Before entering university, I had an applied research project that generated visitor passes by performing OCR on identity cards. The idea was to use them for pr

Before entering university, I had an applied research project that generated visitor passes by performing OCR on identity cards. The idea was to use them for protected locations as a better alternative to leaving your precious identity card at the security post. It worked but never went anywhere because I didn't know how to do very much algorithmic analysis and design work and didn't have the confidence to sell what I had simply put together by experimentation. Now I do a lot of algorithmic analysis and design but see my research work as too difficult to commercialize. Ironically, my current startup idea doesn't have academic research behind it as a competitive advantage... It's just a service that I know people want.