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The Submate Semi-Marathon
This is an update on Submate from Startup Weekend Paris by Laurent Kretz
The semi-marathon of Paris happened yesterday – congrats to all finalists, especially for running by 0 degrees!!
This post is not about this run, but the SubMate semi-marathon instead. It’s Monday March 8, and we’re finally catching sight of the finish line. A semi-marathon, because it’s an early alpha we’ll be releasing. But as Reid Hoffman said: “If you are not ashamed by your product when you launch it, you launched too late” !
So here’s how it went down so far on SubMate:
- Early December 2009. I attend the Statup Weekend Paris edition. At the last minute, I decide to pitch SubMate, an old idea I already worked on unsuccessfully. I find an amazing team to work with me on the project and we deliver a prototype by the end of the weekend.
- End of December. We meet a cool guy, Hubert Fisselier, a soon to be iPhone developer. He loves the concept of SubMate, and we decide to work together on an iPhone app.
- Mid-January. Things are slow in December and early January, you know how it is: Xmas, foie gras, Hanukkah, vacations, family, … So nothing happens until mid-January when we pick where we left off. Starting out by rethinking the site, the architecture, the navigation.
- End of January. We are trying to code as much as possible, but my two cofounders are employed. Good news: Sylvain has decided to leave his company to concentrate full time on the project. And Jonathan is working on nights and weekends.
- February. On the 12th, almost a month ago, Sylvain hits his final day at his company. February is a tricky month though: it flies by so fast! Without even noticing it, we’re already at the end of the month. However, since the 12th, Sylvain and myself work efficiently on the code. The majority of the development happens as of that date.
- End of February. We applied for a couple of conferences, and are selected amongst the 20 finalists of Plugg 2010. We decide to target the conference (March 11th) for the beta release of the app. The first release of the iPhone app is looking good, and we need to finalize it and put some polish on it.
- March. Here we are. Less than 3 months since the Startup Weekend, and a month into heavy coding. The beta should be ready soon, and the iPhone app looks better every day.
As you can see, it’s been a marathon so far. In only three months, we went from an idea to an organized startup project. And in only a month, we took a dirty prototype to a beta site and an iPhone app.
But I call it a “semi” because what’s coming next is HUGE. So stay tuned for some cool SubMate news!
Day 2 Candid Interviews!
“Choose a product. Set your price. Get an alert. Buy”
“What’s good right now. Even in your own home.”
“Harnessing the world’s unused processing power”
“Event planning simplified. Conferences as communities.”
“Where we publish all the great stories”
“The only source you need for information on local beer, wine, and spirits events. Cheers!”
“Power Ownership = Freedom. It’s a new opportunity to go off the grid even while you’re on it.”
“It’s who you’re playing”
24 ideas and 9 teams running!
Off to an amazing start here at PDXSW. We had 24 ideas pitched last night, and we now have 9 teams off and running with the ideas. Here are the ideas that are being built and the person who pitched them as of now:
#3. Murat – “Timeshare” green energy
#4. Donald – Mobile/web grocery list maker
#7. Stephen – Green Social Networking for conference planners
#8. Deborah – Reader’s choice publishing
#10. Ed – Local Libations – Social network for wineries and distillers
#11. Jeff – Grid/distributed computing
#13. Scott – Internet radio on embedded devices
#14. Tony – Amazon price notification service
#15. Garrett – Online multiplayer games with webcam interaction
Portland Ten Sponsoring
Thank you Portland Ten for supporting Startup Weekend attendees can receive
a. two free passes to the next 6 weeks of Skill Development workshops (12 workshops in legal, finance, accounting, VC, PR, product management, etc.)
b. Free Startup Checkups offered to any attendees of Startup Weekend– a 1-hour venture-capital style evaluation meeting to assess the startup’s current status.
More info about Skill Development workshops here, more about Checkups here.
Two more announcements: Portland Ten’s next Six Week Sprint will begin Friday, March 12th, we’ll offer 10% off for any Startup Weekend attendee.
Second, they are starting to evaluate companies for the May-July round of Portland Ten, as an FYI for anyone interested, and the best way to catch their attention is to a) attend Founders’ Coffee Tuesdays 9 am at Daily Cafe, 13th & Kearney NW, b) schedule a Startup Checkup, or c) attend any Skill Development workshop.
Special Offer from Mavenn
A huge thank you to Mavenn for sponsoring Startup Weekend and putting together a special offer as well just for Startup Weekend attendees that is sure to help get startups up and going!
“Mavenn helps app developers make money through tasteful product referrals by automatically generating and custom placing relevant product links. Mavenn enables fully transparent tracking of your earnings with access to detailed analytics to help you grow your revenue.
For one best qualified and live consumer web app developed through the Portland Startup weekend, Mavenn will provide six months of better-than-free special service, complete with all the features, with no subscription fees or transaction fees.
For all other live web apps, Mavenn will provide three months on the same terms.”
NedSpace with an amazing offer!
A big thanks to NedSpace for hosting the event, and in addition, they are putting together a nice offer for a few teams coming out of the weekend who want to continue!
The offer:
For one top qualifying Portland Startup Weekend team that is going to take their business model and work full time Monday thru Friday and grow it into an ongoing and financially sustainable entity, NedSpace is offering free open desk space for three months. For any other teams that meet the same criteria (fulltime effort, Monday thru Friday) will receive one month free open desk space.
The offer will be extended to the teams based on ambitions coming out of the weekend. This is an amazing way to help a startup get up-and running with the right kind of support. Thank you NedSpace!
Startup Overnight with 48 Hour Launch Weekend
Memphis 48 Hour Launch T-Shirt
Fall 2009 Season of Entrepreneurship
LaunchMemphis 2010 Spring Schedule
IBM Small and Medium Enterprise Tool Kit…
Escalator Pitch Competition on November 21st!
Announcing the 2009 Escalator Pitch Competition
An Insider View of Bioscience Entrepreneurship: Successful Case Studies
Startup Weekend Memphis Reunion on Thursday August 27th
Fall 2009 Schedule of Events
Be sure to catch Ignite Portland!
It starts at 5:30pm March 3rd – Get all the info here: http://www.igniteportland.com/
T-Minus 3 days!
Hey everyone, things are shaping up quite nicely with a few days left to still register. For those of you who might be pitching an idea on Friday night, be sure to check out this handy tutorial on how to create the most effective pitch.
Tutorial Startup Weekend Pitch
View more presentations from START Vienna.
Oklahoma City Startup Weekend
Startup Weekend OKC is right around the corner. We have an amazing group of Mentors to help our teams take their ideas to the next level. We also have a great group of Sponsors that are so excited to see what comes out of OKC in the first weekend of March.
For a rundown of what a typical weekend looks like you can click here.
What is included in your registration? You get 7 meals, access to great tools, and all the networking & team building you can stand over 54 hours.
If you have a conflicting event that weekend still consider coming to Startup Weekend. You will be working with your team all weekend so if something comes up and you need to leave for a while that is not a problem at all. We know birthday parties, basketball games, church, marathon training and backing up your hard drive are all things that are important as well. So don’t feel like you can’t be a part of Startup Weekend just becuase you have a conflict or two.
If you have any other questions hit the “contact us” button and email or give us a call. Click here to register for the event and to learn more details.
New: Reply to Suggestions
Just a quick announcement today — in addition to or instead of completing a suggestion by linking your blog posts to it, you may simply reply to it. As usual, any followers will be notified of your completed suggestion.
Updated Complete Suggestion dialogue
Check it out and let us know what you think. We also added a new item to the new blog and edit blog pages; a checkbox for “This is a personal blog.” More on that below:
When this is checked, we will mark this blog as one that personally represents you via XFN. This will allow other sites (like Google) to show your Skribit profile as part of your connected websites. Click here to read all the gory details.