Mike Whitaker was recently featured in the Tulsa Business Journal discussing Tulsa’s efforts for creating a healthy entrepreneurial environment.
Attempting to define Mike Whitaker’s brainchild Idea Gateway is almost as difficult as defining an idea.
“Idea Gateway is an entrepreneur’s resource for evaluating ideas for their ultimate merit, whether they are good or bad, in the process of creating an investable, viable business” Whitaker explained.
Whitaker is a self-described “serial entrepreneur,” having started his first business while he was in high school. He opened a successful manufacturing business in 1995 in Oklahoma City, and in 2007, “decided to start something in Tulsa to create multiple businesses in rapid time.”
For the entrepreneur, Idea Gateway attempts to “bridge the gap between people who invest in new ideas and the public services that help business plans get written and the basic, foundational support given to those ideas.”
“We think like investors are going to think, and we think like entrepreneurs think,” Whitaker said. “We save people a lot of time and pain before the they go to investors.”
Whitaker said his company doesn’t necessarily have “clients,” because he doesn’t collect fees for the services he provides young, start-up businesses. Whitaker, through Idea Gateway, submitted two business plans to the 2008 Mayor’s Entrepreneurial Spirit Awards – Oovation, a social network content portal, and StartMOM, which matches professional mothers with part-time income opportunities.
StartMOM was one of the top 25 ideas in the contest, and Oovation was…
Read the full article in the Tulsa Business Journal…
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