On taking chances…
Last weekend was unarguably the best weekend of my life. It was the kind of weekend I’d forever chase and try to recreate. It started on Friday, when I got a message about The Lagos Startup Weekend.
“A weekend to connect with people driven to build something new, get exposed to the core knowledge of Entrepreneurship and win cool prizes if your idea impresses the Judges.”
After checking it out, curiousity got the better of me so I registered for the event. Three of my female co-devs and I went there in a light mood. We went with the mindset of being observers and having fun. We didn’t plan to participate; we just wanted to listen to and encourage people’s ideas, eat free food and go home. It was just us taking a chance, unsure of what to expect, but being open to the possibilities.
We listened to other attendees pitch their ideas. One caught our attention and we found ourselves rooting for Unibrow’s (don’t even ask) idea of reducing the menace of petroleum sale discrepancies in the country. Together, we made a team of six, consisting of three “not-so-serious” ladies and three guys to work on the awesome idea. That same day, a WhatsApp group was created to facilitate easy communication on what is expected of us, share individual roles and deliberate on a stipulated time for the next day meeting which was a Saturday. Then, it dawned on me that this was no joke nor was it about the food.
The next day, we broke the team into four sub-teams: hardware prototyping (using 3D printing and an Arduino), Web development (to produce a demo), Business development (to talk to potential clients and form a business model) and app prototyping with social media (for a use case). Mine involved building our social media presence and prototyping the model of the application. Yeah, I like to toot my own horn. On the last day which was a Sunday, teamwork continued and we even got into a small argument over delayed activities which in hindsight, contributed to the awesomeness of the weekend. Every story needs a little conflict, right? I managed to soak up some patience lessons as I tried not to get angry in the middle of the argument.
If you live in Nigeria and buy fuel frequently, you will understand the problem from the snapshot below:
Our team, Flowbyte, came up with a device that calculates the exact amount of fuel being sold to consumers, confirms that the consumer is getting the right volume for their cash and checks for irregularities. We made a prototype that linked with a front-end platform designed to simulate how the device works. Our device is designed to interface with the fuel nozzle, and have a housing for the electronics.
When fuel is being transferred into the fuel tank, it passes through the device and gets measured in the process. This result is computed immediately and displays on an LCD screen on the side of the device. The results displayed is the volume of the fuel that passed through the device in litres, this helps the consumer to compare the volume of litres bought compared to litres displayed, hence detecting any form of discrepancies or meter tampering. Watch our space on twitter @getflowbyte for more information and updates with its development.
We presented our solution which was a prototype of this device and guess what? WE WON, OH YES — WE DID. What started out to be a calm relaxing outing, turned out to be a learning and rewarding life changing event. I leave you to look out for me in this snapshot!!!
Does this story have any morals? Sure! Enjoy life while you can, learn to catch fun around circumstances because you never can tell where it leads you to. Life is too valuable to live like everyone else. Get the vibes, meet new people, explore, and engage in activities that give your soul peace and happiness.
It was really overwhelming though. I don’t think these words are enough to describe how magical my weekend was. Sharing it here is my way of preserving the memory and sharing it with you all.
I called it a life changing event because it qualified us to participate in the Global startup challenge and I’ll endear you to kindly vote for my team. The following links are the web URLs to vote for us in different tracks:
Here’s to the weekend.
