This month I heard about two young ladies who have created brilliant ‘why-didn’t-I-think-of-that-already‘ ideas (yes, I’m holding back envy while simultaneously full of admiration).
- Kina McAllister used Kickstarter to developed “Stem Box”
- Cindy Wu developed “Experiment” to be the new Kickstarter-like platform for science projects
The interesting thing is that both stories involve crowd-source funding platforms.
I wanted to share these two stories with you in hopes that they inspire YOU to feel confident about your ideas and find ways to speak up about them!
Kina McAllister and Stem Box
Photo source: http://lifeisbeautiful.com/speakers/kina-mcallister/
Kina McAllister created Stem Box – kits you can order that are filled with cool and gross science experiments. She used the crowd-source funding platform Kickstarter to raise $22,943 and funded her campaign to disseminate kits around the country with the hope that they will attract more girls into science. Kina is in her twenties and is a research technician at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle Washington.
Read the full story about how she started her idea.
Cindy Wu and Experiment
Photo source: NY Times – Women in the World
Cindy Wu, in her early twenties, created a crowd-source funding platform called Experiment specifically designed for funding scientific research. A recent college graduate from University of Washington, Cindy wanted to take her research further. She was frustrated this wasn’t a possibility because of the restrictions from government agencies: she was young, didn’t have a PhD and she wanted less than $25,000. She wondered why a crowd-funding platform like Kickstarter or Kiva didn’t exist specifically for scientific research, so she dropped out of graduate school to create it herself. With a quick pitch of her idea she raised $1.2 million dollars.
- 3-minute pitch
- Experiment funding website
- Read the full story of the birth of her idea
You Have Good Ideas Too
These ladies had some fantastic ideas they executed and made into realities.
We all have good ideas (even if you think you don’t)! Truth moment: For whatever psychological reasons, I am the type of person who constantly feels inspired to have ideas, but then gets frustrated that they never seem to arrive; Alternatively, I feel like everything has already been thought of so what genius ideas could possibly be left for me to think.
I’m not telling you this to get you to join my pity party, I’m telling you this because 1) I know I’m probably not alone in these thoughts and 2) I want you to feel supported and confident with your ideas, because we can additionally think, “Holy cow! These women had ideas that they might have thought weren’t worth pursuing, and yet, they created resources they wanted simply because they needed them and wouldn’t accept that they just didn’t exist.”
What do I wish existed and can I do something today that might make the slightest change in what I think is important for the world?
They didn’t give up on their ideas or put them aside. They played with them until they created their reality.
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