trensy

Imagine this scenario. You just finished an inspiring afternoon at a local food pantry volunteering your time to help stock the shelves and get food on the table for so many who are struggling.  Now you are back home and you need to log your service to get credit with your group.  What do you do? If you are like most, you are required to download and print a paper form, complete it, and get it to your sponsor.

Now flip the scenario. What if you are the sponsor. You receive hundreds and hundreds of paper forms and have to figure out what to do with them.  If you are like most, you take those forms and type them into an excel spreadsheet.  What a pain, right? I don't know about you but I'm not thrilled about a drill in copy and paste. 

This is the problem we are working to solve at trensy. Our web and mobile app make it easy for everyone to manage service hours. From allowing organizers to approve and comment on service hours to users having an easy way to keep track and log their service; trensy is making a traditionally agonizing process simple. Be sure to explore our website for more information and email us to schedule a live demo.

I'm reading a great book right right now by Simon Sinek called Start With Why. The basic idea is that the best companies don't promote the products they sell, they promote why they are a company.  So it got me thinking, why trensy?  This is why...

We believe in the power of good people.  We also believe in the power of good old-fashioned competition to help these good people get more involved in their community and with their favorite groups and organizations.

To to this, we've created a platform to link good people with the best groups and organizations to find great ways to get involved and compete with their friends for prizes and pride.  

One of my favorite parts about working on trensy is the vast number of interesting people I get to meet and collaborate with on a daily basis.  From going to actual networking events to the individual coffee meetings I'm able to arrange to the social connections online, I find it so rewarding to have the opportunity to work with such smart and interesting people. As an entrepreneur, these relationships are the lifeblood that is helping to shape our company everyday. When I'm having these conversations I try to focus on two main areas, feedback and reflection.

Genuine feedback is a must in any successful business and without a big team, our only source of this feedback is to get out and make these connections.  Certainly not everyone believes in our mission as strongly as I do and, honestly, that is OK. These conversations are often times more beneficial to me as it can open my eyes to a problem or inconsistency in our platform that a "fanboy" may not see.  

Following any meeting I try to sit down and reflect on the conversation.  This time in thought allows me to dive deeper into the relationship and feedback to begin to draw conclusions and learn from each interaction to make our product better.  

We just updated the look and feel of trensy.com to make it cleaner and more streamlined.  We're VERY happy with the result of our hard work and hope you are too.  Check it out and let us know what you think.

Thanks to the Startup America Sponsorship, I had the opportunity to attend TechCrunch Disrupt this week in NYC.  It has been great to meet so many interesting and smart people.  But I have to ask...WHERE ARE ALL OF THE RECYCLING BINS.  As with any conference, there are copious amounts of water bottles, juice bottles, cans, and paper.  Unfortunately, all of this is making its way into a landfill somewhere in NY instead of into the recycling.

Indianapolis, IN, May 8, 2012 - The Graham Rahal Foundation and trensy, a local social good startup, have partnered to help brighten the day of terminally ill children in hospitals. At this Saturday's 500 Festival Kids' Day on Monument Circle from 12-4, children and families can stop by the Graham Rahal Foundation booth to make a card that will be sent to children's hospitals through the organization, Cards for Hospitalized Kids. Cards are distributed to children in an effort to make their day a little better through such a tough time. 

Everyone who makes a card will have the option to check in their good deed on trensy to win great prizes. Some of these include: gift cards from restaurants like Weber Grill, signed Graham Rahal Merchandise, free haircuts at Cookie Cutters, free pizza, and more. Balloons will be available for kids along with everything needed to make a card, all that is needed is some creativity.

After making a card, kids will be encouraged to check out some of Graham's racing equipment available at the booth. This will be a unique opportunity to make a difference in a child's life and have a great time doing it!

About the Graham Rahal Foundation:

The Graham Rahal Foundation is dedicated to work for a cause that was significantly important to Graham’s former race team owner and friend, the late actor and philanthropist Paul Newman – helping children with medical conditions. Through various fundraising events and activities, the foundation helps Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer (www.alexslemonade.org/), SeriousFun Children’s Network (www.seriousfunnetwork.org/), and various other organizations.

About trensy:

trensy is working to change the way people think about community service by making it fun, competitive, and everyday.  Through smartphone and web apps, users check in good deeds they do in their community to earn points and awards and compete with friends to see who can spread the most good. Visit www.trensy.com for more information and to get started.

About Cards for Hospitalized Kids:

March is a time of year marked by crazed basketball fans glued to their TV sets, cheering on their favorite teams in the NCAA basketball tournament.  This enthusiasm and passion is second to none and, as a fan myself, I LOVE this time of year. So it got us thinking, why not try to harness some of this enthusiasm and competitive nature with a challenge for good.  This is how the trensy Bracket Challenge was born.    

At its core, trensy is working to change the way people think about community service by making it fun, competitive and everyday instead of just when convenient. Using smartphone and web apps, users find and check in good deeds they do throughout the day to earn points and awards.  It's really a great way to get involved and make the community a better place.  

The trensy Bracket Challenge was launched as a way to energize fans of the 68 schools competing in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.  Each school is rallying their fans to do good deeds in the community to earn points and push their team to the top of the leaderboard.  The team with the most points at the end of the tournament will win the bragging rights of being the trensy Bracket Challenge Champion (hopefully this will accompany another championship for that school) and be known for the great amount of good they were able to accomplish. Now the only question remaining is which school can rally their faithful to join and check in enough good deeds to be the champion.  

Is your team dancing?  Get involved now to be sure your team is winning on the court and in the community! Take the trensy Bracket Challenge today!

On Friday afternoon we got the great news that Trensy had been approved by Apple and was ready to download in the App Store.  It had been quite a process going back and forth with Apple but our persistence with them paid off.  

See, as everyone knows, Apple is quite selective about how they approve apps that get submitted to the App Store.  I've heard several seemingly valid theories on this but certainly can't confirm any.  The issue they had with us seemed to be the fact they we didn't develop natively in Xcode.  Instead, we chose a more versatile route using a variety of web languages and used PhoneGap (a great program) to add iOS native functionality and make it a native app. There are certainly advantages and disadvantages of this choice but, for us, it has been perfect.  So essentially, we were getting denied because they didn't like our development choices.  After a resubmission, an appeal, and a conversation with an Apple reviewer; we finally convinced them we were competent and are approved to the App Store (app store link). 

We are excited to have you download Trensy and begin checking in good deeds in your community.  We look forward to your feedback (good and bad) so we can continue to improve Trensy and work toward our mission.