The Muse Factory
Innovation Endeavors, a venture capital firm backed by Eric Schmidt, chairman and former CEO of Google, invested in Tony Deifell and Dana Underwood to embark on an entrepreneurial journey.
Dana & Tony started by exploring how to help people be more thoughtful in a digital age and ended up focusing on re-designing gift giving. They used a "design-thinking" process — basically Anthropology meets entrepreneurship — to identify insights about people's needs. The insights from 100+ field-based interviews and emersion experiences nationwide led to "AwesomeBox" — a gift-giving platform that is social-by-design.
They began their journey at the "pre-idea" stage. Watch their first video — on the way to Innovation Endeavors in Palo Alto.
If you write a “Dear Santa” letter, it won’t make it past your local US Postal Service branch. But, USPS identifies letters from those most in need and makes the wishes available (minus identifying info) to people who want to make someone’s Christmas a little brighter.
Here is a letter from a high schooler who wants to make her mom happy.
