Los Angeles Startup Weekend

Yeah, we launched.

Tyler Willis — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 08:09:58 +0000

And it’s pretty sweet.

SocialMixr is a Game Developer that has created Frenemies, a game that serves as a debate platform. Go play the game here.

You’d think there would be fan fare, explosions of fireworks. Wookies clapping and screaming, when in reality some just told me half his team decided to stay until 6am (when Streetfire needs to reclaim their offices) to play the game. Yep, one more addictive product released into the world.

Pirates vs. Ninjas, watch your back.

Startup Weekend OUT!

“Motion Creates Emotion”

Tyler Willis — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 05:47:04 +0000

But if you can’t stand up while cold calling some prospect, the next best thing is copywriting. Here’s an example of what our copy team is ready to show the world:

Frenemy (ˈfre-nə-mē): Someone who is both friend and enemy, a relationship that is both mutually beneficial or dependent while being competitive, fraught with risk and mistrust.

Frenemies is a Facebook game where you play your friends in your quest to become the most popular. Help your friends today. Stab them in the back tomorrow.

Drama = Popularity

Challenge your frenemies with questions.
Create drama.
Become popular.

See kids, it’s that easy. Play our game all day, be cool. Simple.

Dev’s gone…

Tyler Willis — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 05:02:34 +0000

Mild?

Oh, so this is why our sponsors do so much video.

Tyler Willis — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 04:15:37 +0000

So Streetfire.net has some pretty cool guys at the helm, I’ve just spent the last few minutes trying to rig a video camera on a small remote control car with Alexis Godschalk, the creative director at Streetfire. Everyone tells us we are crazy (and also silly) until they see how cool it is, I’m pretty sure you are going to have the same reaction:

The CamCar (patent pending) was, as far as I know, just invented right now by Alexis from Streetfire.net and just went on it’s inaugural run. Dev had this to say, “It’s cool, in fact it’s so cool it shouldn’t be here, WE ARE WORKING RIGHT NOW.” Other comments of awe and satisfaction ran freely. There was a significant amount of photos taken. I’d love to tell you more, but I’d rather go drive it around some more. FUN! =]

Oh: Updates are - Dev is running the last mile with regards to features, Marketing has a super secret SEO idea that they are excited about, Content Teams have completed almost all content for the application, the game website and our corporate website. So basically every team is doing really really well, and all I can think about is driving that car around some more. OFF!!!

I’ll take my Devs scrambled please.

Tyler Willis — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 03:20:06 +0000

So there’s one law of startups, it’s that everything will take longer than you think. If there is one other one, it’s that the task will always take as much time as you schedule to complete it. So while the development team seems to have somehow avoided the first law, they’ve definitely hit the second one. They are motivated to push the best possible product out the door at midnight. The smallest of tiny bug fixes are no match for this robust group, but spelling errors? That’s another story — Hey, you can’t expect Gods to do the work of us mortals.

Check out the look of the application, we’ve got a really good internal version built.

Board of Directors Pitch

Tyler Willis — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 23:40:04 +0000

12 people have stepped forward in the race for honor, glory, and working for free. With skills ranging from app development to a CEO of a successful mid-sized gaming company, the choice is incredibly hard. Needless to say, despite our board being 5 people, we will have all 12 candidates be greatly involved in the day to day execution on our plan.

Show me the money.

Tyler Willis — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 21:45:27 +0000

Craig from Bizdev has some great insights for how we make money on this, they have a road-map of the next 12 mo. We’ve got about 4 different avenues towards profitability. All 4 could be explored concurrently, and that’s how bizdev is presenting it to the group. It’s all about whether our money/team resources support an aggressively quick schedule on all 4 fronts.

The team consensus seems to be that we shouldn’t focus on all 4 fronts, instead we should do one well and look to jump effectively to the next step once we get the engine humming on the first section. We hold the further conversation on this and start talking about board development and the future of the company. Board Members (5) will guide the company forward and will pull help in to the project as we need. The candidates are being nominated between now and 2:30pm, after that point we will vote on a board of developers and maybe our future course of action. I’m going to corner some people for interviews.

Our code works. It works so sweet.

Tyler Willis — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 19:55:29 +0000

Rana and I took a long dinner last night to travel to Guitar Center’s flagship store and check it out, pretty neat! Rob Giles came with us and bought a new axe. I’m probably making myself seem silly by calling it an axe, but this non-musical grammar nerd can’t resist the desire to try out oft avoided words. Anyway, I got to see him rocking out Since the analogy of Startup Weekend is living the first year of a startup in one year, we basically took the entire month of June off. When we came back, predictably, a lot had happened.

Most significantly, the LA event has become the second Startup Weekend to have a working prototype of the product on Saturday night. This is amazing, and we had a blast playing the game last night. The design is really cool and we’ve arranged our structure for the company. SocialMixr is the company we are building. The first game that we are releasing is based on the concept of a Frenemy, which is simply “An enemy disguised as a friend.”

At it’s core, Frenemies utilizes a debate platform that allows you to create conversation about issues that mean something to you. This game encourages you to campaign for your cause amongst friends. The more people that you recruit to your side, the more likely you are to win the argument. Of course, some of your friends are simply lurking in the dark for their chance to bring you down, and our game has been built to allow them to do so. You get rewarded for you ability to highlight great issues and for the influence you exert on issues you care about.

We are fine-tuning the development and catching bugs and preparing to drop the new design in. The speed at which we are operating is impressive. Startup Weekends are designed to allow for some craziness and chaos so that you forge communal connections and enjoy the experience, but I feel like we’ve all worked together for 6 months - it’s a extremely well oiled machine. I’m blown away, as a San Franciscian I never thought I’d say this, but…

LA ROCKS!!! … except for the traffic.

in 7 minutes we’ll get together to decide the future of the company and have a “lively debate.” I’m looking forward to it!

Exciting stuff comes out of Bizdev/Mktg

ben — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 06:06:02 +0000

For the past few hours, bizdev and marketing have been hacking away at ideas for long term sustainability of the business and ways to promote development of current ideas and creation of new ideas. We have a pretty detailed business plan that lays out milestones in the company’s future and where we plan to be at each point. Some pretty solid stuff. They continue to work at fine tuning…

Bizdev/mktg seems to like working in the low ambient lighting…

Creative has come up with some really cool designs, and I can guarantee that this product will be in the übercool category…

As you can see, some of the creative guys are having fun…

Dev currently has a partially functioning product, but they continue to work hard at getting a workable prototype up for testing. We can’t wait to get our hands on this to try it out…

Look at all the Red Bull in the background…

Rob Giles Plays a Set

Tyler Willis — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 01:50:05 +0000

and my camera runs out. Sad Face.