dejan

Good points, and am aware of them. We decided to go with any home page, we could do in few days, just to publish, and work on that on the fly. I am seeing a complete visual/informational change in the next weeks, hopefully with some help.

Thank you for your insightful comment. Highly appreciated.

I agree, I am not satisfied with it either. However, compromises are made to put it online. I would like to change it with more visual. Will consider this.

Thanks for the comment!

Thanks. I got that for the bold text several times. It's amazing the disparity between using and coding.

Experience plays a great role in implementing, while a lot of times it is the one that sets the boundaries to imagination. This makes young minds very viable to imagination, but surely need the experience to go further. Aleveo should connect them, and give feedback on those ideas, by enriching them with others' experiences.

Only then can we judge if these students have viable ideas. So, soon we'll find out :)

Thanks for the comment!

You are damn right. Didn't really think about it, must be an awful habit of mine.

Sorry about that, hope you didn't heart your eyes =) will be changed, especially soon when we're able to afford a designer.

Thanks for the heads up. I couldn't agree more on the narrow focus of startups. We got online few days ago, and already have lined up very famous names. It should be seen these days.

We didn't get support from anyone and still don't, so that should explain the barebones. But there is a lot to be changed, especially about the mood, this should be most of all fun. And challenges will be awesome, I promise. =)

Thanks again! Cheers!

That's a nice way to start a conversation :) Thanks for the encouragement, I get those a lot :)

You are absolutely right about what you say, but, I don't think you got the point of Aleveo. We're not trying to be next Google or Yahoo Answers, or any sort of similar service. What you describe is answer service.

Also the focus is wrong. We do not aim at making money out of students' ideas, but to provide them with help to get in touch with companies, so that they can have better jobs tomorrow, and there is space for profits too. I know it's difficult to understand social oriented business, but here is one.

If we think about companies, they do not have problems, or if they did, they wouldn't talk about. They have employees to solve their problems. But, Aleveo provides the company with this channel for external input on their offerings, with constructive feedback how to improve stuff, or make new.

Lets say I think of a new automotive door handle that is easier to user, looks better, yet is cheaper to produce. What will I do as a student? Build a company around that? Not really. But at least I will show it to someone who will appreciate it. If lets say FIAT adopts this idea or thinks its viable, they award the student with something either money, sponsorship, internship or whatever they like. Moreover, the company gets to see who can is suitable to be part of their innovation culture.

There is no innovation in tried and tested model, and for sure no entrepreneurialism. It's not all about the money.

The major idea of Aleveo is for students to push ideas to companies. And this is especially needed in visual things such as industrial design let's say. So, for the student above, he could tag his idea "FIAT" and when someone from Fiat logins, he can see ideas submitted to them. Challenges are a "pull" method on the other hand.

Indeed, we've been doing a research on the topic for 6 months, but the development took only one. I'll post the research as an idea, I think you'll find it shocking what the current youth unemployment situation is doing long term.

Thanks for the critic, I find it highly constructive, and I appreciate your toughness.

It's interesting that there are a few Dutch start-ups doing such things. The other one is ReDesignMe.com. Italians have similar thing for advertising bootb.com.

Aleveo is meant to be a global complementary service to innovating, customer feedback and recruiting aiming at providing students with better opportunities, and that is the direction we're keeping.

Moreove, Aleveo is hand managed and filtered by hand, for public ideas. Garbage input doesn't get through, and human filter serves both, the author and the one reading it. Yet, by having the ideas public, all benefit from the conversation.

Best ideas will be awarded either by companies or directly by Aleveo each month with three awards 1500, 1000 and 500€, no matter where they come from.

Thanks for the comment and info!

First, thanks for a valuable comment.

I know it's currently not obvious, but the challenges are the ones that will offer cash awards. However, we didn't want to limit to only those, as for students even a recognition matters, as it helps them with their future career.

On the other hand, we set up the fee for companies so that we can provide independent awards to good ideas each month - 1500, 1000 and 500€, as a permanent incentive, yet with a monthly topic that matters to all. However, we are having the issue we are struggling with getting support, from the universities, governments, and companies. Unlike innovationexchange.com and others, to students 500, and even 100€ means a lot, but the official recognition is priceless. If considered on a global scale, how valuable for one student in India might be a recommendation letter, or honorable mention of let's say Proctor and Gamble, or BMW? It might change the whole life of one, yet the company received a value as it is issuing such.

An idea is a sign there is something that is not satisfied, and companies should listen carefully, as young are the current or future customers, employees and leaders.

We are two MSc. students at the Politecnico di Milano, and we hold the official support of the university, but that is so slow. It is exactly why we are doing this. With any idea at universities, it is so difficult to get any help. We are suggesting Aleveo as part of the Management of Innovation course, so that might be a start. We also imagined Aleveo as a form of an internship.

Well, we're online since two days ago, so we're hoping for a lot to change now, including the design (or lack of it).

We're still unsure about the service fee hence not charging yet, but what you suggest indeed makes sense. Recurring fee might not be the right choice.

Thanks again!

Yes, that's how it got understood. =) Thanks for the feedback, I think it needs a lot of revisions so that it's all a bit clearer.

Sorry for the confusion, there still are not any opened challenges or jobs. We are negotiation with some companies to open some these days.

Challenge is a en entity to which you attach your idea, by tagging it with the tag that challenge defined.

:) Thanks TomOfTTB

I've read that book, and I agree that it's not so clear, as in the other comment.

No excuses...but take a month of time, and what you can build in that time span, alone. There is two of us, but I am the only developer/designer :) Would I spend another month hiding it while tweaking. No.

We need to go bravely public as soon as possible and change stuff on the fly.

This is so true, that revealing ideas is so difficult. I see it everyday, yet people do this within companies too. It's a million dollar idea. Well, unless you do something about it, its worth nada. And Aleveo aims at those ideas that you see around you and have no intentions on acting upon. How many times a day we say hmm, that can be done this way. Do we act on it... rarely.

With students it's even more different. When they graduate, they have nothing in their CVs. At least, they can have their ideas. And thats is what we want to show to the world.

Can't find the article now, but I think it was either Seth Godin or on Signal vs. Noise on value of ideas. Basically, they set it straight forward:

bad idea -$1 poor idea $0 good idea $1 great idea $10

no execution 0 poor execution 1000 good execution 100.000 outstanding execution 1.000.000

great idea with some good execution might be worth $10 x 100.000, but without execution it's just a 0. Moreover, no one ever pursues other's ideas, as they say, everyone thinks your idea is stupid except you.

Thanks for the input, highly appreciated.

It's innovation/ideas crowdsourcing for companies, based on students' input. It aims at involving students in practical tasks of companies eg: marketing campaigns, new products, product improvements, business conducts, new markets etc.

I agree it's a lot of text. In fact, it's all stripped out, bare bones. It'll get replaced soon by visual clues. We decided to publish it asap and work on it while building the community around campuses worldwide. It's more offline than online in that manner.

@mitko, thnx, good point, I'll look into it.

I am surprised how many Europeans there are here. There just has to be done something in Europe so that we do not turn to US for developing ideas... Greetings to all European hackers! :)

true. it's incremental innovation. However, they're bad at it too IMHO. Search hasn't changed since they've launched. And even then, they had nothing new..Their new algorithm..blahh. Using microcomputers for search processing. Thats the startup thinking, alright, cut all the costs, do it cheaper, do it better. There is no recipe, but they hit the right time. Thats what they did right, recognize the moment. However, google search sucks, and it sucks badly. Crawlers are as bad as spam. It clogs up. It's inefficient...and Google is too big to do anything about it, it's victim of its own size. There ARE better ways. I miss those days when we pulled hair by trying to save a KB in the mem.. efficiency and efficacy for their own sake.

Regarding the 100/month, my starting point is that you've gotta live anyway, regardless where your efforts are. I understand your view, I am trying to change it in self, and found that I approach my business efforts with much higher perseverance... = I am doing it no matter what, and I will find the cheapest way to do it, it's worth it!

Good Luck!

Seems to me their 'innovation' machine stopped working long time ago. It was expected though, after all those acquisitions. In reality, I haven't seen anything 'new', but just 'better'. This could be their way to go through the downturn.. As for us, we've applied at YC, but when I weigh it out, it's not the money that we really need, but guidance. Real costs of doing a startup, in the beginning, cant be a lot more than 100€ per month. If they are, you are simply not an entrepreneur...

Seems to me their 'innovation' machine stopped working long time ago. It was expected though, after all those acquisitions. In reality, I haven't seen anything 'new', but just 'better'. This could be their way to go through the downturn..

As for us, we've applied at YC, but when I weigh it out, it's not the money that we really need, but guidance. Real costs of doing a startup, in the beginning, cant be a lot more than 100€ per month. If they are, you are simply not an entrepreneur...