FAHION INDUSTRY AND E-COMMERCE

The rise of mobile and e-commerce made a huge significance in the fashion industry. With the introduction of online companies like LIBBSY, the fashion industry is so very different as compared to what it was few years back. Most of the major fashion brands are so progressively marking their mark and tend to grow or build their market with the help of the e-commerce platform. Consumers are so engaged to spend their time on online purchasing than direct shopping as it is more convenient by saving time and effort to reach the destination. One need to create an effortless shopping experience to be positively leverage the e-commerce.

                                         

     

           

            Social network plays a vital role here.  I said so, as me as the user depend on the online or the user- generated content before making a purchase. Various social networks are now available [LIBBSY – ONE STOP DESTINATION FOR WOMEN SHOPPING]. Instagram, repost, Facebook, blogs and many more fashion buying and selling application or platforms are at ease for the customers choice. For me the urge to do online shopping have increased from the past as I have more options and seamless services to choose from a single portal rather than running around in a mall with a fuss…

                       

            LIBBSY - WE BUILD MARKET-PLACES FOR YOU TO LEARN AND GROW YOUR BUSINESS

           

E-platforms have made it easier for us. [LIBBSY PROVIDES GOOD QUALITY BRANDED PRODUCTS.] Most of the E-platform effortlessly try to provide highest level of customer satisfaction. As I have experienced that these application have made the users wanting come back for more. In fact, the retailers are keen to work with start-ups to please the hunger for modernism's. Online market-place for women clothing allow them to connect with a selection of products, indirectly helping the growing brands gain limelight through a larger platform.

            For those who want to create their own line of clothing but don’t have access to the resources or funding to do it on their own, these E-app aids to provide ability for the entrepreneurs to use E-platforms like Facebook, blogs or any related apps targeting to promote to specific individuals. 

BE SMART AND CHOOSE WISELY - LIBBSY COMING SOON

PREPARE YOURSELF TO START A STARTUP

I KNEW THAT I FAILED I WOULDN’T REGRET THAT, BUT I KNEW THE ONE THING I MIGHT REGRET IS NOT TRYING. – JEFF BEZOS, AMAZON 

Starting a startup is a task where you can't always trust your instincts. Running your own business takes guts, assurance and an enduring passion for what you do. If you know nothing more than this, you may at least pause before making them. Before you kick start, always believe in yourself and focus on the subjects that matters to you the most.  You can, however, trust your instincts about people. The most common mistakes young Entrepreneurs make is not to do that enough. They do get involved with people who seem exciting, but about whom they feel some misgivings personally. Later when a thing goes wrong then they say "We knew there was something wrong about him, but we ignored it because he seemed so impressive."

This is one case where it pays to be self-indulgent. Work with people you genuinely like, and you have known long enough to be sure – “CHOOSE THE RIGHT PARTNERS”

You need an expertise to give you advice that surprises you.

“WE AT VENTURE ART PROVIDES YOU WITH THE BEST AND INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS” - http://www.ventureart.biz/

Passion may be what attracts you to your new startup, commitment is what keeps you going. Commitment are shown in the conscious effort you make to stay on track or in the decisions; you make each day to do the things that needs to be done, even if they are boring or difficult. Learning new and latest ideas is an art that one could acquire with passion.  A passionate learners will always know the current demand of the society, which you could make him aware of the scenario.

Fit your attention into the type that startup ideas:

·      Get Innovative Ideas

·      Learn a lot about things that matters you and society

·      Work on problems that interest you

·      Work with individuals you like and respect

The way to succeed in a startup is not to be an expert on startups, but to be an expert on your customers and the problem you're solving for them. Choose the right partners who could give you innovative ideas, and make sure they are sustainable. This expertise should be able to guide you through all phases of the growth of your business. A comprehensive approach should be taken at any situation during the business process and importantly the outcome for the approach is essential.

Commitment is the fuel that keeps the engine turning over for the long haul. The entrepreneurial journey is a tough one. When you combine your spirit with commitment, and allow your passion to inspire you, the result is one of the hallmarks of successful entrepreneurs.

The way to come up with good startup ideas is to take a step back. Instead of making a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, turn your mind into the type that startup ideas form in without any conscious effort. In fact, so unconsciously that you don't even realize at first that they're startup ideas.

Young Entrepreneurs' first instinct on starting a startup is to try to figure out the tricks for winning at this new game. Since fundraising appears to be the measure of success for startups, they always want to know what the tricks are  for investors. The best way to satisfy investors is to make a startup that's actually doing well, meaning growing fast.

Depending on how wrecked the company is you can succeed by lapping up to the right people, giving the impression of productivity, and so on. Startups are as impersonal as physics. You have to make something people want, and you prosper only to the extent you do.

At its best, starting a startup is merely a mysterious motive for curiosity. And you'll do it best if you introduce the ulterior motive toward the end of the process.

So for young entrepreneurs, who would like to start a startup remember to boiled down to two words: JUST LEARN – “Paul Graham, Entrepreneur”

HR LESSONS FROM START-UPS

What crosses your mind when you think about HR in start-ups? Is it the absence of it? Or a bright coloured office and casual dress code? Startups are mostly run by a founder and his core team, who care the least about structures, functions and policies. That's why entrepreneurial HR is a system that works mostly on the basis of mutual agreement and unwritten rules.

"HR in start-ups is a lot more than free beer in the fridge and the ping pong table," says Kanchan Kumar, Founder, Emportant, a payroll processing firm. Start-ups, being nimble-footed, have the luxury of disrupting the HR function. And they are doing just that. When your employer spends his revenue to build your net worth and not merely to pay you a take-home salary, or when the founder himself delivers the induction programme to explain the companys culture right on day one, you know that the HR function is too mature to be called frivolous. Bring Your Own Device is now Bring Your Own Cloud, showing the transparency and the trust in employees that these start-ups are pioneering.

Blending roles and diminishing boundaries calls for the founder to deliver on HR responsibilities. The first priority is managing people rather than managing a product. "We don't have a traditional HR person. I double up as the HR manager, among other things," says Anand Jain, Founder, Clever Tap, a mobile technology start-up.

Let us look at each HR process and how it is being disrupted at start-ups.

Hiring: Set the ball rolling

Social seems to be the unanimous choice for hiring with referrals leading the way. A twist or two paves the way for integration of the new hires.

"All my employees were hired through referrals. The induction is informal. Since new employees come through referrals, they hit the ground running as they have the knowledge of the company and the product," says Jain.

Ankur Agarwal, Founder, PriceBaba, an online price comparison site, echoes this. "The biggest plus of social recruiting is that the candidate is vetted much before joining. We also have a good history of getting interns to join us full time after they complete their education. That loop is priceless. Once someone joins full time, he helps us recruit more good candidates from his college."

Crowd Fire, a social media product marketing company, approaches talent sourcing differently. It organises meet-ups for brainstorming design ideas and pools in talent for future hiring. WebEngage, a company that provides online marketing tools for ecommerce firms, flies down the interviewee to its office in Mumbai for several rounds to find the right capability, with minimal mismatch between expectation and delivery.

Instamojo, an instant payment solutions provider, focuses on direct hiring through sources such as the Career page, AngelList, Referrals and Instahyre. Referral bonus becomes a lump sum if the employee facilitates joining of five or more people. Media Magic pays Rs 10,000 to the interviewer once the candidate completes three months in the organisation. This builds ownership and expertise among the leaders in the firm.

FreeCharge also depends on referrals. Employee referrals are enhanced with gamification, which is interesting, fun and rewarding. As part of the programme, there is an online portal which helps employees share the jobs available on social networking sites and relevant forums. 'Tech Carnival' offers a Goa vacation after every successful referral.

New Hire Integration POCE (Post Offer Candidate Engagement) at FreeCharge offers a platform for candidates to interact and integrate and get to know the workplace culture, norms and expectations. New hires are invited for informal meets and greet lunch sessions with the hiring managers. New laptops are sent even before they come on board.

Big Basket invests in a strong cultural orientation with focus on integrity, speed and urgency. Growing at a whopping 200 per cent, deepening the vision and the mission of the founder remain imperatives. Creating the best last mile for the customer requires each and every employee to deliver on the core culture. Managing employees on payroll and on-demand labour requires rigorous training on the core culture and mission along with skill-based programmes.

Time Management

The focus at start-ups is on productivity and attendance is secondary. "We dont track vacation or work hours. If an employee is thinking about attendance, he is not thinking about the product or tech," says Jain of Clever Trap.

Work arrangement that works best for the talent is offered, and this goes beyond work-from-home. Agarwal of PriceBaba offers traffic-friendly work hours. "We never measure attendance. We ask team members to declare their leaves to their managers over email. We recently did away with timings altogether. Our previous policy was that employees could come in any time between 9am and 11am. We have now left it to the individual. So, employees choose the timings, and most of them have their creative ways of beating the Mumbai traffic."

Training: Passing the Ball

Developing skills requires a similar focus. WebEngage, being a small and fast-growing company, doesn't have enough slack and structure to put employees through a training programme. So, the employee, after joining, is given a solo task. For techies, it is a problem they wanted to solve for long but couldnt focus on, due to various reasons. Sales guys attend a number of sessions with the CEO and the sales team where they decode the process they follow and note down points to be kept in mind while approaching the clients.

Instamojo combines various forms with hands-on training and interactive methods such as townhall presentation, role-playing, facilitation along with mentoring, and e-learning.

At times, employees are allowed to interact with mentors outside the firm."One of our biggest challenges is that our young team lacks the experience of setting up processes or dealing with tricky management issues. So, we have a set of mentors to help us out. We have empowered our team members to directly speak to these mentors. For instance, Jain of Clever Tap and Aditya Mishra of SwitchMe, a loan switching platform, are directly accessible to several people in our team as mentors. We have internal Barcamp-like unconference sessions, delivered by individuals within the company, and the topics can range from 'productivity' to 'spirituality', says Agarwal of PriceBaba.

FreeCharge organises 'bugathon' and 'hackathon' before the launch of any new product.

Teaming up

Structures are designed according to work and responsibility. Sampad Swain, Founder, Instamojo, says, "Considering that we are a very small group, we have no designations or hierarchies. This way each person focuses on his responsibilities, working as a team and learning. This also reduces corporate politics."

Kunal Shah, Founder, FreeCharge, says, "We follow a flat structure and this has helped us build a great work culture. We give our employees a lot of freedom to implement their ideas and access senior leadership teams."

But growth fuels structures. WebEngage, being at that stage, has leads to teams, including development, design, support, marketing and sales. "Timely execution of things demands ownership and, hence, the leads, but other than that we prefer no hierarchy as such and follow an open culture, both physically and philosophically," says the founder, Avlesh Singh.

The tools that are mostly used are JIRA for project management and Salesforce for the sales team. Trello, Slack and Google Docs remain the next favourites.

Measuring for a match win

Startup employees engage better with their employers, thanks to flexible HR policies

Media Magic's svadhyaya programme requires that employees review and rate themselves. It's a 100 per cent self-review system where the manager comments only on the ranking and not on the review. Founder Kapil Agarwal believes no one can own your success or explain what you delivered. "Often, this self-review makes the employee contemplate where he should have focused more. Hence, he can plan the goals for the next year even better." Jain of Clever Tap approaches it differently: "The speed of feature releases is a good indicator of output and efficiency."

Balancing act

When passion drives performance, the work-life balance is re defined. Jain agrees. "While there's no organised attempt at employee engagement, we try to have fun as a team as much as we can. We took the team out for an IPL match and called in an astronomer for a star-gazing event." At times, the absence of budget helps employees gel better. Kushal Agarwal, Co-Founder, Gift XOXO, shares an incident. "Our old office building required painting and decoration. Since we did not have a big budget, we announced a 'paint your wall' programme that became a hit with the employees. Everyone went beyond painting and decorated the office with captions and favourite cartoon characters. In no time, our office started looking swanky, with far greater sense of ownership among employees." Instamojo had a 'bring your pet to work' day. But it's the ease of work it focuses on more with work-from-home options, no rigid swipe in & out time and flexible work hours. There is also no restriction on the number of earned leaves as long as this does not harm the business/key deliverables. There are no defined work stations and employees can sit wherever they want. FreeCharge takes it a step ahead with flexible work hours and extended maternity leave.

Salaries, Not an Issue

Deciding compensation is like walking on a knife and requires maintaining a balance between being profitable and creating value for employees. Clever Tap offers market or above market salaries apart from stock options. The goal is to make sure that the employees are not worried about salaries in the short term. Stock options are issued to encourage them to build something they will be proud of in the next few years. This takes care of long-term wealth generation. A similar trend is followed at PriceBaba, where the employee can decide the distribution of cash and equity. "We never try to retain someone for money. That is a race we cannot afford to run and do not want to run. We offer leadership and growth to people. The key takeaway for them is the learning. At the same time, we offer a combination of equity and cash. The candidate can choose if he wants more equity or more cash," says Agarwal.

Disrupting the Game

Blending roles calls for the founder to deliver on HR responsibilities. The first priority is managing people rather than managing a product.

HR functions in startups run in the vein of every other process as managing people is deeply integrated with the development of the product. Segregation and defining of functions is secondary.

The founders are disrupting the process without often realising the maturity that they have achieved. The stickiness of disruptive functions in startups should help them solve bigger business problems as they grow.

Are such disruptions possible at large corporations? Big firms have better platforms and bigger budgets, with often the best brains, to innovate. Is it possible to have lean workflows with high degree of transparency where the employee will know his performance with every delivery and not with the year-end appraisal ranking? Can large organisations sustain the holographic structure where the core culture of the founder gets imbibed in each of its parts?

What would it take for the firm to orient and align the new leaders in the firm to continue with the legacy? Can large firms function like a hologram where every employee and vertical is exactly a copy of the whole?

Citation from Business Today :http://goo.gl/dfaJRm

 

Silicon Valley startups go farming

Agriculture tech is a hot space for venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.

Silicon Valley, often accused of following the herd, is doing that quite literally when it comes to startups building technology for farmers. Some of the most well known venture capitalists and entrepreneurs are now focused on bringing the latest computing technologies — data analytics, cloud computing, mobile apps — to farms.

On Wednesday, farming software startup Granular said that it has raised a new round of $18.7 million in funding from investors Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, and Khosla Ventures. New investors in the round, which is Granular’s second, included Tao Capital Partners, Emory Investment Management, Fall Line Capital, and H. Barton Asset Management.

Granular debuted last year from the split of another startup called Solum that was founded in 2009. Agriculture giant Monsanto acquired the half of Solum’s business that sold soil testing and data tech to farmers and folded it into the data team it acquired in 2013 from data startup Climate Corp.

Solum’s remaining technology, which is software, cloud-services, mobile apps and collaboration tools for farmers, was spun out into Granular. Now Granular’s software is helping a handful of farmers manage their farms more efficiently, using less water and less fertilizer. The tech enables them to tap into detailed data about how their farms operate in real time and, presumably, make better decisions.

For example, Ohio farmer Mark Bryant has been using Granular’s software to manage his farm’s operations, budget, and inventory tracking. Granular introduced its software last year with seven Midwestern farmers who also helped the company design the original software.

Granular is just one of dozens of startups trying to sell tech to farmers. The company is focused on the thousands of big farm owners that account for a third of U.S. farmland. These large farmers are increasingly buying up land from smaller farming operations and are looking for new tools to manage it all.

Not only has the agriculture industry been slow to adopt tech, but farmers are increasingly looking to use tech to reduce their use of water and fertilizer to save money. Water shortages from droughts are expected to become more common. As the world population hits 9 billion in 2050, farmers will have to produce more food, with less resources.

Extreme weather aggravated by climate change is also making farming more risky. Farmers are looking to use more tech to better deal with the potential weather problems.

Between 2013 and 2014, Silicon Valley’s interest in backing agriculture and food-related startups doubled in terms of deal size, according to data from the Cleantech Group. In 2014, 151 startups focused on agriculture and food (not including biofuels, but including some of the on-demand food startups) were funded to the tune of $976 million.

That funding FAST-PACE looks like it will continue this year. In May farming data startup Farmers Business Network raised $15 million from Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and DBL Investors. Other farming tech startups include FarmLink, Adapt-N, Farmers Edge, FarmLogs,aWhere, Granular, Farmeron, OnFarm, Agralogics, Blue River Technology and Precision Hawk.

Citation from Fortune : http://goo.gl/BmQ1QB

EAT, PROGRAM, LOVE: THE RISE OF TECH START-UPS IN BALI

Instead of unwinding in the tropical paradise of Bali, entrepreneurs are opting to plug into the island's emerging tech start-up scene because of a thriving start-up ecosystem, low overheads and, of course, the allure of the beautiful surroundings.

"With the rapid shift in remote working and entrepreneurial hubs popping up all over, [Bali] has quickly become quite a fascinating place for start-ups," said Andrea Loubier, CEO of Mailbird, a Bali-based email client start-up told CNBC in an email interview.

After completing her college education in the U.S., Loubier worked forseveral years before taking the plunge to seek out opportunities in Asia.

It was in Bali that Loubier met Michael Bodekaer, founder of Livit, an Indonesian-based tech start-up ecosystem. He invited her onboard tolaunch Mailbird, a Windows email client program, which was her first experience of building a tech company from the ground up.

Infrastructure, co-working spaces and start-up ecosystems

The IT infrastructure in Bali has grown rapidly over the last three years,with more Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and fiber optic networks.

"There are also many coworking and entrepreneurial initiatives in place to encourage the growth of tech start-ups," said Loubier.

For example, Livit collaborates with fledgling entrepreneurs and start-ups, providing them with mentors, specialist resources, growth acceleration and a space to work in one of Livit's six villas in Southeastern Bali.

Another successful start-up is Labster, a Bali-based tech science education company that generates scenarios with 3D animations to visualize life sciences and help students virtually go through their lab exercises.

Livit's ecosystem is unique because it functions as a coworking, co-living incubator program. Every need is taken care of, allowing participants to focus solely on their projects. Think of it as a work-and-play retreat with expert guidance on hand for the whole start-up team.

Many other coworking spaces in Bali also aim to create a conducive environment for tech start-ups to thrive, by actively promoting entrepreneurship, business networking and seminars through weekly events and conferences.

Strategic position

As an island province of Indonesia, Bali is in a good strategic position to attract IT talent, entrepreneurs and investments from Jakarta or Bandung, which have more mature IT infrastructure and investing communities. The greater Indonesian market also presents growth potential for Bali-based tech start-ups to tap into, or the location could be used as a launch pad to access the rest of Asia.

Bali might be an ideal haven in which to come up with new innovationsbut if the start-ups want to scale up, there are also limitations to overcome.

"They need to maintain and attract more IT resources to Bali, set up good business connections in other Indonesia cities and internationally, provide competitive customer service and support from their location," Yanna Dharmasthira, research director at Gartner, told CNBC in an email interview.

"Bali is somewhat remote in nature, compared to other cities, and the travelling expenses in and out of Bali should also be considered," she said.

"The island of gods" still has some way to go before claiming the title of Asia's Silicon Valley, but it is nonetheless a great middle ground for digital entrepreneurs to work in a beautiful, non-urban environmentand still be close to modern comforts and small luxuries.

CITATION FROM CNBC:http://goo.gl/rYk9Df

HOW STARTUPS CAN SAVE NUCLEAR TECH

A growing number of nuclear startups are trying to solve the world’s most pressing problem.

A recent disturbing report predicts that despite a colossal number of new solar panels and wind turbines over the next quarter century, the planet will still face dangerous rising temperatures. Basically even if these widely embraced clean energy technologies are put on overdrive, we’re still probably screwed.

The report was understandably bearish on big growth in nuclear power. Following the tragic earthquake and accompanying meltdown of the nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan in 2011, new nuclear reactor construction has been largely halted in many countries. Public fear over safety, especially following such incidents, has long hampered the industry, and led to it being the sort of black sheep of clean power.But four years after the infamous accident, environmentalists, nuclear advocates, and researchers are now looking at nuclear tech as an almost necessary way to generate power without carbon emissions that, if used correctly, could be crucial to help the world avoid the worst of global warming. And unlike with solar and wind, nuclear reactors generate power around the clock.

Tapping into this emerging sentiment is a new wave of entrepreneurs and investors, many in Silicon Valley, who are passionate about how tech innovation can lift the industry out of its nuclear stalemate.

The new guard are working within a nuclear industry that is stuck in the regulatory and financing patterns of old. Big conglomerates dominate and career nuclear execs are the norm. But the lack of interest in new tech and new ideas are in sharp contrast to the high stakes of averting planetary catastrophe. Last month, beneath the high-vaulted ceilings of the sleek offices of Founders Fund, a venture capital firm that backed Facebook, Airbnb and SpaceX, sits a small group of these passionate nuclear evangelists. They are supposed to appear on a panel about nuclear energy that I’m moderating, but they’re actually far more interesting to listen to just chatting on their own.

There’s a spread of wine and cheese in one corner, and around the room are windows big enough to see the San Francisco Bay in the background. The wooden door into the office is so preposterously large that you can’t help but instinctively feel what they seem to be implying: We do big things. At one point, the firm adopted the motto “we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters,” as a sort of dismissal of the preoccupation among many Silicon Valley investors with the next hot consumer app. Last Summer, Founders Fund invested a small $2 million seed round into an early stage nuclear startup calledTransatomic Power. Founded in 2011 by MIT nuclear scientists Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie, Transatomic Power is working on a nuclear reactor that uses molten salt and nuclear waste as a power source. While molten salt nuclear reactor tech is decades old, Dewan and Massie are using new designs and materials.

Dewan, who looks a bit like actress Amy Adams, is one of the clear leaders of this growing movement of nuclear entrepreneurs. The nuclear policy advocates in the room refer to her as “their secret weapon” that they use in meetings on Capital Hill to inspire and make connections. She’s young, well-spoken and doesn’t fit the profile of the typical nuclear industry exec. She and the senior statesman in the room, venture capital icon Ray Rothrock, take turns interrupting each other to answer questions about the hurdles that face startups in the nuclear sector. Unlike Dewan, Rothrock fits the physical description of the typical nuclear exec, but he’s actually anything but.

Rothrock’s been a venture capitalist for over two decades. He backed Sun Microsystems early on, launched the Internet investing practice for VC firm Venrock in the early 90’s, and later formed the company’s energy investing practice. He also started his career as a nuclear engineer in the late 80’s and early 90’s before getting the investing itch.

Some of Rothrock’s nuclear ambitions are poured into a stealthy startup, Tri Alpa Energy, that is working on nuclear fusion (nuclear fission is what’s used in today’s reactors). Years ago Venrock backed Tri Alpha Energy, and the company now also has the financial support of the Russian government (through the nanotech company Rusnano), Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and Goldman Sachs. Rothrock is Tri Alpa Energy’s chairman.

Nuclear tech renaissance? Dewan and Rothrock say nuclear tech is undergoing a period of rare entrepreneurial innovation. Rothrock says that compared to when he was in school, there are many more students today working on nuclear tech projects because of pressing climate change.

They cite figures of 55 nuclear startups with a total of $1.6 billion in funding. Rothrock says people don’t believe him when he says there’s that many startups working on nuclear technology. But those numbers are tiny compared to how many on-demand delivery startups, or mobile photo sharing startups, there are with millions of dollars from venture capitalists.

Founders Fund partner Scott Nolan, who made the investment in Transatomic Power, compares the nuclear entrepreneurial tech movement to what’s been happening in aerospace with young disruptor SpaceX and others. Nolan was an early employee at SpaceX and helped develop the propulsion systems used on the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets and the Dragon spacecraft.

Investors beyond Venrock and Founders Fund are starting to take notice. Last month the head of Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator, Sam Altman, said he was joining the boards of two nuclear startups. Helion Energy, which is building a magnet-based fusion reactor, and UPower,which has designed a small modular fission reactor, unusually went through the Y Combinator program.Then there’s young nuclear fusion startup General Fusion, which is backed by Canadian venture capitalists Chrysalix Venture Capital, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and the Canadian government. The company hopes to have a working prototype of its fusion reactor this year and an operating reactor in 2020. Bill Gates has backed a nuclear startup called TerraPower, which was a spin off from the intellectual property incubator Intellectual Ventures. The company is working on a technology called a traveling wave nuclear reactor, which uses nuclear waste as a power source. There’s also NuScale Power, which has been working on small, modular water reactors. Instead of the massive 1 gigawatt nuclear power generators that are in use today, NuScale Power makes a smaller 50 megawatt one (1,000 megawatts make 1 gigawatt).

Many of these nuclear startups, like Transatomic Power and TerraPower, are trying to address the issue of nuclear waste with their new reactor designs. That’s because the problem of what to do with the radioactive byproduct that results after a reactor has used up its fuel, is both complicated and important for the future of the nuclear industry.

Barriers to nuclear innovation Despite the dozens of nuclear startups these days, the sector is far from welcoming to entrepreneurs. Combining the difficulties of the startup world with the difficulties of nuclear technology is a colossal endeavor.

Nuclear technology can take decades to move from the lab into commercialization. Many nuclear startups don’t even give commercialization estimates because it can be so many years away. That makes it difficult for investors to back because they don’t know when they can expect a return.

The traditional nuclear industry also requires billions of dollars to get nuclear reactors built. The first nuclear plant under construction in the U.S. in decades, in Georgia, is estimated to cost $14 billion, and is now over budget and behind schedule. Access to funding will plague all of the nuclear startups. NuScale Power faced a funding crunch and sold a majority ownership to Texas energy services company Fluor. But the biggest barrier for a nuclear startup could be regulation. It can take years to wade through the regulatory process of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The NRC was born out of the Atomic Energy Commission of the 1940s, and its history is tied with nuclear arms proliferation and the military. It’s a closed, enforcing regulatory body and not equipped to deal with building relationships with entrepreneurs. Rothrock has been advocating for an entirely new federal nuclear agency that would operate like the federal Food and Drug Administration. When pharmaceutical companies submit drugs for approval with the FDA they have to meet certain milestones with their studies and prove that it works. Rothrock thinks an ‘FDA for nuclear’ could create the same predictable milestones for nuclear reactors and enable entrepreneurs and startups to get their new reactor technologies off the ground much more quickly. If Rothrock and Dewan can help deliver changes in the nuclear tech industry, it could help open up this much neglected sector to some of the brightest and passionate young minds. Instead of flocking to Silicon Valley to create mobile apps, maybe the top students will turn to nuclear, like Dewan did. And if the U.S. nuclear industry doesn’t change, many of these innovations will be commercialized overseas. China’s appetite for any new power generation tech is voracious. Russia is also particularly interested in new nuclear power. Dewan and Rothrock have an important mission. With climate change looming on the horizon, nuclear technology could be the planet’s best hope.

CITATION FROM FORTUNE : http://goo.gl/vioiO3