There were four entrepreneurs who pitched at the January NEF Forum. First up was Colt Correa of Digibit who brought his family to demonstrate how Digibit games keep kids engaged, exercising, and entertained. The product is not WiFi dependent, is battery powered, and is intended for the Nintendo users 8 - 15 years of age.
Curtis McFall, of Camp Gig was next and explained how his employment platform meets the needs of summer camp owners in locating talented employees. The platform is a data base of domestic staff including profiles, photos, and videos where employers can search to fill openings.
Erin Barbossa of Intuissa followed Curtis and explained that there is a lack of preventative mental health therapy programs in the industry. Stress causes $500 billion in lost productivity. Her solution is a B2B program offering proactive, individual, and on-sight psychotherapists to mitigate problems before they occur.
The last presenter was Brad Wilson of Write About. As a teacher, he observed the lack of interest students have for writing because traditional methods to encourage them are boring. Students want to write about things that interest them. Thus, the Write About platform was born to encourage students to write by suggesting topics. Students who participated increased their writing frequency by 50%. Early adopters are teachers who encourage school districts to purchase.
The judges had their work cut out for them, but decided that Brad Wilson of Write About was the winner of the $230 prize. Congratulations to Brad and all of the entrepreneurs for a great job.
At the January NEF Forum, Chris Lin, CEO of Mandy and Pandy, explained how his teaching tools makes learning Chinese fun for young children. China and the U.S. are the world's largest economies and largest trading partners. Kids who learn Chinese will have a competitive advantage in the future global economic environment. Yet, there is a large shortage of Chinese teaching programs in the U.S. language education industry. The Mandy and Pandy Curriculum was developed for American kids to have fun, engage, and learn interactively as opposed to rote memorization. Included in the materials is a unique character training app that teaches kids how to correctly write Chinese characters. Chris has identified several school districts to sell his curriculum. So far, Mandy and Pandy has traction with Dexter, Ann Arbor Districts, and Oakland County Schools. Look for them on Amazon. A TV show is planned to launch in 2021 to achieve rapid revenue growth for the company. Visit them at: 
At the NEF November forum meeting, Scott Taylor, Steve Schwartz and Michael Sherman changed things up a bit when discussing Entrepreneurs’ Tech War Stories. Each of them put the audience in the entrepreneur’s driver seat by using real-world examples of company technology dilemmas and then asked the audience to choose what they would do. The room was divided into two groups and then asked to defend their position. In each of the scenarios, more information became available and the audience could change sides based on new facts. For those who changed their positions, they were asked why. Needless to say, they kept us all guessing. It was surprising to learn how similar the points of the audience and the entrepreneur’s management team were. In the end, the audience was told what position the company chose. However, some of the decisions will not play out for years to come which highlighted the point of the exercise in that entrepreneurs make decisions today that can sink the business tomorrow. It all depends on the information available at the time of the decision and the flexibility of the company to adapt to changes in that information to either stay the course or chose a different path. 
