The first weekend of June was an unforgettable one for a slew of our “Catalysts”, due to an intense and bizarre competition called StartupBus. 

What is StartupBus you ask? It is an extreme startup competition, where top talent compete as “buspreneurs” to build next-gen technology companies over the course of a 3-day road trip, naturally, on a bus. 

One of our intrepid interns Mika Ichiki-Welches participated in Chicago’s MakerBus. The following is her account of the adventure...

As promised, my life has been changed. (Also sorry about the novel.) We stood outside of the black coach bus, strangers to each other and completely unaware of how the next five days would transform us. I was afraid that I would be of little help to a team with my limited skill set, but what I didn't know was that I wasn't the only one with that fear. Although some of the "buspreneurs" were specialists in their fields, and thus explicitly "hackers" (programmers), "hustlers" (business and marketing people), or "hipsters" (designers), some of us jumped into the experience because it was unlike anything we had ever done before. And we were all determined to make the maker world proud with the first ever hardware-centered bus - the Makerbus. We were welcomed on to the bus by our two fantastic conductors - Chris and Carl - and introduced ourselves, each pitching an idea for a product. Mine was a virtual wall calendar that would automatically update by pulling calendar events from family members' online calendars. Then we were set free to talk amongst each other and build teams based on these ideas. To my excitement two people - Jeanine and Scott - were interested in my idea, and with some further conversation it evolved into a smart mirror that displayed calendar events and other important information to its viewer - namely, ReflectMe.

Three days were spent travelling through Detroit and Pittsburgh on our way to Nashville, with very little sense of what day it was, what time it was, or even what state we were in at any given moment. Our whole focus was dedicated to making sure we would have the four things the judges were looking for:

A working product

Quality design

Traction

A solid pitch

Unlike a normal "hackathon" (we were told later by the founder, Elias, that StartupBus is NOT a hackathon) there was a whole lot more we needed to take into account besides a cool product. Because the end-goal was to create a startup company, we also needed to prove traction - that we had a viable market that would or already was buying what we were selling. An unreal amount of time was spent then on getting the word out about our product through a Facebook group, Twitter, Indiegogo, and a website. It felt uncomfortable streaming constant posts about ReflectMe, but we knew it was important for making sure we were even creating the right product. That was the other thing - the product itself was in constant iteration, which made it really difficult for Scott and myself to hone in on what we were developing technically. A whole lot of research was poured into understanding our potential markets, and everybody had a different opinion. There was a point where we almost pivoted to a picture frame that displayed a loved one's picture when you smiled at it. There was a whole lot to wrap our minds around and get running with. And of course, all of this needed to be finalized in three days on a bus.

Luckily, we had pit stops. After gathering materials from Microcenter and Home Depot, we spent hours at Techshops on the first and second night fleshing out the physical product. This meant debugging the LCD screen that we had bought that wouldn't power up, making a one-way mirror out of acrylic and mirror/window film, and building a frame and encasing out of wood scrapped up from Techshop Pittsburgh (with help from our new friend Jay!).

The make-up of our team worked surprisingly well. Having three people on our team was a bit nerve-wrecking at first, but actually worked out to our benefit. It gave us each a good gauge of the large responsibility we each held in the product. We also were blessed with three laid-back yet efficient members who trusted each other to get their work done. I was very proud of Jeanine's ability to step up to and perform impressively in a position that she hadn't had much specific experience in, and very appreciative of Scott's patience with me despite my limited experience programming. I gained so much experience through our process and was able to feel like I contributed a great deal to both the product and the marketing sides.

It was implied that the "hustler" on the team would be the one pitching the product (you know, because engineers are all awkward and antisocial) but for one of the milestones in the game a non-hustler had to pitch. So at one of our pit stops on the second day, I ended up presenting our product idea to a room full of investors. I am fairly comfortable on stage, from acting in several productions and from speech team in high school, although I often freeze when it comes to improvisation of any kind. Despite my nerves regarding lack of preparation, our product was well-received and I became the designated pitcher for our team moving forward!

On day three we arrived in Nashville with a decided market - affluent families - and an almost-working ("done, not perfect") prototype that could detect a face and display a pre-conceived dashboard of information. We got our first night of over four hours of sleep, and head out the next morning with the rest of the buses to present at Studio615. We got right to work - Scott refining our prototype, Jeanine researching data with our newly adopted team member Amber, and me memorizing the pitch. Everybody had their eyes on the Makerbus; there is a beauty in having a physical product. After our first pitch in the competition, the first word uttered by the judges was "Wow." A couple hours later it was announced that all four teams from our bus made it to the second round! This meant that our bus was the first ever to advance all their teams to semifinals.

So semifinals came and our demo didn't work. The problem was that unlike our first round that was held in a side room, semifinals happened on stage where the lighting messed with our camera's ability to detect a face. Also, although Jeanine and Amber had prepped the perfect responses to questions about traction, these judges asked questions that we weren't expecting. "Why a mirror?" came up a lot, and it was difficult to articulate the convenience and efficiency a smart mirror could bring to a hectic life that was different from just having a smart phone that distracted you and took up your valuable time. We left the stage not discouraged completely, but unsettled. So it was with great surprise and excitement that we were accepted into the final round, along with another Makerbus team - PillyPod! Side note: there was a team called Spaces who, during semifinals, got on stage and announced that they were dropping out because they were offered an early investment, valuating them at half a million dollars! They used an Oculus Rift to create a therapeutic alternate reality for people to escape their stressful lives and have a place to relax. They probably took turns using it after that news. Moving on. Short story shorter, day two brought even more stress as we needed a pitch twice as long as the day before, significant traction that would set us apart from our competitors, and a prototype that would work on stage. I had a fabulous mentor - Ray - who was extremely dedicated to helping us with our pitch. He gave me tips on phrasing and body language, and had me practice giving my pitch to him from stage. We also got some help from Mark, who redid our design!

Finally, we got on stage and again, the demo didn't work. During the Q/A session we tried again, but unfortunately that is the downside of hardware. Otherwise, we felt strong and proud of how far we came. It was farther than any of us had expected going into the experience. So when Pizzafy - an app to simplify the pizza-ordering experience - won, with PillyPod - a smart pill organizer that senses and notifies whether daily medication has been taken - as the runner up, it was kind of strange how content we were. Besides, we exhausted and it was good to be done.

Afterthoughts:

We are planning to continue refining ReflectMe into the prototype that we envision, and seeing how far Indiegogo will take us. We've gotten a lot of great connections and press, and were even featured in Trend Inc. today!