Robert Hidajat pitches the idea that would become Unleash Heroes
Ten startups, each 54 hours old, gave their final pitch tonight to a panel of judges and “Unleash Heroes” emerged as the winner of Startup Weekend Des Moines. The Unleash Heroes concept is to devise a tracking and reward system of “hero points” to honor and encourage the heroic activities that people do in their everyday lives, like giving blood or volunteering.
From their blog:
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At Unleash Heroes we connect you with charitable organizations that need your help, plus track all those good things you do with a simple, centralized point system. You’ll earn points for rewards that benefit you as well as your favorite organizations. Your personal points may also contribute to collective community points for your school, neighborhood, or city. As you tell us what type of volunteer opportunities interest you we’d like to alert you via email or text message. This site is a resource for willing volunteers to find who needs their help on a given day.
The idea for Unleash Heroes was concieved by Robert Hidajat of Ames who pitched to the entire group on Friday night. A team quickly formed and refined the concept throughout the weekend.
As the winning team, the one determined to be “most likely to succeed”, Unleash Heroes recieves the following prizes:
- 2 months of free office space from Foundry Coworking
- A premium WordPress template design and free hosting from 48 Web
- 10 hours of social media strategy, support and/or creative services from Lessing-Flynn
- $200 credit from Amazon Web Services
- A 30 minute mentor session with Project Skyway
The second and third place teams were Lady Capital and Locusic, respectively. Additionally, Fundle was honored with the prize for “best pitch” and Lady Capital for “best consumer app.”
All ten teams recieve a $50 credit for Amazon Web Services and are eligible for a $500 prize if they incorporate within 30 days and create a 60-second video pitch. Additionally, each attendee gets a $100 credit for oDesk and $50 credit from Twilio.