#1 Tapja An interactive childrens E-book for iPad

#2 MyFlashSpy A flash sale aggregator. All flash sale sites in one place. Spy on your favorite brands, spy on over 85+ flash sale sites. All customized to you.

#3 TalkTheatre TalkTheatre is a service that [...]]]> Houston Startup Weekend was last weekend and of the 12 teams that pitched, the winning teams were:

#1 Tapja
An interactive childrens E-book for iPad

#2 MyFlashSpy
A flash sale aggregator. All flash sale sites in one place. Spy on your favorite brands, spy on over 85+ flash sale sites. All customized to you.

#3 TalkTheatre
TalkTheatre is a service that allows independent filmmakers to obtain detailed, granular feedback data from a varied demographic audience for their works in progress.

Now that Tapja has won Houston Startup Weekend, they are eligible for the Global Startup Battle. You can help Tapja win this competition by going to this Facebook page and voting for them.

Unfortunately, the video that is referenced from their voting page has problems and flickers quite a bit. You can view a working copy of the video on the Tapja Facebook page. Feel free to “Like” them while you’re at it.

Jobbawalkie Hype local job searching using Google / [...]]]> This weekend’s Startup Weekend has been an incredibly exciting event. As I write this, teams are frantically preparing their presentations for their pitches this evening. Video of the presentations will be made available after the event, but until then here is some information on the startups that are participating.

Jobbawalkie
Hype local job searching using Google / Bing maps
Web: http://jobbawalkie.com
Twitter: @jobbawalkie

Vidivise
Veni. Vidi . Vici. Face-to-face advice. Instant compentation.
Twitter: @vidivise

SnapHang
Mobile app that allows users to tag art they have seen in public places, share art with friends, find nearby art, and in the long term, buy or rent the art for their home.

ThePointster
The Pointster is a social platform for organizations to motivate and reward members.
Web: http://pointster.net
Twitter: @thepointster
Facebook: The Pointster

Bionic Education
Tech-enabled, high-performance private schools affordable to the middle class
Twitter: @bioniceducation
Facebook: Bionic Education

BuyLeftovers.com
An innovative solution for delivering time-sensitive inventory to new consumers in search of value focused offers. BuyLeftOvers is a system that allows customers to receive SMS and email notifications of time-sensitive offers which are distributed through web or mobile formats. Customers receive a bar-coded voucher with purchase that they are then able to redeem at the supplier’s business.
Web: http://www.buyleftovers.com
Twitter: @buyleftovers
Facebook: Buy Leftovers

Calorify
We’ve all been peer pressured into breaking our health routine or diet to join friends or family out at a restaurant or bar. With Calorify you can make conscious eating choices regardless of where you end up. Coming soon to a smartphone in your pocket!
Twitter: @calorify
Web: http://calorify.me
Web: http://signup.calorify.me

TalkTheatre
“TalkTheatre is a service that allows independent filmmakers to obtain detailed, granular feedback data from a varied demographic audience for their works in progress.

Through the TalkTheatre web site, indie filmmakers can issue private screenings to limited audiences. These viewers are encouraged to give detailed feedback on all aspects of the video. This feedback can then be used by the filmmaker to determine which parts of the film/clip resonated with the audience and influence post-production decisions.”

Web: http://yourtalktheatre.appspot.com

MyFlashSpy.com
“Flash sale aggregator. All flash sale sites in one place. Spy on your favorite brands, spy on over 85+ flash sale sites. All customized to you”
Web: http://www.MyFlashSpy.com
Twitter: @MyFlashSpy
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MyFlashSpy

At The Appointed Time Consulting (Prison Assist)
At The Appointed Time Consulting (Prison Assist) is a not-for-profit organization founded by CEO Nakia Franklin. Beginning with an online community we will focused on providing individuals released from a correctional institution with resources, training, information, internal networks, classes and programs that will encourage successful completion of their supervision and beyond. This will further allow them to have support, services, and mentors that will help them cope through the obstacles of life. They will ultimately have added value in their lives by reducing recidivism and becoming upstanding citizens that contribute to the communities.
Web: http://www.AtTheAppointedTime.com
Facebook: At The Appointed Time (page)

StarvingStudents
Facebook: Starving Students
Web: http://www.wix.com/devonyjackson/starvingstudents

Tapja
Interactive Children E-book for iPad
Twitter: @apptapja
Web: http://www.tapja.com

Javid Jamae: http://javidjamae.com/2011/11/05/startup-weekend-a-schedule-and-plan-of-action/

Austin Fatheree: http://www.rivvir.com/startup_weekend_toolbox/

The Squarefoot: http://www.thesquarefoot.com/houston/startup-weekend-houston-entrepreneurs-kauffman-foundation

After reading these, how could you not want to participate?

We were very excited to learn that StartupHouston was featured in an article about StartupWeekend Houston in last Friday’s Houston Business Journal, however it appears that they gave us too much credit.

While it is true that StartupHouston helped to promote the event, participated in the event, and helped to even find sponsors for the event, the main credit [...]]]>  

We were very excited to learn that StartupHouston was featured in an article about StartupWeekend Houston in last Friday’s Houston Business Journal, however it appears that they gave us too much credit.

While it is true that StartupHouston helped to promote the event, participated in the event, and helped to even find sponsors for the event, the main credit for organizing the event and bringing it to Houston in the first place goes to Erica O’Grady.  You can see the video interview I did with her here where we talked about her being one of the original founders of the event and how she sees Houston startup community evolving.  Many thanks to Erica for getting this started, as well as all of the other great things that she has organized such as Refresh Houston and BarCamp Houston.  We wouldn’t be the same town without her.

We’re also happy that TipDish got a lot of coverage in the article, but TipDish would not have happened if not for the hard work and creativity shown by all of those who attended the event, those who sponsored the event, and those who hosted the event.  So to share the love, I’ve listed them here:

StartupWeekend Houston Founders: 

• Andrew Hyde, Anthony Nguyen, Chris Doelle, Chris Massey, Chris Pitre, Chris Pratt, Chris Schilling, Erica O’Grady, Geri Druckman, Greg Thibodeaux, Gwendolyn Bell, Josh Tabin, Kelsey Ruger, Kurt Stoll, Laura Mayes, Marc Nathan, Marco Ramirez, Marcus Mateus, Matthew Alberty, Matthew Wettergreen, Melissa Garcia, Robert Gremillion, Tony DeMaria 

TipDish Concept

• Laura Mayes came up with the concept for TipDish, and what a great concept it is.  Out of all of the previous startupweekend events, most people think this one has the best chance of making money.  You can see my video interview with her here to see where she got the idea and what’s up with her new venture Sk*rt. 

StartupWeekend Houston Sponsors

• DFJ Mercury, Linux Journal, Tendenci, The Method Agency, The Planet, Mosaic CFO

StartupWeekend Houston Hosts

• The Method Agency generously let us invade their digs for the full weekend and all I could keep telling myself as I looked around was ‘What a cool place to work.’  They said they had an interview with the Mayor there the day after we left.  Hope he helped himself to some leftover pizza and granola.   
• You can see some pics from their office on our Flickr set.

Finally, a big ‘Thank You’ to Andrew Hyde and Gwen Bell for bringing StartupWeekend to Houston.  We appreciate the chance to show the other cities what makes Houston a great place for startups.

If we’ve left anyone out, feel free to drop us a line in our comments section or come tell us about it at our next OpenCoffee Club meetup.

It was clear to me before heading into this weekend that launching a company over the course of 48 hours was stuff of fantasy. Now that the weekend is behind me and I had a chance to catch up on some well needed sleep, I have a different perspective.

TipDish is a social media directory and [...]]]>

It was clear to me before heading into this weekend that launching a company over the course of 48 hours was stuff of fantasy. Now that the weekend is behind me and I had a chance to catch up on some well needed sleep, I have a different perspective.

TipDish is a social media directory and wire service that connects companies, organizations, PR and Marketing Professionals with the leaders and influencers in social media. It exists for two reasons:

• To give influencers direct, targeted access to the latest news and information from communications professionals (Tippers).
• To give communications professionals (Tippers) a smart, easy connection to the right social media influencers (Dishers)

I’ve been involved in several startups,, in a variety of shapes and sizes. I can safely say that this was the most educational of them all.
Rapid startup is becoming the new medium. Amazon Web Services is currently running a startup challenge that comes with over $100,000 in prizes to the winner. The winner is judged from entrants that operate or have launched an application that is “leveraging AWS to build its infrastructure and business.” I have several friends with companies utilizing different AWS tools and I am impressed with what Amazon has created. It is a business in a box.

This weekend we did not use AWS for our infrastructure: we went with a sponsored dedicated server from our friends at The Planet and Ruby on Rails as the development platform. We had a group of eager and hungry young entrepreneurs who worked their tails off to create content, a user interface and a marketing plan. Some of us “not so young” folks contributed with our experience by setting milestones for the weekend to keep the weekend on target. The biggest challenge for the team was making sure we spent time on important items that helped us achieve the goal of launching and not getting sidetracked on collateral issues.

Part of what is difficult about the Startup Weekend challenge is that building a web 2.0 business requires some planning before development can build the application. The user interface team worked hard all Friday night to get wireframes in the development team’s hands by early Saturday. This gave the dev team about 30 or so hours to go from start to completion on the application. I don’t know about you but I would not feel comfortable launching anything after 30 hours of coding. That is not a knock on our development team who I think did a fantastic job of getting something out the door.

So let’s break down the weekend (we started at 6PM Friday night and went until 9PM Sunday night so we are ticking off 51 hours):

• 3 hours to meet and pitch our ideas (48 to go)
• 1 hour to discuss and select our project (47 to go)
• 1 hour to break into teams and identify what needs to get done (46 to go)
• 10 hours to define the business model and market (36 to go)
• 3 hours to build wireframes and set site design (33 to go)
• 33 hours to code and launch based on 18 hours of planning

That’s a tall order for anyone. I challenge you to do better. Perhaps at the next Startup Weekend in Houston?

I plan to see where we can take TipDish. I hope this is just the beginning and not the end. We shall see.

Monica Danna, editor of the Houstonist blog stopped by today to do some guest blogging. You can check out her first post here.

[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/clip:324065[/vimeo]

StartupWeekendHouston does Yoga to relax from Startup Houston on Vimeo.

Want to take some time to [...]]]> So how do the people here at StartupWeekendHouston decompress after a long day or development session. Why Yoga of course! At least a version of it that Gwendolyn Bell shared with us. Here is the video below.

[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/clip:324065[/vimeo]

StartupWeekendHouston does Yoga to relax from Startup Houston on Vimeo.

Want to take some time to decompress? You can also see all of the other videos that we have taken at StartupHouston for the event on Vimeo here and see all of our Flickr photos here.

Here is what the team has been able to [...]]]> So now that we have the first 24 hours of Startup Weekend – Houston under our belt, here are my initial thoughts:

• Developers, developers, developers;
• It is hard to avoid the feature creep;
• Everyone is a marketing expert;
• Market research is of UTMOST importance;
• Pizza can get old quickly; and
• Developers, developers, developers.

Here is what the team has been able to accomplish so far:

• Business model well defined
• User interface done (for the most part)
• Positioning is forming, but we keep getting stuck in the weeds on small stuff
• Development work coming along but slower than hoped due to lack of development resources

This is turning out to be an eye opening experience as it relates to Houston, Web 2.0 and entrepreneurship. I plan on packing it in shortly but will be back online tomorrow to dish out some more tips on the experience.

Right now it looks like the group is leaning towards TipDish. It’s catchy, and it has 8 characters or less in it’s name (which is what Gwendolyn Bell tells us) and we’ve come up with a way to use the name to describe people who use the service (Tippers for the [...]]]> The top names are:

• TipDish
• MediaConnectr
• MediaMatchup

Right now it looks like the group is leaning towards TipDish. It’s catchy, and it has 8 characters or less in it’s name (which is what Gwendolyn Bell tells us) and we’ve come up with a way to use the name to describe people who use the service (Tippers for the PR firms that use the service and Dishers for bloggers and other media outlets that will cover their info).

Update: We have officially decided to go with TipDish as our business name. Keep your eyes on TipDish.com for more.