#startupbus

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! 

To me, StartupBus 2015 touted as “The Most Intense Startup Competition In The World” resembled one-part distillation engine, one-part prison yard, all in a hyper-compressed dynamic event environment. Standard sleep cycles were soon replaced by an undulating stream of consciousness, where daily trivialities and second-guessing became supplanted by a singleminded, all-encompassing focus to continue, pursue, and overcome. 

THE CONDITIONS

Getting in to StartupBus, happened through a series of events: Luke Haseloff was hosting his awesome monthly networking mixer, and I met Josh Coleman Director of Enterprise Partnerships at SquareOffs and invited him to the Google : Microsoft Space to provide some lightweight consulting, and turned out Josh was a StartupBus 2014 Alumni, General Assembly Instructor, Toastmaster Judge and  - who was good friends with Jenn Shaw 2015 Conductor, who was still recruiting for the NYC team 1 day before the bus left at 4am. At that moment I experienced the “great pull” of StartupBus recruiting.

NYC’s original high tech bus “broke down” and was swapped out with a ~20 year old replacement with power enough for 1 laptop out of ~30 players, no wifi, and poor AC which posed a challenge for NYC tech startups jockeying for position against international players who in one case received Kanye West’s tour bus. Regardless of the imbalance, our coaches Jenn Shaw and Edwin Rogers stated: 

“The judges do not care... If you do not have a killer business in 3 days, you will fail... NYC won the past 2 years, and we’re not losing on our watch.” - And I think, in reality, this stoked the fire, raised the game and every competitor loved them even more for it. The seemingly insurmountable became a worthy target for the talent on-board.

Tell this to any entrepreneur (especially one from NYC), and I’m sure they’ll bring their A-Game and to be honest, I’d take that dilapidated bus any day – It was a furnace purifying the metal in all of us - and hats off to the drivers who crossed 9 states over 3 days with a bus full of hungry, sweaty entrepreneurs who’s very concepts of time, space, self-identity and ownership dissolved and melded into a seething field of new probabilities. There is no room for bloated egos in such a high frequency environment.

PLAYING THE GAME

I actually found the StartupBus environment easy – it was returning home that was hard, perhaps because I became semi-institutionalized to the high concentration of talent and demands. As an entrepreneur who focuses on product architecture and business operations for Fortune 500 Clients and Startups with my company True Interaction, I found myself boiling down all actions into micro-functions, in order to control return-on-investment, and to cover high-value terrain in the shortest, most effective way possible. For example, the StartupBus Stock Game became a template to focus team attention towards goals, and determine our position against a simple index. 

Image Source: StartupBus Stock Game - SPACES hit ~$6,000 per share, (10x over 2nd place competition, and 5 SPACES team and friends placed in the top 10 investor leaderboard) by listening to competitive movements and taking timely tactical actions to achieve milestones and acquire support - which we fought for all the way till close of the game 12am midnight. Leading in the competition further secured real-life position: “StartupbusNYC: The entire @thespacesapp team confirmed their #NYC #startupbus spots this week + crushed it! #MicDrop #virtualreality #motivationmonday” 

When our team, SPACES, began covering high-value terrain in shorter periods of time, this updated our collective situational intelligence on our product, the market, and the requirements needed to achieve the next milestones. Ultimately, this lead to greater team confidence, clarity of vision, space to think, and increased probability of business viability. Moreover, our pace, precision, and pertinence provided SPACES a story that resonated with the investors and customers who began on-boarding quickly.

And as we persevered, we arrived at a major decision point concerning how we would approach the semi-finals...

HOW WE FORMED

We began this journey knowing very little what to expect. SPACES was formed by the last of the contestants who gravitated together; seemingly the leftovers from other teams. We spent the first half-day tossing around various ideas, fracturing and reforming, until we all discovered that we agreed that winning the competition was not what was really important. Instead, we focused on what we truly value in life, and chose to build something we all could be proud of. From this foundation, conversations swirled around everything from 4th century Hesychasm, Wet-Ware, Abstract Representationalism, as well as emerging market technologies. 

Image Source Jennifer Spriggs - SPACES team somewhere in the middle of America composing core theory for validation. While we looked on Size of Problem + Size of Market; we focused on the contemporary human condition as it relates to the challenges of Time & Space. Fernando Martinez, Jen Lew, Jon Clinkenbeard and Andre Smith is the team that I journeyed with - and will do so again.

CHOOSING A PATH

The team took each other seriously. Each of us sacrificed, lead, followed, took input, and let go – all for the sake of the greater vision. And as we persevered, we arrived at a major decision point concerning how we would approach the semi-finals. PATH 1: Fight for 1st place, and broadcast more details on our market position, or PATH 2: Go media dark. With seed investment already coming in, pre-orders from customers, Intellectual Property forming, and an emerging market ahead, we decided to actually form our company and go media dark. We decided are not a “startup,” we are a business.

“Spaces team raised angel funding at StartupBus North America semi-finals and went stealth mode ever since to protect their technology and go-to-market strategy.” - Rait Arro, StartupBus Director & Founder of Aiden App

Image Source: Laura Horak -  The conditions of the game changed, and therefore the stakes changed. We ante'd up and decided to play the next game of building a real business, and in the metaphorical sense shared with us by Raymond Lewis of Wastebits, “We took the Red Pill, to see how far the Rabbit Hole Goes...”

CROWD FEEDBACK

To be honest, the unyielding reality, fear and awe of creating a company that may lead to a 4+ year journey was bigger and deeper emotionally than pitching in the Semi-Finals – and thats how we knew we made the right decision. We stood in a circle with coaches Jenn Shaw and Edwin Rogers with our heads together and all confirmed our feelings and went on stage, announced our conclusion and experienced a crowd of supportive peers exploding in shock, awe, high-fives and a few statements that sounded like: “THAT was the best bad-@s&! #BALLERS! #H!T I’ve seen!!” 

Our homies @thespacesapp w/ the ultimate mic drop - so much swagger. #startupbus2015 #virtualreality #getit #micdrop 

mik3cap: Blown away… @TheSpacesApp got up on stage, thanked @TheStartupBus, announced it has investment and DECLINED TO PITCH. #MicDrop #StartupBus

But, what makes the StartupBus community so rich is the variety of mentors who keep you in check, ask tough questions, shedding light on things you don’t see, for example Nate Cooper promptly informed us that our actions are receiving mixed thoughts, and in a loose rendition he shared: 

“You have to remember that there is a community out there of alumni, judges and influencers that may perceive your actions as immodest. Consider the world beyond this competition room.” - Nate Cooper

Valuable feedback for any entrepreneur – Don’t just take home memories of the visceral reactions and buzz, but look under the hood of what you are affecting beyond your boundaries. And if you take home just 1 lesson: “Always thank your sponsors!”

FEAR OF RELAPSE

I personally confided in Mike Caprio, stating that my greatest concern is losing the velocity I experienced on StartupBus when I return to the real-world of NYC. Prior to StartupBus, I felt like a drug addict, addicted to complacency (even though I run at NYC speed) StartupBus was rehab running at 10xNYC speed. This distilled StartupBus environment educed latent potential out of all of us. Upon return, I did not want to relapse back to being a complacency addict. Mike said, and I paraphrase: 

“StartupBus is designed to help you see your potential faster. It has nothing to do with the conditions of NYC, because you bring that new known potential with you everywhere.” - Mike Caprio

And the more I think back, and talk with other busepreneurs (after some recovery from Post Competition Stress Disorder); I am aware of a fundamental shift in my perception of what can actually be done in any period of time. 

PERSONALITY CHANGE

I experienced a personality change in various ways, such as:

Eating strange foods without flinching, such as Cow Lung.

Waking up at 4am with a clear focus on the work day ahead.

Wearing clothes out of convenience instead of just style.

Using my laptop without power cord, completing all work before 1%.

Negotiating with random people until new opportunities are found.

For example, during the night of the after-parties, the bouncers would not let us into the club because I was carrying my baggage (my returning flight was canceled twice). Normally I would have acquiesced; instead the team and I negotiated with the bouncers for 10 minutes, keeping the conversation going, until we found an opportunity: I whistled to a security guard across the street who was watching over the CMT music awards concert stage, and somehow negotiated a way for my baggage into private storage by entrusting my gold watch as collateral. Rachel the Security Guard, thank you! You came through for the SPACES team, so we could celebrate together with the others. 

Spending time with my team and other StartupBus entrepreneurs was absolutely paramount, worth losing all my equipment. 

As I reflect back, part of that personality change came from specific inflection points, for example during one conversation with Edwin Rogers about the performance of our first pitch, I stated: “ahhh. I should’ve jumped in and corrected a statement during the pitch, but I was exhausted...” WEAK!!! Right? And Edwin let me know it:

“You gotta drop that attitude. This is no place for those excuses. You take it home and do what you gotta do or get out.” - Edwin Rogers StartupBus NYC Coach

Only for a split second, did my ego jump in to defend, but I dropped the excuse quick and grew up. It does not matter who you are, or how you think you are doing in life - waking up to the limits you self-impose, will help you push through to where you need to be. And great coaches make the difference.

GRATITUDE

Once, in the throes of the netherworld between 4 and 5 am, our team had a challenge and nearly disintegrated. We were crippled with fatigue, and someone had called security on us (shout out to Zachary who tried to help out - you rock!). I called StartupBus NYC Coach Jenn Shaw, half-expecting voicemail. Instead, she got up, took the time to listen to the situation, and somehow mustered the capacity to help soothe conditions. The Commitment was greatly humbling. 

Later, while completing a few tasks, I couldn’t help but be overcome with the reality of the sacrifices made to make this all happen, and I welled up with only what I can define as “joy and gratitude.” To be honest, this is something I have never felt with such depth and honesty. You can’t experience this any other way. Everyone involved with with StartupBus made this deep human experience happen. 

For me, it wasn’t about starting a company, or competing with the vague idea of “to win”. It was about discovering a rare human experience that can only be found in the trenches of trials, and in that spirit, after the semi-finals we put our effort into another NYC team Pizzafy - to bolster the pitch, business model, social media marketing, design and operations – to help them take home the win, ultimately leading to a TripleCrown for NYC – which only added to the night of celebration for us. 

“We were absolutely in it to win it. Winning connections, winning ideas, winning collaborations, winning creativity, and it all went as planned! Three years in a row with the Northeast winning the 2015 National Championship. We had a blast. And people that know us know not to underestimate the talent, determination, work ethic – and ability to entertain and be entertained – all while kicking ass!” - StartupBusNYC 2015

Hi there, 

Hate having bad first dates?  Help us luv your first dates in the next 24 hours!  

We are the LUVVID team.  We are part of StartupBus 2015.  We are designing, developing and launching:  http://www.luvvid.video/  in the next 24 HOURS on a bus!  LUVVID is a video speed-dating platform for better first dates, just like meeting at a bar for the first time.   

We’ll be sharing our app design with you as we progress in the next 24 hours. The bus will be rolling.... Stay tuned and give us feedback on our product.  Let’s make great first dates together!