On Friday, May 31, Ben Fathi took the stage at Startup Weekend LA to tell the story of a young child. Danny, the boy, was one of thousands of children who have lost their lives due to defective, recalled products. That’s where ChildSafe, a mobile and web app that allows parents to check product safety ratings pre-purchase and continue tracking them after buying, comes in.
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ChildSafe was one of the 54 ideas pitched that night, and one of only 12 that were selected by the popular vote to move into the next round. Since Fathi’s pitch received the most votes, he was able to assemble his team from the attending designers, developers and non-tech participants first. He ended up building a crew comprised of a developer, designer, attorney, business analyst and three researchers.
“I was very fortunate to be able to assemble a rockstar team of eight highly talented individuals,” Fathi says. “Once I had my team, we began to layout a roadmap for the next 50 hours and got to work.”
According to Fathi, American emergency rooms see 260,000 children a year with injuries stemming from defective products. What’s more, there is no simple way for parents to access up-to-date safety information.
“We believe that entrepreneurs can play a part in creating a viable solution to this massive problem and that is why we chose to work on this idea at Startup Weekend,” Fathi says.
The 54-hour-long event is known to be grueling and challenging, not least of all because teams must have a working demo to share by Sunday night. Compared to those who lost momentum or gave up partway through, Fathi says he drew on his motivation to solve this problem, using it as inspiration to carry his team through to the end. He says working on an idea he liked plus having a well-balanced team made it possible.
At the end of the weekend, the judges recognized ChildSafe as the overall winner, awarding them two months of free membership at Coloft, where the event took place.
When asked what his reaction was when his team won, Fathi said, “Excitement! As a team we felt that we did our absolute best and gave it our all, and it meant a lot that the judges recognized that.”
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