@tweetasy @startupjunkyard @tribetrader & @misspivot Team photos from Triangle Startup Weekend on Saturday.
Today’s the big day for Startup Weekend, there’s four events happening around the USA. Startup Weekend San Fransisco, Columbus, Chicago and here in Raleigh, NC we’re calling it Triangle Startup Weekend (#TriSUW). Teams are hard at work, establishing their business model, marketing plans, designing interfaces and coding the back-end. I’m expecting there’s going to be some late night coding as some of us get ready to watch the NCAA tournament games in the background. Good luck to all the teams participating in Startup Weekend today. Here are a few photos of our teams hard at work.
Startup Junkyard @startupjunkyard
Tweetasy @tweetasy http://tweetasy.com
TribeTrader @tribetrader http://tribetrader.com/
Entrepreneurs Need to Evolve Beyond Ad-Supported Business Models
Yesterday after the introduction of the event I challenged all participants of Triangle Startup Weekend to put some real creative thought into the business model of their startup pitch. The ad-supported model of startups is not viable in good times, but in a down economy with all forms of advertising dollars heading south, it is more critical to devise multiple revenue streams, and not rely on advertising.
This message was well-received by the Triangle Startup Weekend participants, as lots of people were nodding their heads in agreement. There have been enough reports of failed startups that just couldn’t make it on ad-based models, that this was an easy challenge to agree to.
The entrepreneurs of the Triangle have moved beyond the latest internet bubble of build it and they come, and when they do, serve some ads. Our group at Startup Weekend will be creating startups with sustainable business models that can survive past this weekend.
The four startup ideas in progress at Triangle Startup Weekend. Which 1 do you like?
The process:
- Started with 21 ideas
- Merged ideas that were similar
- Had a vote where each person could only vote twice
- Had another vote to eliminate ideas that were tied
- Then 4 startup groups were formed:
1. Tweetasy @tweetasy http://tweetasy.com
Pitch:
# tweetstories (Adam Arney) – a complete story within 140 characters. Could build it in one weekend. Collaborative fiction or individual effort. Goal is entire story in one tweet.
tweatre (Justis)
2. Startup Junkyard @startupjunkyard
Pitch:
startup junkyard (Joel) – half-finished startups can sell their assets. Your idea comes alive when it meets the people who have the time and passion to put into executing it correctly. 10-15% commission at the point of sale. Also considering ad revenue or a listing free.
3. TribeTrader @tribetrader
Pitch:
(Andy Louis Charles) – web 2.0 barter system for services, goods, etc. Revenue is a monthly fee. Customers trade with a custom currency, specific to the network. Also get a brokerage fee for closing a deal. Encourage local affiliates to nurture each community.
4. http://piv-ot.com @misspivot
Pitch:
wing women (Ryan Robbins) – send a woman who is intelligent and cute and funny to go on a “date” with the man. She will join you at the bar in order to help in approaching women. There is an existing website doing this, but no mobile app. We make mobile app.
Here they are, hard at work at Triangle Startup Weekend. Which one do you like?
21 ideas pitched at Triangle Startup Weekend and 4 made the cut. Which one would you start?
- screenwritr (Graham Hensley) – collaborative authorship service for screenplays, TV, books
- startup junkyard (Joel) – half-finished startups can sell their assets. Your idea comes alive when it meets the people who have the time and passion to put into executing it correctly. 10-15% commission at the point of sale. Also considering ad revenue or a listing free.
- themes marketplace (Alicia Weller) – theme marketplace for for wordpress, drupal, joomla, etc. Commission based revenue model for selling those themes.
- matchucation.com (Brandon Hoe) – help find a college that fits everything they want. Get ratings from existing students on how friendly it is to lifestyle concerns. Revenue model: sell their information to colleges and lenders.
- digiplicity network (Justin Pierce) – unemployed are turning to starting their own business. Makes the network of wholesale services, marketing collateral, printers, etc, to help you launch your business quickly. Revenue comes from markup on sales.
- (Andy Louis Charles) – web 2.0 barter system for services, goods, etc. Revenue is a monthly fee. Customers trade with a custom currency, specific to the network. Also get a brokerage fee for closing a deal. Encourage local affiliates to nurture each community.
- wing women (Ryan Robbins) – send a woman who is intelligent and cute and funny to go on a “date” with the man. She will join you at the bar in order to help in approaching women. There is an existing website doing this, but no mobile app. We make mobile app.
- JAM (just add mobile) (Andrew Gaudi) – interact with your users via SMS in the easiest way possible. They already have some back-end done, need some front-end and usability. Would push to local service people, like car sales. Copy and paste some code into your website. Also want SMS-to-chat service. Pay-per-use service, as a markup over what we pay to the SMS gateway.
- tweetstories (Adam Arney) - a complete story within 140 characters. Could build it in one weekend. Collaborative fiction or individual effort. Goal is entire story in one tweet.
- social gopher (Scott Brewster) – social media temp service to hire people who can do odd jobs or be a “gopher”. We provide the payroll services.
- gradgrid (Chad Etzel) – automate graduation planning … graduation, seating charts, name, height
- exquisite corpse (Daniel) – fold a piece of paper into an accordion and pass it on to people who add their pieces to the accordion. The voted art gets printed as a collage.
- (Jeff Cohen) – calendar aggregation tool. Grabs RSS feeds from organizational calendars and aggregate all in one place, to review upcoming events.
- (Max) revenue sharing for a content portal where multiple authors contribute
- iStalker – take pictures of someone you’re stalking and hold the information hostage
- crowdsourced marketing – for the sorta marketer, they can band together to give one site a bunch of Google juice at once
- iphone gotcha (Steve)
- community shopping (Steve) – people create small wishlists in order to get bulk discounts. (reverse woot)
- tweatre (Justis) -
- casual outdoor sports – use geolocative techniques to do pickup games for anything from tennis to full team sports. Revenue stream will inject eCommerce to purchase equipment for the game you’re playing.
- sendahug.com – go online and send a hug to someone. Real life person goes and hugs them, we capture pictures and show it online.
We want to thank our new sponsor: Cuthrell Consulting http://cuthrell.com & @qthrul
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leadership, systems engineering, IPTV, security services, vendor
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If you’re interested in Cuthrell Consulting services you can contact
them at: http://cuthrell.com
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