Today's Entrepreneur: Greg Horn

Today's Entrepreneur is Greg Horn, CEO and Founder of Gigawatt, which is a crowdfunding platform that specializes in "blitz fundraising" and helps groups hit their goals quickly with exciting 24-hour giving campaigns. We developed our "24-Hour Formula" when we raised over $150,000 for Muhlenberg College (PA) in 24 hours

Gigawatt is one of the top 5 finalist to present in the Oaktown Competition at Splash Oakland on May 6-7. Be sure to support Horn and Gigawatt. Register here.

Horn graduated from Lehigh University with a BS degree in Information Systems Engineering. Here's a look at his entrepreneurial background.

At Nuance, I developed the concept to build an ever-evolving speech recognition engine for the open-ended requests that come into New York City 311 (NYC's general information hotline). We cataloged millions of call transcriptions and logged them into a database to find the most common reasons people call. We were giving callers the ability to answer a "How may we help you?" request. Eventually we'd build automation around the top requests. This solution is being put into place by Nuance at 311.

I want to change the world.

Tesla, Virgin, Google

The most frustrating things about innovation is that nothing ever moves as fast as you'd hope it would. Everything always takes a fair bit longer than you expect it to and that can be really frustrating.

The most rewarding thing is that I see the direct impact of my contributions to our cause on a daily basis. This can be a double-edged sword because I also see a dip when I take some time off, but the rewarding side of it is soo worth it to see that direct impact.

1. Don't be afraid to fail. Mistakes are great lessons. 
2. People are much more willing to help than you would think. All you need to do is ask. 
3. It's going to take longer than you expect.

I've been a risk taker and a rule breaker my entire life, which is why I feel that I've gravitated to the entrepreneur's lifestyle. Add to that the fact that I ran Track for 10 years which gave me a sense that you only get the results you want based on the amount of work you put in!

I've spent most of my career in the "real world" doing Technical Sales for a speech recognition software and services company called Nuance where I helped large entreprises construct customized solutions. 

At Nuance, I developed the concept to build an ever-evolving speech recognition engine for the open-ended requests that come into New York City 311 (NYC's general information hotline). We cataloged millions of call transcriptions and logged them into a database to find the most common reasons people call. We were giving callers the ability to answer a "How may we help you?" request. Eventually we'd build automation around the top requests. This solution is being put into place by Nuance at 311.

However, after a handful of years doing that, I realized that I truly wanted to make a difference in this world and I wasn't going to be able to do that as a part of a large, public company, so I left and started Gigawatt!