Startup Bus: Trial by Mentors

Part One

Serendipity

Having gone to many hackathons, 18 in the two years before this writing, and a similar competition, Entrepreneurship Immersion Week Fall 2014, you would think Startup Bus would be a breeze. The concept is that you are loaded onto a bus with up to 25 strangers, form teams, and build a business within 72 hours while traveling to a destination; in our case this was Boulder, Colorado for Startup Week. However this trip had the most bizarre personal experiences I have ever come across since starting my journey of entrepreneurship and making. The beginning of which was getting approval from my boss, who did not approve at first.

I asked my boss if I could do this and they said it would be best not to. Two hours later they called me into their office and said it was really a choice that I should make. The days leading up to Startup Bus saw the close finish line of a project I was working on at my job. The project met a point where I could not contribute anymore. My boss told me they had two big projects they want me to work on but they have not been signed off on yet. This worked out in both of our favors because I was able to do Startup Bus and they wouldn’t have to come up with tasks for me to do.

With my boss leaving it up to me I had no reason not to go. I started budgeting and would be able to make it with a few dollars left to spare until my next paycheck when I got back. That is, until I received the Northeast Ohio Student Venture Fund scholarship. This scholarship was provided by combined grants from the Burton D. Morgan Foundation and Knight Foundation. The total amount of $1000 would cover pretty much all of my expense and allow me to budget more appropriately, since I’m still paying off school. Considering this was the first scholarship I have ever received in my entire life, though I’ve applied to many, it seemed as if everything was working in my favor and I definitely had no reason to say no.

Let’s Get Social

Like any competition where people are randomly selected we were given access to a forum where we could talk about ourselves but not about ideas or team forming. I jumped right into interacting with people trying to find out as much information as we could about the trip and what we would do after the competition since it ended on a Thursday. A lot of people wanted to stay in Boulder after the competition so we could explore and relax before going home. After a few days of talking I did some searching for an AirBnB, I found one and made a request to book. Right away the owners accepted the offer, but no one on the Startup Bus committed to staying. Time to hustle.

I posted as much as possible about the house, the rates, how much fun it would be if we all lived in the same place for a weekend. Right away the number of people committed to staying surpassed the number of people allowed to stay at the house. I messaged the AirBnB owner and they cut me a deal for the whole house. I ended up making a Sheet with formulas that listed how much each person owed based on; how long they were staying and if they preferred their own bed. This was the beginning of stories I can’t tell.

Coincidence Part One

While all of this was going on I had found out about a local event called Hack The Arts. I don’t usually go to events but I signed up anyways because one of the people at the event was featured in the same article as me, also one of my co-workers was going. Upon arrival I made it a point to talk to this person, Bill Myers, within the first few minutes we became best friends, akin to the scene in Step Brothers. I asked Bill about what he does and he could barely get the word “Startup Bus” out of his mouth without giving me chills. We both stared into each others eyes wondering about the possibilities that could unfold if we teamed up. After a brief enlightenment we both snapped back to reality, not virtual, and started talking about what we would want to do. We agreed to keep our meeting a secret and to not plan to work together without meeting the other busprenuers for the sake of competition, this agreement didn’t matter.

Launch Party

I met Bill on a Tuesday and that coming weekend was when Startup Bus was leaving. We had a launch party hosted by Wastebits on Saturday. This was a time for the busprenuers to finally meet in person but still not form teams and work on ideas. Right away I was able to pick people out based on what we discussed online in the forum. This made it easier to connect with people. Being involved in the entrepreneurship ecosystem, by working at LaunchNet at Kent State, and doing various pitch competitions in the past few years also helped. The atmosphere among everyone though still seemed to be that no one had any idea what they got themselves into, whether they were even cut out to do it, but they all were very excited. I had the same feeling as well. During one of my conversations someone was telling me how they weren’t sure if they were supposed to be there, everyone else was so young and they have never done anything like this before. I told them that they were there for a reason. We were all interviewed and picked, if the conductors didn’t think we should be there then we wouldn’t have been chosen.

We all went to bed as if it was Christmas night and we were waiting for Santa. The next day some of us even expressed how we barely slept because we were so anxious.

Always Be Pitching

Once the bus started rolling we listen to a speech by the conductors and they we all had to standup, go to the front of the bus, and pitch an idea. A lot of people had really good ideas and things that I could see being turned into businesses in the future. Some people didn’t have ideas and relied on talking about what they do, which was also helpful. After this we were given time to walk around and try to form teams. The general consensus at the time was, how bad ass would it be if our whole bus worked on the same project or if we formed a company with each team working on a specific project for that company’s goal. This idea also centered on automated parenting where each team could pick a project or problem with parenting and help build it. Then we would present as each team and subliminally explain to the judges who each team was part of a larger company that we all formed. This idea didn’t pan out past the first day unfortunately.

The idea I pitched, one that I’ve been thinking about for a few years and have pitched before, was rebuilding education around Virtual and Augmented reality. My pitch it: What if students could follow Paul Revere as he travels from Lexington to Concord when the British start moving troops. At any point the students can zoom out and see where the British actually are. Students could also pause, rewind, and fast-forward so they could learn at their own pace in an environment that is more visual, audible, and haptic than learning in a current class room. At the same time teachers can provide their own questions, quizzes or tests so students can be tested while interacting. This could then all be used at home as well because most smartphones have Virtual Reality capabilities and Google is even giving away Google Cardboard in cereal boxes.

I did my rounds, made some suggestions to teams on how to make an MVP, minimal viable product, out of their idea and then found Bill. Bill pitched a virtual reality idea where he wanted to create experiences that were accessible to everyone. So people that couldn’t travel could visit places and truly feel like they were there. Our team formed around Bill in a really no fluid way. A lot of people were just standing in the same place talking because it was hard to move on the bus. Everyone around us was talking but no one really formed teams and we were nearing our first stop. I don’t remember if there was any official “Hey this is great let’s all work together” it just kind of happened.

Seriously MVP

Our team knew we wanted to make some sort of experience with virtual reality. Like every company we went through a lot of talking, changing ideas, and drawing on the windows. One of the biggest hurdles for us was the bus theme. This year buses had themes and our, because we’re properly located in a manufacturing region in the USA, was the maker theme. Our team loved the theme but we struggled finding the proper fit within our product to create an MVP. Our ideas were all over the place. For one idea we would provide a DIY wheelchair to educate the public on how wheelchair bound people view the world and teach them how virtual reality would bring entertainment to them. Another idea was to create an affiliate program through Make. We would teach people how to work with an arduino virtually and then when they are comfortable enough building their own circuits they would be able to sign up for a subscription box to actually make what they wanted to.

Our discussion of these ideas were extensive and allowed us to express our creativity early on and find our roles, for whenever we would eventually move forward. No matter what our ideas always had the same values; Virtual Reality, Experiences, Make. We met with our mentors throughout the day and I believe by our first meeting we had kind of finalized on doing Virtual Reality training for maker spaces.

Our new goal, though not completely thought out at the time, was to provide virtual training for common equipment in maker spaces. This centered on the lower level equipment that does not have any previous certification or high level training needed. Basically this was centered on learning how 3D Printers, Laser Cutters, Water Jet Cutters, and tools of that nature worked. The goal was to penetrate the 80/20 aspect of teaching. We wanted to clear up the 80% of basic questions most people have when first using these tools and allow the latter 20% of the questions to be answered by workers in the Maker Spaces.

Overall from our teams experience we know that maker spaces have an on boarding process where people need to be trained on equipment. For maker spaces at Schools, Universities, and even some local ones this is highly unfeasible to train every single person. The problem is that these location don’t always have enough staff, or not all of the staff know all of the equipment. This creates a long wait list for people wanting to be trained and eventually some lose interest. We wanted to provide this training virtually. We also found that our training, because it’s more hands on, would help break the barrier of entry for those who may be too scared to approach a maker space or felt that regular training through videos didn’t teach them enough to feel comfortable using this equipment.

End of Part One

This is the end of part one. In the next part I will talk about our experience with the mentors, pitching, and how some of startup bus spent the rest of their time in Colorado.