RE: Booo!OK Hork......
1- Firstly, Just because you haven't heard of a company, doesn't mean they aren't a success. There are thousands upon thousands of companies that are success stories that none of us on this board have even heard of. And let me remind you that these are "successful" start up companies, unlike the Apples, Microsofts, and IBMs of the world.
2- Below shows some of the successes that have been attained from I-stage:
A Whole New Stage of Development
March 15, 2010 by admin
Nearly six months after i-stage 2009, a check-in with our alumni proves business is going fantastically, especially after a knockout International CES.
Boxee, our first i-stage champ and a burgeoning content giant, has since closed $10 million dollars in venture capital. At the 2010 CES, Boxee jumped outside the screen to launch their first hardware product, the Boxee Box with D-Link. The Boxee Box won numerous awards including Last Gadget Standing, LAPTOPMagazine’s Best of CES for Home Entertainment, the G4 Best of the Best at CES and Dave Graveline’s Top 10 @ CES. The company has come a long way from CEO Avner Ronen’s “goose bumps when [he] sent the SMSs and made the call to tell [the offices] we had won.”
Regen’s ReNu, the judges’ pick in 2009, has received a vast amount of media and product attention thanks to their participation. In addition to receiving free exhibition space at CES, they have been featured on The NBC Today Show, CBS Evening News, Fox Business Channel and been in countless publications, as well as being a CES Innovations Design and Engineering award winner. Look forward to an expanded solar-powered product line from Regen this year.
And other finalists are also finding their way to becoming household names. i-stage allows start-ups and fully established companies alike to get real feedback from industry professionals and a vast amount of media attention. Jennifer Indovina, CEO of Tenrehte Technologies, launched her start-up last January. Their product, the PICOwatt, was another eco-friendly standout at the 2009 i-stage.
Indovina credits both i-stage and CES with their success. “It’s been a whirlwind,” she said. “We entered our prototype into i-stage and then took advantage of the reduced rates for CES. We won the Best of CES by CNET in Green Products and are now dealing with national labs. We now plan to have our product on Amazon by the end of the year.” PICOwatt continues to garner national acclaim, including a recent New York Times feature.
Mei Shibata of ThinkEco feels the same way as Indovina, “i-stage really helped to confirm the consumer appeal of our product and we are grateful for the many doors that it opened for us. With the positive market feedback from i-stage as a spring board, we have successfully raised a seed round of financing and have initiated pilot tests with major corporations that may not have heard about us otherwise.”
Both Shibata and Indovina feel it’s a must experience for companies to promote themselves and their products. “Having gone through the experience, I believe that i-stage is an unparalleled opportunity that CEA makes available to young companies like ours,” Shibata said. Indovina said that she would gladly enter i-stage again when their company launches a new product.
Every year, innovative new products are launched and displayed at i-stage. From the enTourage eDGe, a first of its kind eReader/netbook combo, which drew the attention of ABC News, MSNBC and CNN, to the CubicVue 3D Filter, a filter that creates 3D content on flat panel TVs without 3D glasses. The next i-stage takes place on October 18 in San Francisco. Will you be our next winner?
Filed under: Las Vegas, Phoenix, Success Stories
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Regen Shines as Another i-stage Success Story
November 22, 2009 by admin
Regen’s ReNu is proving that i-stage will not hit a sophomore slump, as the winner of the second annual competition has already garnered critical praise on par with the inaugural champ boxee. In the same month that boxee announced expansions to its own product line, Regen took the spotlight and charged up tech and environmental blogs alike, with TreeHugger saluting it as the sexiest of solar chargers.
Regen’s star power has also made it the first i-stage winner to take home a CES Innovations Design and Engineering Award, in the portable power category.
Check out some of the early praise for Regen’s line of solar-powered products, which won’t even hit the market until 2010:
§Alternative Consumer
§CNET
§Gizmodo
§Earth Techling
§Engadget
§Fast Company
§High Tech Lounge
§Inhabitat
§Mother Nature Network
3- In regards to the number of 'new' start ups that would have been involved in i-stage:
The 2010 CES attracted all of the top 50 global telecommunications service providers and featured 2,500 technology exhibitors, including a record 330 first time exhibitors.
Also, please view the video in the below link which comments on the hundreds of start ups in i-stage (top left):
https://i-stage.ce.org/
4- Perhaps Nick had a slip of his words or Globe and Mail had a slip when quoting him (happens all the time). Regardless, the information posted on the Sonomax site reads as follows:
The i-stage competition is “The Springboard to CES.” Among the many innovations that have debuted at CES are Blu-ray Disc by Philips Electronics (PHG:NYSE), XBOX by Microsoft (NASDAQGS:MSFT) and the Nintendo Entertainment System by Nintendo (Nintendo Co ADR:Frankfurt 76651.F).
At no point did they write that these products were in the i-stage competition, but rather that their products debuted at the CES show itself.