitter.
• Send us a message about it! (So we know you did it.)

Startup Weekend is at FIU in Miami on November 20 – 22, 2015.

We will draw two names Monday, November 16^th.

Thanks!

Gabriel

 I start around 8 minutes.

My pastor called me up and says he knows a guy who could use some help on a project in Haiti with a solar panel setup.  I offer my help and tell him it’s OK to give him my information.  I eventually get a call and some of the first few words out of my mouth are to the effect of “I’m happy to help you over the phone but I have no interest in going to Haiti.”  We talked for a bit about two orphanages he worked with and he sent me a report from another fellow and I told him I’d take a look at it.  No big deal.

So a few days later I get a call from my pastor, “Will you go?”  I really didn’t want to.  In fact my friend also got the invite and I knew I wasn’t going without him (body guard or something) and when he finally agreed, I agreed too, we purchased our tickets, and we were Haiti bound.

Along the way, another two friends joined the crew and we were set.  This turned from ‘stepping off the edge of the earth’ experience to a guy’s trip to a Caribbean island!  I was still very nervous, but I had enough familiarity around me to be comfortable. 

So on the day we are all set to leave, my friend who was the entire reason I agreed to go, checks his passport, and it’s expired.  I questioned not going for a few minutes then sucked it up and decided to go anyway.

The trip down there was uneventful, plane rides, customs, no big deal.

The ride through Port-au-Price was awesome!  I had my phone recording video most of the time. The crazy driving, the people, the culture was all great.  I never felt unsafe.  We had about a 3 hour ride into the mountains to get to our first location.  We picked up supplies along the way.  Then we left the cars behind and got into two boats that were about 50 years old.  I had my doubts they were going to hold us.  We made it across about a 50 yard wide river, and then our hike began.  About 45 minutes in the sun and we finally made it to the orphanage in Pourier.  It was about 6 buildings smack in the middle of nowhere.  Kids came pouring out of a building a greeted us very warmly.  They were very interested in my friend’s tattoos, me not so much.  After introductions and a tour, we got to work.

The orphanage had a water treatment system that provided some basic filtration and sanitization.  It was a unit, which turned out to be common in Haiti, provided by a Christian outreach organization.  It was working well, but they didn’t have a reliable way to get water pumped to it.  The facility was also located next to a small stream, that apparently could be a large stream during the rainy season.  It turns out they used to have a DC pumping system, but the pump had been stolen and they were using an AC pump system which ran off of their generator.  

That evening we were presented with a church service.  I had never been in a service that lasted close to 3 hours.  It was crazy.  It was also pretty cool.  I ended up making friends with some kids sitting next to me.  Among them was a young girl and her little brother that so much reminded me of my own kids.  We couldn’t speak to each other much we mostly exchanged smiles and she enjoyed me taking pictures of her (apparently kids around the world are amazed with the iPhone).

An item which is worth mentioning here is that EVERYTHING is scarce in Haiti.  Everything we take for granted like fuel, electricity, water, food, etc.  If it’s around, it’s expensive.  While you may think they had it made with a generator around for power; for one, they don’t use power, two, diesel has to travel in the previously mentioned boat over the waterway and on a mule for a 45 minute walk.  It seems odd at first though, but a generator almost causes more problems than it solves.

Anyway, that being said, solar power is the only thing that makes any sense there if you are outside of a major city.  As we continued our discovery phase, there were about 10 solar panels on the roof doing nothing and our guide had sent down two more and some small pumps ahead of us.  They also had a single pump setup that would at least put water into their cisterns.  We looked at our resources and proceed to put together a system which was able to run pump water from the stream up about 20 feet to the water treatment system at about 3 gallons per minute.  This was significant as there was a certain rate at which it would not run their water system.

By the time we left, we were filling 500 gallon tanks of safe water and we were also filling a 15,000 gallon pool for a future tilapia farm.  Side note, the pool was dug by hand.  They also shared with us that before their DC pump was stolen they had provided safe water for about 20 square miles (by best guess given the description of the area as it was explained to me).  During a cholera epidemic, their area didn’t get sick.  When their DC pump system was stolen, they didn’t have the resources to supply the area anymore.  Now that they had a solar powered pump system again, they could once again supply water for their community.

In all, it was an amazing experience.  The people were very warm and inviting.  In America, we tend to not ‘see’ God because we have so much.  In Haiti, you can see God everywhere.  I can’t wait to go back.

The kids were great and very receptive.  I’m posting a few resources here for them. 

Students, I’d love to hear your feedback on today’s presentation.  Feel free to post comments below and share your thoughts.  You are also welcome to ask me questions.

Technical

• Arduino – www.arduino.cc
• Basic level programming of hardware
• Internet
• Snap Circuits

Personality:

• Meyers-Briggs/Keirsey
• http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp
• http://similarminds.com/jung.html
• http://www.keirsey.com/sorter/register.aspx

Humor:

• The Knack

Thousands of Wellington, Florida residents, including Gabriel Goldstein’s family attend Sunday services at LifeChurch.tv. When this popular nationwide church with 15 locations and a global online audience shared its idea for volunteers to design and build the movie-themed Monsters Inc. art installation in its lobby in Wellington, Gabriel and his company Anidea Engineering, Inc.  immediately signed up, even without any pressure from his two kids aged 5 years and 11 months old. It’s not by coincidence that our company’s tagline is: “got an idea? Get Anidea!”   

“Anidea strongly believes in giving back to the community.” said Gabriel Goldstein, CEO and Chief Product Design Engineer at Anidea Engineering.

Our experienced, Palm Beach County-based product design firm was ecstatic to donate our expertise in design, mechanical and electrical engineering, and implementation in two main areas:  a conveyor system and LED sign.

First and more intense was a pulley, conveyor system that aerially displayed vibrant Monsters Inc. artwork throughout the church’s lobby. This required over 400 hundred feet of steel cable running through seven custom-designed pulley brackets and a motor drive mechanism.

The second major contribution was inspired by the Monsters Inc. movie “Stalk – Don’t Stalk” LED sign. Our efforts replicated the sign and decked it out with flashing green and red lights, surprisingly and resourcefully made from a Styrofoam beach cooler.

In closing, Gabriel Goldstein states, “working with fellow, talented LifeChurch.tv volunteers and seeing the amazement in everyone’s eyes, including my children’s, made this philanthropic effort worthwhile. Give us a ‘monstrous’ idea, we helped make it a reality, and it was ‘monstrously’ fulfilling for everyone!”   

Gabriel Goldstein of Anidea Engineering was at Baron Sign and met Governor Scott.  He was promoting a plan to eliminate sales tax on capital equipment.

https://ideamensch.com/gabriel-goldstein/