Looking to Invest? Would you buy stock from a Pro-Athlete?

If your answer is yes, then you should look into fantex.com. Last year, I attended a presentation of the company at MIT; it certainly grabbed my attention because of the innovative way to invest your money. The proposition is that people can own stock which is linked to the future cash flows of the professional athlete. Complicated? Not so much if you have a few basics understanding of underlying assets, cash flows, and stock market. Currently you can invest and own “a piece” of 49’ers wide receiver Vernon Williams, or Cincinnati wide receiver Mohamed Sanu. I don’t have data to show you how fantex is doing; however, this is a good example that new start-ups and ideas are hidden in any industry; best ideas are at the intersection of areas, this one for me is right at the corner of finance and sports.

Voice Recognition and the IoT

While the Internet of Things (IoT) keeps growing, with more start-ups going down that way, it is important that the voice recognition technology evolves. The power of the voice commands complements nicely compelling IoT gadgets and products. Let’s not forget situations where touching screens are not an option – cooking or driving -. Big giants like Apple and Google have deep pockets to pour millions in the developing of the Voice Recognition Technology, but smaller software or hardware companies do not have this financial capacity. The Californian Company Wit.ai is aiming to offer their voice recognition products free in exchange for user data. This is a very interesting proposition, and more than 4,500 developers are already using their products. I strongly advice to take a look at this form of collaboration for your start-up. – This post is based in an Article from the MIT Technology Review (Vol 188/2015 – Written by Rachel Metz)