In50hrs : India's Premier Idea-to-Prototype Platform

We have all seen the adverts and the search for the perfect co-founders: The Hacker Ninjas, Rockstar designers, the Designer Gurus, The Pixel Movers, but hackerstreet has been home to one of the most elegantly written co-founder post that We've come across in a while.

Which got us thinking - What does the right pitch look like, when you are looking for a teammate with a complimentary skillset? This applies when you want to try it for In50hrs, or be it for the startup ahead.

1. Lose the Jargon

When you are writing, you want to assume that the person you are talking to, doesnt get flattered by the jargons out there - big data, analytics (or in the last five years, Social Media), etc etc might not get the attention of anyone. But if you are specific to the point to exactly the core technology you are using, you might get some crisp and sharp eyes on your post. Getting to the point, helps.

2. Lose the Adjectives

We do not believe you are looking for an actual Ninja. Provided that, you will attract the wrong kind of audience - mostly aspiring, but not there yet types - who are the wrong audience for you, and the job at hand.

3. Introduce yourself, not by how you see yourself, but by how others see you.

I have yet to see a post that says "I am known to make some major leaps of faith, i fall often, but i always learn a thing or two out of it - atleast the hope I hope so - and get back on the horse", adding to it, experience in the domain (if you are the business guy), and the kind of places you've worked in will get you bonus points. Keep it real.

4. Explain the venture that you've set yourself to embark on

This is the toughest, because anyone with an idea is brimming with excitement and there is no blemish, but only a bed of roses and all thorns are ignored. In our opinion, thats the wrong start to a venture, it means infact that you are still short of your research. Writing about your venture in a realistic sense, who the competition is, and the opportunity you are after, will win you some very special brownie points. Remember to face your fears early on than later.

5. Explain what you bring to the table

Make it very very clear. If we are looking for a co-founder out in the open, go as wide and complementary as possible. Most co-founders who are friends tend to carry overlapping skillsets, but if you are looking out, see if you can make it complementary. But first, and if there is trust to be built, make it very clear what you bring to the table.

6. Why is this different, new and why should anyone care?

There must be an assumption as to why you believe this makes sense. For Freshdesk for eg, that case was simple. "There is a large number of Small and Medium enterprises that are using Zendesk and as shown in the hackernews thread discussion, they are increasing the price and there seems to be a large unmet audience"

7. What you are looking for in a teammate

Spell it out. What are you exactly looking for in a teammate? Are you expecting the other person to go meet other people? travel? make sales? and keep in mind that the roles are equal, and one is not blatantly holding more power than the other.

8. What is the End goal?

Are you looking for a teammate for a competition, a hackathon, an idea-to-prototype event, or is the plan to do a startup? If a startup, what would be the commitment and is there funding / avenues to raise money - all of that would have to be laid out. Lets say you already have a team and product in place and you want to experiment with some new ideas - and this might not become a new startup, but just a new product to your existing line, then make sure its clear in the messaging.

9. Wear their hat.

Imagine life from the other side of the table. Lets say you are a developer with mad skills or a designer with a good sense of colors, lines and design. Or an ideasmith who has a knack for spotting opportunities. What are each of these looking for in an ideal teammate? What would get their juices flowing to want to partner with anyone. Make sure that somewhere in the pitch, that is covered - a technologist/developer joins a team for many many reasons - might be for money, might be for the thrill of learning something, might be just for fun, but make sure you know what you can promise and deliver on.

10. The Essentials: Clarity and Modesty

In everything carry a sense of modesty. This is a partnership you make towards a venture - and its risky and there are rough seas ahead. Keep things simple and straightforward early on. Be modest - better yet be yourself.

Need an example? Check out the post in Hackerstreet.

Note: Sitting on an Idea, that you would like to prototype and validate? Participate in the upcoming In50hrs - coming across Chennai, Bangalore, Pune and Delhi. Register Now

Great amount of tussle for finish the prototypes fast.  

The hotcake idea of the event was iWish.

iWish: A Social Network to Huddle and make your Wishes come true. Well, everyone has wishes. Some come true and some don't. Most don't come true as most dream of the craziest things possible. Nevertheless, they are dreams and there isn't a limit. So, there came iWish, from Radhika Singh and Milanpreet Kaur. iWish lets you add-in your dreams to their social network and lets you know if there is someone(like you) wishing for/dreaming about getting a similar dream, enabling you to huddle with such and live it for real. 

We had around 26 Participants with 7 Mentors and 4 Jurors at the Venue, Persistent Systems, showcasing 7 Prototypes on the Demo Evening.

List of Prototypes that got demoed:

• Ubique: Add Topics to your Conversation. Google Groups, Facebook Groups, Whatsapp Groups have conversations happening all the time. But there comes a point when the group is left barren due to the lack of topics to talk about. Ubique is aims to solve that. How? By pushing-in new topics that are related to the past conversations in the group or anything breaking.

• Pingstry: An App Database tailored to find the apps you are looking for. There are a zillion apps across various marketplaces. There is no simple way, yet, for anyone to find an app that they want other than typing in the name of the app. Pingstry lets you search based on categories, mix and match of features, and discover the apps you didn't know, they exist.

• Event Kiosk: A iPad App to find in-event information. Finding who's at the event, who's speaking, who's who is a pain when one happens to drop-in at an event. Event Kiosk aims at solving the problem of getting the information right when people check-in at the event venue enabling them to discover all the information they want, on an iPad, docked at various points in the venue area.

• FYIP: Authentic n Social Product Review Database. In the current era of Electronics, it's hard to find reviews that you can trust. FYIP aims to solve the problem by being a social base for authentic reviews where friends and family could easily make decisions of buying the products without having to budge too much on the thought process.

• AdsHub: A New-age D2D2C Advertisement Platform for Mobile. Every Developer obviously wishes to see many, download his/her app and use it. But in reality, though a lot of love the app, the download doesn't quite skyrocket. AdsHub aims at enabling developers to publish ads of other apps in a peer to peer fashion hence enabling more downloads from the users.

• Project Resolution: A Cheat Sheet for Android App Developers. It's a pain for an Android Developer to get real world, accurate information like Resolution, Touch Density, Battery and such about the current devices. Project Resolution is a cheat sheet that has all the information a developer would need before launching his/her app, hence enabling to pick the devices he/she would trust. 

A Big Thank You to all the Mentors and Jury who helped shape Ideas to Interesting Prototypes with their valuable Inputs and Feedbacks.  

Mentors - Akshay Mathur from ShopSocially, Sarang Lakare from IntouchApp, Amol Vedak from MobileWare, Aditya Kulkarni from Pubmatic, Sahil Khan from The Tossed Salad, Patanjali Somayaji from Motorola, Amit Dixit from FirstFuel Software.

Jurors - Roby John from June Software, Arun Prabhudesai from RedBus, Sagar Bedmutha from Optinno Mobiletech, Parag Dhanuka from Nexus VP. 

Some great words about the event: 

"Enthusiastic People All Around" - Akshay Mathur

"Best Event Attended Till Date" - Pratik Nikam

Facebook Album of the event -> https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.526239354076256.122227.427343437299182&type=1&l=087b27a6c0

In50hrs Bangalore was a blast! Great amount of energy and a ton of ideas got pitched.

The hotcake idea of the event was Design A-Board.

Design A-Board - An Interior Designer Palette on the Web. We all go through different interior designs magazines and dream about the picture perfect house while talking to an interior designer but when it comes to reality, we realize that as there is a huge communication gap between the designer and you as the mediums used are broken and there is not a simple solution for a designer to just showcase the best picks for the house like the type of flooring, the shades of paint and the subtle things for the decor. So came the Idea "Design A-Board" from an Interior Designer, Taru and the Hacker, Shubanshu.

We had around 38 Participants with 8 Mentors and 7 Jurors at the Venue, ThoughtWorks and went house full during the Demo Evening.

List of Prototypes that got demoed -

• Hunger Free India: A Portal to give away excess food cooked. India is a country where population needs no mention. Everyday, we hear about hunger-stricken stories and at the same time, amount of food wastage that’s done in several restaurants, malls and such. Hunger Free India aims at solving the problem by connecting Food Donors to Takers to achieve a Hunger Free India.

• SocioG:  A Kickstarter for High Impactful Social Causes. Every time we come come across a newspaper article that talks about something cool, something innovative, something that could be a social game changer, we have a slight rush of blood in the head to help such causes solve big problems. SocioG helps you discover such projects and lets you be a part of it.

• G-Track: Realtime Tracking of Heavy Vehicles. It’s a tremendous pain for a logistic chain to keep a track of all the shipments in real time and there is no cost effective solution in the market that could be viable to any. G-Track aims at solving the problem in a very simple fashion. Adding to that, they wanted to bring in on-the-fly fuel and engine check system on board

• Get Driving: A Portal to find the best driving schools. Finding a nearby driving school from peers is fairly easy but when the point comes to finding good ones, women friendly, there is no way out. Get Driving is the perfect pitstop for that.

• Speechly: A “Voice” based Social Network for Mobiles. In the current age of Open Social Networks, text has been ‘the’ only primary means of communications limiting interactions. Speechly aims at taking this a step further by enabling users to leave a voice message for people to interact. Aiming at Non-English speaking Countries and the Rural population set.

• Source-it: Tech Enabling the Mom-and-Pop Shop. Every Time you wish to get something from a nearby ‘Kirana’ shop, you’d be like, “What’s the number?”, “Would they have it?” and so on. Source-it aims at solving the problem.

• Real Estate GIS: Precise Real Estate data on a Map. Most site these days talk about ‘availability’ of places to buy, places to rent and so on. When it comes to the point of tapering to your needs, you are lost in oblivion. Real Estate GIS lets you find every tiniest detail of information you need in a very intuitive format, on a map.

• 50focal: Video Production and Publisher for Corporates. A lot of events happen in a company and most that happen, are internal. The video capture quality of most look as though they’ve come out of a blind alley as most are not really professional and even if they are, they are just put up on a hard disk and be long forgotten. 50focal aims at solving the problem also enabling the corporates to manage their video lot in a much better format.

• My Share Plex: A portal to exchange unwanted goods. In this electronic era, we tend to buy just too many unwanted products and this, of late has become an ongoing phenomena. My Share Plex makes it easy for someone to put up their product on the website and the site automatically figures out the credibility of it, making it easy for anyone to buy it with ease.

• One Bucket List: Bucket Listing Made Easy. Everybody dreams. Places, Cars, Exotic Food and what not. One Bucket List is exactly something one could crave for. Add all things awesome on mind that you wish to do and make sure things happen soon. The app is live at http://onebucketlist.com

• Keysome: Hotkeys for Everyone. “Too many browser tabs”, “Isn’t that Tab already open?” is pretty much a common thing you hear from your peers. Keysome, a Chrome browser plugin that helps you shift between tabs with just hot keys and predefined hotkeys that are shortcuts that would let you open frequently opened websites hassle-free. The website is live at http://keysome.in 

A Big Thank You to all the Mentors and Jury who helped shape Ideas to Interesting Prototypes with their valuable Inputs and Feedbacks. 

Mentors - Vasudha Chandak from Practo, Hari Shankaran from HackerRank, Vaidhy from Apigee, Ravi Padaki from Pravi Solutions, Freeman Murray from Startup School, Venkat Mangudi from Venkat Mangudi Consulting, Prayank Swaroop from Accel Partners & Kiran Jonnalagadda from HasGeek.

Jurors - Shashank ND from Practo, Phanindra Sama from RedBus, Sanjay Anandaraman from SeedFund, Pallav Nadhani from Fusion Charts, Ketan Hajarnavis from ThoughtWorks, Sanjeev Gadre, Rohit Singhal from SourceBits. 

Some great words about the event:

"Seeing ideas come to life and the infectious enthusiasm" - Venkat Mangudi

"Energy - Ideas - Enthusiasm - Hope - Fire in the Belly" - Ketan Hajarnavis

Facebook Photo Album of the event -> https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.513376592029199.119880.427343437299182&type=1&l=000e20a1a3

Registrations for In50hrs  Pune are now OPEN.

In50hrs Delhi ended on a high. The experience was more like a trek to the Mount Everest. Raffish Crowd, Cold Weather, Folks running down to grab their iPhone5, abrupt Pizza Orders and finally hoard in Prototypes to flaunt.

Couple of prototypes that got showcased.

• LinkMySport - A Portal to Find and Organize Local Sport Events. In today's era of cemented urban living, it's a gigantic task for someone to figure out if a nearby ground is empty or anyone is already playing the same sport you'd been dying to play for ages. LinkMySport aims at easing out such a problem fixture enabling them to form teams online, pick a ground that's available for a particular date and go play.

• theRestronaut - Wine and Food Pairing delivered at best, on a Tablet. All of us, while looking at the menu card think of "Hey! What goes good with this?", "What's a spicy meal in here?" and end up going for what's less confusing or eye catchy. That way, essence of the having food outside dies out. theRestronaut aims at solving the problem enabling the waiter to help them pick the best pair of food and wine enabling diners to have the best food experience altogether.

• Band Baaja - An iOS app for Wedding Planning. An Indian Wedding is perhaps one of the most extravagant and joyous event that happens in Indian Familia. With so much joy around, there also follows just too much of tormented tasks of making sure that the event goes for a grand success and it is just not easy to make sure everything falls in place, picture perfect. So, Band Baaja. An iOS app that would help the Bride or the Bridegroom or the whole family to find the right set of folks (like Designers, Caterers, The Brass Band, Venue Management and so on) and at the same time, sync up with your family on how things are going with a smart checklist.

• Challengify - A Social Task Management App for Mobile. Most of us, put up tasks on list and just forget and look it up only a while later to regret about not getting things done, letting task management go for a toss. Reasons could vary but if you could get nudged by someone close like family or friends and make sure the task gets done, the whole experience onto working towards tasks changes and Challengify is here to change that.

Registrations for In50hrs Bangalore and Pune are now OPEN.

We love the community, and when it comes to being given a face, we ask the community to come up with their own works of art that represent what we do at In50hrs.

Almost a year back, we ran a contest for the In50hrs T-Shirt design, and quite honestly, we were floored. We didnt anticipate that there would be this many talented folks out there, with so many varied ideas, putting them into a design and participating. But they did. And a few of them really stood out.

Our Current "Genius Mode On" was picked as the winner - and was designed by Vernicia Drooge.

That T-Shirt design has been our defacto for a bit more over than a year now and we thought we would design a new one - why? Because as organizers we want some new tees (really, its the truth.) And also we want to see what other new design ideas are out there.

We did get some very valuable feedback when we did this last time, so putting all of that together, we thought we'd give a little bit more specifics on what we are looking for:

Guidelines:

1. A design that represents In50hrs - the ideation, the building, the coming together of ideas, developers, designers, the clock of 50 hours - that should give you a hint of how to think.

2. A design that is unisexual - we got a few designs last time, that women might not be able to wear. Keep in mind that the design has to fit both.

3. We have decided that instead of the usual black and white, we want to go with a shade of tee in our own custom color - so we are going with a brown. If you want it in hex, its #332217

4. Leave space for Sponsor logos on the Sleeves - left and right arm

5. We print these t-shirts in the best quality possible, which means we do rubber prints, instead of screen printing which fades with the second wash. With Rubber/vinyl printing, the cost of the tee goes up by Rs. 25 - 40 for every additional color. So keep the colors in the design to a max of three.

6. Once done, upload the pics on the web, and paste a link to it in the Facebook thread.

7. Get folks to vote for it.

8. As of Nov 25th 2012, Midnight IST, the design that gets the most number of votes, will be picked.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach us over twitter - Officially at @in50hrs or personally - Vijay (@vijayanands) and Aditya (@adivik2000)