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Startup Weekend LA October 18, 2010
Wow. It has been a long time since I’ve blogged. In fact upon logging into this site I discovered a draft for a post I was writing about winning the Boxee and Twilio Hackathon back in April!
So if you did not know (due to my lack of blogging) Brett Hazen and I won the Boxee & Twilio Hackathon in April for our app “Bring The Popcorn”
Boxee Blog
Now that thats finally on my blog let me get down to the latest news.
This weekend was Startup Weekend LA hosted at the Coloft. If you are not familiar with Startup Weekend it is an event where entrepreneurs get together over the weekend, pitch ideas, form teams around those ideas, and then build a product over the weekend and show them off on Sunday.
So for Startup Weekend I worked as part of Team Hinty based on Daniel O’ Shea’s pitch.
To summarize Hinty in my own words:
Hinty is your life out loud.
During the day I have productive hours (like when I read my email in the morning and when Im at work) and then I have unproductive hours (like commuting to work or exercising). Well Hinty is a service that serves its customer’s online content thats important to them over their phones. With our technology you can call a number while you’re on the road and have Hinty read you your morning news (through RSS feeds), emails, or even things like your Facebook or Twitter feeds. This way you can turn those unproductive hours into productive hours.
Your feed sources would be controlled via a website or mobile app. We will also build a mobile app that can stream the content and let you organize your feed sources.
Due to our rockstar team consisting of myself, Drew Baumann, and the rest of the team:
Daniel O’Shea
Jason Templeton
Pete Couture
Alberto Cecioni
Boris Radev
Jay Stakelon
Max Mullen
We ended up winning Startup Weekend LA!
I’m grateful that we won. It was definitely tough competition.
Some of the competing products I really enjoyed were Recipe Byte, a great way to open source your recipes, and also Beerdar, an app for the iPhone which makes it easy to find the beers you like in your area.
In addition we won the Factual‘s Developer Contest so we have some Kindle’s to look forward to!
On a side note I’m pumped now that I know about Factual because its basically a service that provides open databases anyone can create and contribute to. I will definitely be making some projects to integrate with this service.
Due to winning Startup Weekend LA We also got some kickass prizes.
On top of that list is Coloft providing us each with a 1 month membership.
Heroku is also hooking us up with 300 dollars in credit to keep our website alive and well!
In addition we have pitches set up with Tech Coast Angels and Clearstone Venture Partners.
There are exciting times ahead!
Thanks again to Startup Weekend, Coloft, and Tyler Koblasa for the great work that was put into this weekend!
Also a huge thanks to Twilio for hooking us up with Twilio credit and NerdyShirts for the awesome T-Shirts!!
Day 11, Thursday January 22, 2010
So today was pretty fun. We started off the day at Facebook where I asked lots of questions which I can’t give you guys the answers to (damn NDA!). However it was a fun time and I am now ‘friends’ with Dave. Oh! And I found out they are making a movie about the beginning of Facebook! Then we headed to Microsoft and talked to Dan’l Lewin and a few other guys about their up and coming technologies. They showed us a video with some crazy stuff, however I’ll get excited when I see it in production. They have teased me too many times. Then we headed to Intel and were educated on intel chips… way over our heads. It was okay though because we had a nice host and he tried to penetrate our brains. Later in the night we went out for our final dinner at an Italian restaurant and had a great time reminiscing about the trip. I am now full on gnocchi and creme brulee… a hard life I know… Anyways I am now off to finish packing and enjoy the rest of the night! I hope some of you enjoyed following the blog and be sure to watch my twitter at twitter.com/drewbaumann for more frequent updates! I will probably post a majority of my photos to my online gallery tomorrow night so you can see everything!
Day 10, Wednesday January 20, 2010
Today we spent the majority of the day at Google. Yes, that Google. It was pretty awesome. When we got there it was pouring! Fortunately we got inside quick and got a quick tour of our host’s building. However before we started walking we were permitted to raid the Odwalla juice fridge. I instantly knew I was going to like Google. Our next stop was to building 42 (I think) where we were shown this and that till we crossed to building 41 and reached our meeting room. As I waited for our first presenter I got online and tested the internet speed. I have ever been connected to anything faster. The nerd in me’s happiness level spiked. Then we met with a number of employees including members of maps, blogger, and enterprise (to name a few). Afterwards we got some lunch at Charlie’s Cafe. From the selection of gourmet food I choose some sashimi and 2 different sandwich segments. They were delicious! If anyone wants to know more I’ll be sure to share all I can! Then we visited the Google On-Site Store (Beta) and grabbed some Google stuff. I grabbed two shirts for myself: One shows the standard google logo on a black shirt and the other features the android logo. I’m looking forward on sporting them when Im back! After taking some pictures by the giant android and pastries (for the different android versions’ codenames) we said our goodbyes and headed to the Computer History Museum. There we saw a live demonstration of the Babbage Machine. If you’re curious about it look it up on wikipedia. It is actually pretty interesting. Then we met with an alumni at his equestrian club and talked about his experience in Silicon Valley. Finally we returned to the hotel where I’ve been writing this blog post and writing an iPhone app for the Albert Lea Times as a little project. I might even make an android app for them soon. Right now I need to make sure they’re willing to compensate me somehow for my work. Anyways today was really cool and I hope our final day tomorrow is just as much fun!
Day 9, Tuesday January 20, 2010
Today was another big day. We started the day at Benetech. We learned about their software and free digital books for the disabled through bookshare.org. I am excited to see the software in action sometime! Then we headed to Sierra Ventures and learned some more about VC and LED lighting! Then we walked around Stanford till dinner time. for dinner we had Indian with Craig Cornelius from Google. The food was great and Craig is a nice guy. Tomorrow we go to Google!
Day 8, Monday January 18, 2010
Today we woke up to heavy rain and naturally decided to get out of town. Unfortunately it was a little crazy. For instance as we were driving out of town a tree took out the back window of the car in front of us! For our next stop we went to the Red Wood Forest and I saw some of the biggest trees I have ever seen! Not to mention some fat squirrels and banana slugs. Then we headed to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I really enjoyed the seahorse exhibit and thought it was a lot of fun to see the sea otters! Did you know that male sea horses carry and deliver the children? Pretty wild I thought… For lunch we stopped by a Thai restaurant an I was given a big bowl of soup. After getting it I wished I would have gotten the pag thai instead though because it was cheaper and probably had more of the flavors I desired. As we left Monterey it started raining. hard. As we drive back I can feel the added weight from the rain on my pants. Who knows what is in store for tonight, but you readers will most likely know tomorrow or later tonight.
Day 7, Sunday January 18, 2010
On Sunday we transferred Hotels and went to eat Turkish food. Thats about it!
Day 6, Saturday January 17, 2010
Yesterday Jacob and I missed the memo our group was going bike riding. Thats okay though because we went to Haight Ashbury. We didn’t get into a ton of shops because we got into talks with different shop owners and lost track of time. It also did not help that we took a completely random route to get to Haight to begin with. I guess we will have to make a return visit someday! Then we raced back to Fisherman’s Wharf and went on the Alcatraz night tour. It was entertaining and interesting to see this piece of history, but I don’t feel the history when I go through. I guess it was just too clean for me. I guess when I go to a place like that I want to see it in full operation or in a decrepit state. Thats about all we did yesterday. I kind of fell asleep earlier than I thought I would. The good news is the cold is defeated!
Day 5, Friday January 16, 2010
So yesterday was really interesting! The day started off kind of crumby as my stomach ached, but got better as the day went on. Before we went to our first meeting at Porter Novelli I walked around union square and bought a moleskin notebook. After walking through different places we walked to Porter Novelli and had a great time talking to Karen about social media PR. Porter Novelli looks like a cool place to work! It also helped that she provided us with milk and cookies. Unfortunately my stomach hurt so I didn’t eat much. Afterwards we went to creative commons and learned all about what they do. Later In the night Megan suggested that we go to The Purple Onion to see some comedy. Because we didn’t prebuy tickets we spent a lot of time waiting in line. When it was just our group and a few other people I noticed this guy that looked like Robin Williams waiting as well. Once the ticket taker realized Robin was there people made room for him to quickly enter. After the first show I got the opportunity to meet him and got my picture taken with he and Rick Overton. Then we were emptied out of the building for the second show and we thought it was cool we saw him. Once we got a seat in the second show we noticed Robin and Rick came back. While we were sitting we noticed Robin was getting close so we asked for a group photo and chit chatted. Later that night Jacob ended up counting wrinkle rings on Rick Overton’s head because he joked that’s how you could tell his age.
Overall it was an entertaining night!
