Our featured guest is Bill Tai, the brainchild behind and co-founder of the world’s largest startup competition, the Extreme Tech Challenge, with Sir Richard Branson as the anchor judge. More than 4,000 companies have applied over the last three years, and more applications are expected before this year’s competition closes. The top ten present live on stage at the world’s largest consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, CES. The top three go on to present on Sir Richard Branson’s private island. Tai takes calls in this show from startups who are applying for the competition. He talks about how to create product/market fit, how to target the right demographic for your product, how to answer to your team and investors in the boardroom when something goes terribly wrong, and how to find the best funding and networking sources. We take questions from startups that include: XzrTech, the maker of an airport sky-bridge for oceanfront homes; UGo Smooothie, which has developed an automated smoothie store - a full smoothie store that needs no human operator; DirectTech Labs, which has developed Artificial Intellgence (AI) to help companies with independent sales reps to better engage and retain their people by accurately predicting what will happen in their business tomorrow, and helping them act preemptively.