I was attending the monthly Freelancers, 3rd Sunday meetup in Burma Restaurant in Chinatown on a crisp February morning. A week ago, the Year of the Rabbit was ushered in with ceremonial lion dancing and a festive parade down H Street under the iconic arch. The second-floor restaurant is popular with local politicos such as Mayor Adrian Fenty and Attorney General Eric Holder.
One particular patron was having difficulty deciding on an order. He constantly ordered the Burmese Mango Pork and with the delectable pieces of pork braised with pickled mango; it simmered a lasting impression which he often savored in his sleep. With the advent of the new year, he wanted to branch out and broaden his culinary horizon. But indecisiveness gripped him, and John Tinpe, the owner, server and chef was getting a tad impatient since he had a whole dining room of guests.
“I can’t decide between the Fish Curry and Tamarind Fish. Why don’t you just choose for me,” he relented.
“Wouldn’t it be great if all 30 of us could order from the phones,” DW, the event organizer, stated. “Too many people, too little time.”
“And wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could discover who ordered what dishes in the past,” mentioned his son David. “If I knew that a particular friend enjoyed a certain dish, that gives, it would provide instant validation.”
So when the last dish was served, and all the attendees were satiated, I gingerly approached John with these latent issues.
John was beyond receptive. “Why don’t you build me a prototype where people can order dishes from their phones and choose the favorite ingredients and spices.”
“One customer always orders the Mango Pork, the other prefers Coconut Chicken Curry,” DW chimed in. “Maybe they should be a little adventurous and switch orders next time.”
The following month, Senodja Walker and I were brainstorming during Professor Donnelly’s New Ventures Class at the George Washington University.
“So the site will provide faceted search where you can choose your cuisine, type of dish, ingredients and taste preferences,” I stated.
“Not only that, but you can choose your mood and ambience,” Senodja added. “Last weekend, i was going on a date night with hubby and the babysitter watching the kids. So we wanted something romantic with a nice view and no distractions.”
“Perfect, and if you like sports like me, you can select the team that you like to watch, and it’ll tell you which pubs to visit. If you’re a Falcons fan, you definitely don’t want to stumble blindly into a Saints bar.”
“Got a name for the site?”
I reflected back at my last visit to Europe and remembered the sage words from Mark and Marcy.
“Yes, totally RUNINOut,” I responded.
“Like running out of food?”
“No, like Researching, Understanding, Negotiating, Innovating, Navigating.”
“How did you come up with that acronym?”
“I took a trip to Europe in January and learned a lot about understanding other people and building bridges, so I wanted to innovate to make that happen.”
I remembered the sage words from Arthur Magee of Belfast “The key to life is to recognize the importance of each and single person to reach out, to build bridges and to see other people as exactly that, other people.”
I decided to propose this idea at Baltimore’s first ever Startup Weekend that April.
So I arrived at the Emerging Technology Center, Baltimore’s Technology Incubator at 8pm just in time for the pitches and a quick drink of something. I chugged an Amstel Light down as I glanced around the burgeoning crowd of 150 plus of Type-A people. Many developers and entrepreneurs had used the time wisely over the last two hours to get to know each other and to sell their ideas. Not knowing anyone, I was already at a serious disadvantage — and I needed people to vote for my idea, or else I wouldn’t make the cut.
We made our one-minute pitches in a large hallway with no chairs and barely room to crawl — just the floor to sit on and the person next to me to lean on. There were over 75 pitches that night (more than half of the people attended had ideas), but only about 20 would be asked to demo during startup weekend.
Most of the people there were Business, marketing types with less than half being developers — me being an MBA communications type and designer, finding a developer was the one critical skillset needed to make RUNIN Out functional by Sunday evening.
There were lots of wonderful ideas — each one of them was an application that I surely had need for.
Mappable links, text-relationship manager, social charitable giving, checking your health online and via SMS, a mobile site that lets you rent out your driveway, crowdsourcing advice on what you should wear via Twitter, determine ad potential for sites, etc.
When my turn came up, I asked Mike Brenner, if he would allow me to tell the story of my car getting broken into. He allowed me to do so, and I used that example to segue into my core message that it would be wonderful if I had an aggregator that could read Yelp reviews as well as Twitter and police reports and provide a customized recommendation based on the sources I choose and the weights assigned to each one.
The pitch was well received, but when it got time for the voting, everyone was given three sticky notes to place on the the wall pads of each idea. Because there were so many pitches, some of the pads were spread out further down the hall where less people congregated.
“I woke up Friday morning and I was really happy. That’s because sitting in my inbox was a Living Social Dollar Lunch to dozens of restaurants all over the city.
I was on my way to Baltimore, heading to Startup Weekend, so just prior to leaving the city, I conveniently stopped at a very nice restaurant in Dupont Circle.
The restaurant was cozy with a nice ambience. But because I wanted to arrive in Baltimore before the rush hour traffic, I grabbed something to go and quickly returned to my car, only to find window glass all over the sidewalk and my backpack with my MacBook Pro and Canon camcorder was conveniently lifted from my car seat.
I would have screamed if it wasn’t for the pleasant demeanor of a young lady who was already on the phone with the police. She was having lunch in a restaurant directly across the street and had seen the whole thing — a vagrant thug was walking up and down 17th Street NW looking into cars.
A moment later, glass shatters all over the sidewalk and the thug is seeing running down 17th with a backpack in tow.
By the time I arrived, a mere five minutes had escaped. I was livid. When the officer arrived he explained to me that there has been a rash of break-ins lately. If I had taken the time to look at SpotCrime, I would have found this out, but who does have the time.
Furthermore, I didn’t really enjoy the lunch downtown. I didn’t have a chance to read consumer reviews from sites like Yelp because, well, I just didn’t have the time.
The first thing I did after I called the police was to post an update on Facebook that my car was broken into and my laptop stolen. Mike Brenner organizer of Startup Weekend Baltimore immediately contacted me and informed me that they could easily refund my money.
I thanked Mike for the offer but said heck no. Come hell or high water I was heading to Baltimore. I had an idea to pitch and I wasn’t quitting until I made it.”
The pitch was well received, but when it got time for the voting, everyone was given three sticky notes to place on the the wall pads of each idea. Because there were so many pitches, some of the pads were spread out further down the hall where less people congregated.
As a result, I only received six votes, one less than was needed to make the cut of 20. I was in dire straits. I went to see Mike who informed me that although I didn’t make the cut, I was still welcomed to demo as long as I could gather a team and build a prototype.
There were plenty of people with ideas and business acumen, but those with expertise in computer and Web programming were in short supply.
I quickly scurried around the room looking for techies — noticed that groups were already nestled away in their own spots brainstorming ideas. Meanwhile there were a few of us pacing around with great ideas, but no team members wanting to make it happen.
That’s when I made a quick call to Senodja. Senodja Walker was home in Virginia, getting ready to call it a day — she had class all day Saturday at GWU but had signed up for the Sunday demo session in Baltimore.
“Senodja, I need you to come and help me demo.”
“Certainly, but are we going to be ready?”
“We have no choice. It’s make or break for RUNIN Out.”
I invited my roommate, Kanita Williams, to join us in our strategy session and throughout the weekend, all the different groups worked hard to refine their business models.
What was truly amazing was how folks who didn’t even know each other before Friday night get together and collaborate so beautifully to create a product, a business model and a polished presentation in a mere 54 hours.
On Sunday, the event culminated with presentations by all 20+ groups. Though it would be a long night, all the presenters were extremely engaging. Everyone — entrepreneur, developer, marketer — were enormously talented and all their creative juices gushed out throughout the entire weekend.
Normally, I hate lectures, but I completely loved listening to what these innovative minds had to say. The best part of all the hard work was finally sitting down with an open mind and listening to all the fantastic demos. I could see myself being a huge user of their apps one day.
“Startup Weekend is proving that there is enough critical mass to build a sustainable startup culture in Baltimore similar to what Boston has done,” said Ron Schmelzer, a mentor and judge
RUNINOut presented midway through the demos. I started out with the car break in story.
What was truly amazing was how folks who didn’t even know each other before Friday night get together and collaborate so beautifully to create a product, a business model and a polished presentation in a mere 54 hours.
On Sunday, the event culminated with presentations by all 20+ groups. Though it would be a long night, all the presenters were extremely engaging. Everyone — entrepreneur, developer, marketer — were enormously talented and all their creative juices gushed out throughout the entire weekend.
Normally, I hate lectures, but I completely loved listening to what these innovative minds had to say. The best part of all the hard work was finally sitting down with an open mind and listening to all the fantastic demos. I could see myself being a huge user of their apps one day.
“Startup Weekend is proving that there is enough critical mass to build a sustainable startup culture in Baltimore,” said Ron Schmelzer, a mentor and judge
RUNINOut presented midway through the demos. I started out with the car break in story.
As I told the story, Senodja deftly ran the demo illustrating its value in selecting restaurants by location, occasion and appeal (look and taste).
We are a personalized experience portal that crawls the internet for relevant reviews and trends and creates a comprehensive rating report that is personalized to the individual’s specific preferences. Our algorithm also incorporates expert review ratings and the user’s personal preferences. RUNINOut’s food genome creates a personalized food profile for each user based on the latest input, restaurant selections, types of images clicked and user feedback. Like Pandora for music, the more you interact with RUNINOut, the better it gets to know you.
“This is brilliant,” Ron stated “You wanna create a site that is a repository for dishes throughout the local area.”
“And I love how your site will show the pictures of all the main dishes from all my favorite restaurants,” said Yasmine.
Once the demos were over, I was tremendously rewarded by sensing the great vision of all these promising entrepreneurs, many of them will one day become ultra successful and create products that will change the lives for everyone now and for the future.
3rd place: Dapprly + Talkchalkco Dapprly is a Twitter application that allows a person to model outfit options and let the masses tweet-vote for which is best. Talk Chalk is a Facebook app for students, teachers, and parents, allowing for virtual homework assignments and game-style award incentives for doing them.
2nd place: ispylocal : a business that plans to put banners in vacant storefronts, providing a phone number and text system in which passers-by can call and vote for what business they’d like to see move in.
1st place: Parking Panda: a mobile app business designed to connect people who have available parking spaces and those looking for a cheap spot near a busy event
Yes I loved all these ideas and more. One crowd favorite: Greenlyyt , an IPhone application that lets users find nightclubs frequented by single people.
But best of all, meeting and collaborating with wonderful like-minded friends and colleagues — invaluable experience for life.
Ron and the other judges loved our idea. But we didn’t place in the top three because our team lacked a technical expert. Senodja and I were both MBA students, and Kanita was a law clerk in DC. Together we knew a lot about marketing plans and the product life cycle models, but we didn’t know how to code.
“So are you going to hire someone local?” Kanita asked.
”The prices in this town are way too high due to a huge government contracts.”
“Then why don’t you outsource the work to India?”
“I want to find a team from North America who understands our culture, our food, our history.”
“Where will you go to find them?”
“Dunno, but this summer, I’m hitting the road and hope to find someone who can be the last piece of our jigsaw puzzle.”
“Are you heading west to Silicon Valley?”
“West for sure, then traveling through California and as far north as the road takes me.”
