Today was the cutoff day for notifying our innovators about who we are going to make an offer to.   We have recieved hundreds of applications and the process hasn't been easy.    

We first reviewed each proposal.   Since the key to our program is having something that can be built or prototyped within 3 or 4 months we first sorted the applications into those we felt could do that and those we didn't think were possible.     We then looked at the teams with each application to see if we felt they had the right mix of people to pull it off.    In a best case scenario there might be a team or 2 to 4 people with at least someone who can focus on the business and at least 1 if not 2 people who can build the technology.

From there we focused a bit more on the businss idea.   If we felt it could be done quickly and we felt the team could pull it off the next real question was whether we felt there was enough of a market need and whether it was big enough.   For this we not only evaluated the applications ourselves but sent the applications out to some "domain experts" that we had lined up.    It was one thing for us to react to something in a very specized area; it was another to have someone who knows that area inside and out give a thumbs up or thumbs down also.

After going through these steps we then had the applications down to our favorite 50 or so.   From here we sent email asking questions for more information, made phone calls and set up meetings.

After getting feedback we narrowed the list down to about 20 that we met with either in person or over video conference and we ultimately invited in 12 teams.    One dropped out and we now have 11 participating in the program.