Gadgetory

one day a huge amount of money just was deposited into my personal bank account Stanford Business School grad Ian shaquille received that stash of cash thanks to upstart a new crowdfunding platform which he used to share his dream of creating a medical app and now I feel ready just on my own my own company upstart is similar to Kickstarter but instead of funding projects backers fund people we actually need more people early in their careers taking risk and trying to create jobs rather than just take jobs former Google employee Dave Gerard co-founded up start to connect investors and recent graduates in fields from engineering to art if you back somebody an upstart you actually receive and return a very small share their personal income over ten years we actually have created algorithms that will statistically predict somebody's income how does upstart spot a potentially good investment we look at signals in someone's history as to their potential so we look at the schools that they went to we look at what what they studied what their grades were their standardized test scores we see what other job offers or internships they had there's no guarantee of funding graduates have 60 days to raise a minimum of $10,000 half of the 80 individuals on the site have been successfully funded fewer than 10 have failed so what convinced people to back shaquille it might have had something to do with his plans to create a health care app for Google glass magnetics I have 32 angel investors through up Starcom and I wouldn't want to have these same background checks and conversations with each one of them upstart sort of serves in the clearing house with the funding ian's company has grown to 10 employees but that's not the sole benefit we've been you know heavily calling upon our upstart backers to make sure that we can learn from their lessons and good things right and legally and otherwise Shaquille says investors are keen to invest in musicians and artists not just techies and it just opens doors to say that these folks have our back are our mentors it gives us a lot of credibility and yes Shaquille says it also adds some pressure but that may just motivate him further in palo alto california i'm samhitas cnet.com for CBS news