Startup Weekend

That next big tech event was Baltimore’s first-ever Startup Weekend held on April 17-19, 2011.

On Friday afternoon, I arrived at the Emerging Technology Center, Baltimore’s Technology Incubator, at 8 pm, just in time for the pitches and a quick drink of something. I chugged down an Amstel Light as I glanced around the burgeoning crowd of 150+ 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 severe 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 who attended had ideas), but only about 20 would be asked to demo during startup weekend.

Entrepreneurs brainstorming at 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 skill set needed to make RUNINOut functional by Sunday evening.

There were lots of wonderful ideas — each one of them was an application that I surely had use 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. After much nagging, he relented, and I used that example to segue into my core message that it would be wonderful if I had access to an aggregator that could read Yelp reviews as well as tweets and police reports and provide a customized recommendation based on the sources I choose and the weights assigned to each one.

“I woke up Friday morning and I was delighted to see a Living Social Dollar Lunch coupon available for a myriad of restaurants all over the city.  

I was on my way to Baltimore, heading to Startup Weekend, so I conveniently stopped at a renowned restaurant in Dupont Circle just prior to leaving the city.

The restaurant was cozy with a lovely 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 spread all over the sidewalk and my backpack with my MacBook Pro and Canon camcorder conveniently lifted from my car seat.

I would have hollered if it wasn’t for the pleasant demeanor of a young lady named Tinoi Marché who was already on the phone with the police.   She was having lunch in a restaurant directly across the street and had witnessed the whole ordeal. Shortly before, a vagrant ruffian was pacing up and down 17th Street NW looking into cars.

My Subaru Baja window break-in

A moment later, he shatters my side window, and the thug is seeing running down 17th with a backpack in tow.

By the time I arrived, a mere five minutes had escaped. “If I wasn’t sitting down enjoying my meal, I would have run after him,” she said.

“It would have been worth it. That same clown could steal from me the next day or worse hurt somebody.”

When the officer arrived, he explained to me that there had 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 this?

“Well thanks for calling the cops, and no, I wouldn’t want you to get hurt over a laptop and camera.”

Furthermore, I didn’t really enjoy the lunch. 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 was 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 Bmore. I had an idea to pitch, and I wasn’t gonna let a thug ruin my day.

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.

Pitching at Startup Weekend Baltimore

As a result, I only received six votes, one less than was needed to make the cut of 20 participants. My heart sank. 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 by Sunday.

There were plenty of peeps with brilliant ideas and keen business acumen, but those with expertise in web programming were rarer than genius itself. 

I quickly scurried around the room looking for techies —  noticed that groups were already nestled away in their own groups, brainstorming ideas, hoping to change the universe. Meanwhile, there were a few poor souls, pacing around with great ideas, but no associates to fertilize the soul.

Senodja Walker

That’s when I made a quick call to my prior EMBA classmate. Senodja Walker was home in Laurel, MD., getting ready to call it a day — she had class all day Saturday at GWU and Sunday was a day of rest.

“Senodja, I need you to come and help me demo.”

“How about your classmates from Donnelly’s class?”

“They’re not interested in pursuing the startup — only for the class project.”

“Would love to help, but are you going to be ready?”

“I have no choice. It’s make or break for RUNINOut.”

I also invited 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 unique was how folks who didn’t even know each other before Friday night got together and collaborated so seamlessly 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 highly engaging. Everyone — entrepreneur, developer, marketer — was enormously talented, and all their creative juices gushed out throughout the entire weekend.

Usually, 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 the fantastic demos. I could see myself being a huge user of their apps one day.

“Startup Weekend proves 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.

Ron Schmelzer, Techstars Mentor and Investor chats with Yasmine Mustafa

As I went down the bunny trail, Senodja deftly ran the demo illustrating its value in selecting restaurants by location, occasion and appeal (look and taste).

We are a restaurant search engine that crawls the internet for relevant reviews and trends and creates a comprehensive rating report for each individual. Our algorithm also incorporates the user’s personal preferences 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.

“A site that is a repository for dishes throughout the local area is a brilliant idea,” Ron Schmelzer, a Techstars mentor and investor stated. “The other day, I had the craving for a cheesesteak, and I wanted to know where I could find one.”

“And I love how your site will display the pictures of all the top dishes from my favorite Middle Eastern restaurants,” said Yasmine Mustafa, the CEO, and founder of 123LinkIt. “I was born in Kuwait and moved to Philly when I was eight.”

“As exciting as it is to look at pretty pictures, you’re still needing someone to work behind the scenes doing the coding,” Ron added.

“But can’t we just hire someone to build the site?” I asked.

“Anyone can hire a developer. Look, there are three things a startup needs to succeed — money, talent, and expertise. Right now, you’re missing two of these legs,” Ron said.

Once the demos were over, I was tremendously rewarded from hearing the great vision of these promising entrepreneurs — many of them on the verge of creating products that will change the lives of people in Baltimore, DC, and beyond.

But truth be told, it was apparent once again that we would not make the final cut.

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

(In 2017, Parking Panda was acquired by its competitor, Spot Hero)

I loved hearing about all these fascinating ideas and best of all, meeting and collaborating with extraordinary like-minded entrepreneurs — an invaluable life experience.

Ron again explained that we didn’t place because our team lacked a technical expert. Senodja was an Army officer who would be leading her troops to battle, and Kanita was a law clerk in the DC Superior Courts, hoping to grace the halls of SCOTUS one day.

Together we knew a lot about marketing plans, SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat) Analysis, and product life cycle models, but we lacked the knowledge of one thing that mattered the most – how to write code. What we lacked in technical expertise, we could make up for by being innovative and resourceful. I needed to head west until I found someone that could build the framework for our site.

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