Why we don't see startups from 57 year old folks featured in Venturebeat?<p>Trust me when I say that isn't snark. In the US and elsewhere we have a large diaspora of people who held a certain kind of job for a long time, which has since been made redundant by either the economics of the business their employer was in, or the skill set they used was replaced by automation. These people nearly always have high school degrees, many have college degrees. And we hear stories about how they have sent their resume out hundreds or thousands of times without a response.<p>How can we motivate them to throw out the idea that they are going to find their old job at a new place, and replace it with they can create value by using their experience to solve new problems? We need folks like Venturebeat finding those people who have re-invented themselves, and made a startup in their 'grey' years to inspire these people.<p>We have stories of people who have been out of work since 2009, that is 5 years now this March. You can get an entirely new undergraduate degree in 5 years, especially if you skip the 'general ed' requirements. How do we motivate these people to engage?
It could be just a strange coincidence but I used to own a paintball company called Gangstar Paintball. I met with JT Sports (at the time owned by Jarden Group) in Bentonville, Arkansas about selling my company to them as well as a project I was working on at the time.<p>It used a series of technologies in the loader to track a user, their rate of fire, the guns fps and track its location.<p>I have a Non-disclosure agreement with them around this technology that would be up for expiring August 2014 (it was signed August 2009 and was a 5 year agreement).<p>Granted this implementation varies from mine, it sounds all too familiar. I was using a series of directional antennas to triangulate the players location on a field, instead of GPS because GPS's resolution is roughly 10m.<p>It is safe to say 2 things:
1) This implementation will never work as they are selling it.
2) There is an eerie connection to my conversation with JT Sports and this (the paintball world is very small).<p>Perhaps it begs resurrecting -- if this industry can get some $$ from VC and crowd funding, my biggest problem starting up (capital) might not be an issue anymore.
Now here's a killer app for a ruggedized Google Glass built into some protective eyewear; radar HUD and comms. It could come with some gloves that detect when you're signalling to communicate with 'squad', 'team' and 'all' with your non-trigger hand, along with signs for pre-determined messages for silent comms without visual contact.
> With Overwatch, players will be able to attach their iPhones to their paintball or airsoft guns and then track the real-time movement of other players on the battlefield<p>Seems like it could be an expensive game of paintball if you're putting your phone at risk of getting annihilated. Are they planning on making their own components eventually or are they set on the "app" status of it?<p>Pretty cool idea though.
It's great to see pre-college students pursuing technology and entrepreneurship. I didn't even view it as a desirable or viable career path until I started college. I would've appreciated a chance to get started in it at an earlier age.
Really clever idea, but $50,000 to bring this to market is way too unrealistic. He's going to need a lot more.<p>Could see this being a huge hit, though. Paintball 2.0.
Here's the actual venturebeat article this post is referencing - <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2013/12/30/startup-aims-to-bring-call-of-duty-like-tech-to-live-paintball-games/" rel="nofollow">http://venturebeat.com/2013/12/30/startup-aims-to-bring-call...</a>