Flashes of Panic

On my way over to the presentation, I passed by Jumbo. Remembering the success of my nickel on my first trip by him, I left a penny. I think maybe that wasn’t enough.

We didn’t win the business plan contest. This doesn’t come as a big surprise; the two competitors I identified earlier this month as strong entries came out on top. These guys came out on top—not surprising considering what they’ve already done—and these guys were second.

Despite the contest being billed as a winner-take-all, though, they ended up splitting the funds among us, such that we and two others actually came away with $1k, while the top two had some complicated division of the remaining prize (which, while largely cash, also included a fair amount of in-kind services like legal assistance, consulting, and lease credit for office space.) The upside is that, since we didn’t pick up the in-kind services, we’re not now tied to those companies for services or offices; there has been some discussion of locating somewhere other than the Boston metro area. The downside, obviously, is that we’re not $50k ahead on our initial funding.

We got some helpful feedback from two of the judges, who pointed out to us that while we’ve been focusing on the website, and the related software development has been growing in the background, it’s time we started pitching ourselves as a software company, and building the website as a proof of concept.

So there may be a company name change in the near future (one reason I haven’t been spreading around our working title,) and some actual software engineering is going to have to start happening.

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