
How a great idea, a beautiful design, a good pitch, a large following, and a lot of strategic marketing took me further than I dreamed.
In 2013, I had an idea to use an algorithm and create an app to organize you videos and photos on the web. A friend of mine told me about a nationwide competition held at South-by-Southwest for student tech entrepreneurs. At the time I was already running my own program at an organization and wasn’t in school. Within two months of finding out about this competition I enrolled in community college so that I could compete.
Without any coding experience I relied on design and marketing campaigns to overshadow the fact that we had no real product.
Long-story short, we Storyboard became a finalist in the competition. I arrived at SXSW in competition with students from Berkley, MIT, and other universities. Representatives from Google, Square, Foursquare City Guide, and other major tech companies and VC firms were there.
We made it to the end and I finally got asked by Jim Mckelvey (founder of Square)…”I love this idea! Can I download the app?”.
My response.. “Well Jim, there is no app. I made this all on Microsoft Word”. Everyone laughed, including myself. He asked, “How the hell did you make it down here?” (everyone else had a working prototype). I told him, a great idea, a beautiful design, a good pitch, a large following, and a lot of strategic marketing.
We later got offered the opportunity to receive mentorship, Angel Investment seed funding for development, and free office space.
I turned down the opportunity because my passion was in creating opportunities for guys in my city who needed a program that would help them transition out of prison but I learned a lot from the experience.
The main thing I learned was that a great idea, a beautiful design, a good pitch, a large following, and a lot of strategic marketing can do WONDERS for you. I had no coding experience, no technology background, and wasn’t even a student but I made it far with grit, vision, a team, and a brand.
Those who went on to win the competition deserved to be there and win. However, I think in that competition we were the real disrupters.