“Got an idea? Get Anidea!” The slogan for this Wellington-based full-service product design and development firm is not just a play on words, it is also a play on pronunciation, owner and entrepreneur Gabriel Goldstein is quick to point out.
“It’s pronounced ah-NID-e-uh,” said Goldstein, a computer engineer with more than 15 years’ experience in electrical and product engineering.
Before starting his own engineering company 13 years ago, one of Goldstein’s first jobs out of school was at a start-up. Since founding Anidea, it has expanded significantly.
“It has grown from basically me working out of my house to an organization of up to 13 people,” he said of the company that he began in Fort Lauderdale in 2001 when he was 25 years old.
The firm moved to Wellington almost a decade ago.
“We have a really good team. Between our engineers that are in house and some of our contractors, we’ve built some pretty crazy stuff,” Goldstein said. “We love two things: entrepreneurship and building things.”
Anidea Engineering has a diverse set of electrical engineers, mechanical engineers and digital designers who are able to build whatever comes their way.
“Everything that we do is pretty much consumer or industrial electronics,” Goldstein explained. “Most of our products won’t show up on the shelf… most are business-to-business type of products. Things other companies want to build, manufacture and market.”
He described the firm as “the tech back-end for non-tech-centric companies.”
“If you need a new product developed, need something created, electrical or mechanical or some combination thereof, we will design that for you, build it for you and manufacture it for you,” Goldstein said. “For inventors, sometimes we just do prototypes and proving concept designs, but otherwise we are building sophisticated electrical and mechanical systems for our clients.”
Currently, Anidea Engineering has been working with Cytowave, a Jupiter-based company, on a project to develop a therapy device for horses that accelerates the natural healing process by using magnetic fields with complicated wave forms that encourage healing.
Anidea has worked with Cytowave every step of the way, beginning with the involved conception of the device, then the electrical and mechanical design, the software to run it and then through testing and manufacturing.
Other projects that Anidea Engineering has worked on are a firefighter telemetry system, a printer paper roll end cap for authentication, a gate controller for vehicular access, an alarm control panel, LED marine lamps, a GPS-based golfing assistant, a golf club minder, LED stop signs and more.
Well-known throughout the South Florida community, Goldstein will be one of three speakers and judges discussing entrepreneurial success at Palm Beach SCORE’s Entrepreneur Celebration and Recognition Awards, where SCORE will announce its Entrepreneur of the Year and present the recipient with a $5,000 award. Registration is still open for the Thursday, Aug. 7 event at the West Palm Beach Marriott.
A frequent presenter for SCORE — previously known as the Service Corps of Retired Executives — Goldstein is also a sponsor for Startup Palm Beach and is active in the start-up community, as well as the Angel Forum of Florida and the Life Science and Technology Hub.
Working in schools to help foster an interest in science and engineering is something Goldstein is always excited to do.
“Last year, we helped Poinciana Elementary School do a project where they were doing experiments with low-gravity and high-gravity convection,” he said. “We volunteered some of our engineering efforts to develop a tank that went up in the Reduced Gravity Aircraft by the Zero G Corporation that they used, with a video camera on a module we developed that would show how convection stopped at zero gravity. It simulates low-Earth orbits and anti-gravity.”
At Binks Forest Elementary School, Goldstein has been a guest speaker for career day, when he spoke to fifth-graders. “I had a lot of fun talking to kids and telling them a little bit about what I do for a living and maybe inspired a few other kids to be engineers,” he said.
A few months ago, Goldstein and a small team traveled to Pourrier, Haiti, on an exploratory mission to restore water and a solar panel system to an orphanage.
The orphanage had both a cost-effective and an expensive diesel generator pump system for water, but the pump from the cost-effective system had been stolen. “By the time we left,” he said, “they had potable drinking water, and we were filling a fish pond.”
In July, Goldstein served as one of the judges for Startup Weekend West Palm Beach, part of the Startup Weekend movement that has encouraged entrepreneurship through intense weekend-long events.
“Since I participated the first time, I got a lot of perspective on how hard it is to be a judge at these types of events,” he said. “It was really a fun experience and a bit stressful.”
With the tables turned, Goldstein saw things from the competitors’ perspective, as they stood where he once was.
As a competitor, the world of start-ups and entrepreneurship was familiar to Goldstein, whose parents, grandparents and two of his three siblings are all entrepreneurs, and he is passing along his experience and knowledge.
One of Goldstein’s SCORE presentations is, “I have an idea, now what?” where he outlines what needs to be considered before starting a business.
“The important thing is to have a plan to determine what you really want out of your idea. People come to us at various stages of their ideas,” he said, explaining that there are many steps that need to be taken in order to bring an idea to fruition to make it become a reality rather than a concept. “We bring life to people’s ideas and inventions.”
For more information, visit www.anidea-engineering.com or call (561) 383-7311.
ABOVE: Gabriel Goldstein at work in his Wellington office.
