timbuckthree.com

Wow! That was a long, fun, exhausting, and energetic weekend.

The event was at CreateHere in Chattanooga which has a very hip and modern facility. The staff was always helpful and friendly even at 2am on a Saturday night. I’ve said it many times, but I’ll say it again if it wasn’t for the great work of Sheldon Grizzle, Ben Johnson, and Alex Lavidge this weekend wouldn’t have been as successful or fun as it was. Also there were so many people who floated in and out of our team offering help, ideas, and moral support through out the weekend I wouldn’t know where to begin. To all of you who helped, thank you so much!

For a good break down of the projects that came out of 48 Hour Launch go to CreateHere’s post about the weekend. There are a few mistakes and misspellings, but it will give you an idea of what came out of this weekend. The projects range from the power houses that were FloBuckle, HyvMynd, and the extremely intriguing non-profit chattanooga3d.com to smaller scope projects of mStrandz, AllMyStitches, FarmWars!, and our little project, Lokewl.

The whole experience was very positive and extremely collaborative. I had a chance to meet a lot of really fantastically, enthusiastic people from all walks of life. We came in with one idea, left with something related but definitely different.  I think it is a much more solid project and will allow us to expand in several different directions.

It was a fantastic event and even if you don’t have an idea or business you want to try out, you should check out the infectious buzz that happens when there are that many creative people working together in one place. It’s worth a look. Where else can you go to lend your imitation of a farm animal getting zapped by lightening for an iPhone game? Nowhere else, really. If there is a 48 Hour Launch in your area, I whole heartedly suggest you go.

If you are coming with an idea to launch, I offer one caveat. Have your idea down. No, no, no, I mean it really. Know why the people you’re going to try to sell it to would want to use it. Have the market research done. Do as much up front work as you can. Otherwise you’ll spend almost half your time scrambling and readjusting. Trust me.

We came in with a good idea, an iPhone app where people can make to go orders to local restaurants, anything from Mom and Pop to mid sized local restaurants. It’s in the same vein as the Pizza Hut or Dominos apps, but on a local level.  It’s simple, very straightforward, but there was really no initial impetus for a merchant to buy into it other than the cool factor. They would either have to enter in their menus themselves or pay for us to enter it for them. Of course the iPhone would be free for users. We would charge the restaurants a subscription service to be on our system. That would be a tough sell when they can simply take orders through phone or fax today.

Our problem was that we didn’t ask the right questions when we latched onto the orders to go idea. Other than the coolness/high tech factor, why would our target customers want to buy into our product? Even better, why would they not want to buy our product? What problem or pain point was our production going to solve? We didn’t answer those questions. It’s a cool idea and it’s on this really hot, stylish gadget, so why wouldn’t anyone want to try it.  Well, not everyone is as enamored with  technology as people who do nothing but eat, sleep, and breath it everyday. Duh!

That realization came crashing down on our heads around  9pm Friday night. Luckily we had a table full of really smart, passionate people who know to ask those questions. We started looking at it from a different angle and figured out what would be useful and valuable to our customers. Hopefully valuable enough to pay for it.

We took that idea and for the next two days ran with it. We flushed out our use cases. We did market research. We mocked up some screens for both the web site and the iPhone app. We even began putting down the core tables of our data base, but we didn’t have any code to put with our UIs.

We ended up collaborating with HyvMynd that had a database framework that was looking for an front end site. We were a front end site looking for a database. I was a bit hesitant at first to do this, part of this was simply my ego, part wanting to finish this ourselves, and another part not wanting let go of the control of the project (which probably goes back to ego). I’m glad we did work together and I think the end products for both of our teams were very well done.

So what’s next? Well, first rest and sleep then back to the daily life of family, work, and friends. There are a few loose ends to tie up with the name of our project and the business but hopefully those will be tied up within the next week or so.  Let everything settle in. Then get together to see where we stand as a team.