Day 2 of Startup Weekend Kansas City kicked off this morning on the heels of an energetic opening night. For starters, attendees on Friday enjoyed dinner, Boulevard beer and spectacular downtown views from the sixth floor of the bizperc office space.
Co-organizer Adam Coomes served as emcee for the evening, and ice-breaking games got the group’s collective startup juices flowing. Dwolla CEO Ben Milne was the featured speaker for the event’s opening night and told stories of his experiences spanning several years working in startups.
Eventually, it was time to get down to business. Twenty seven ideas were pitched, and eight made the cut. The eight ideas that teams are now working hard to bring to fruition are below (people who originally pitched the ideas are listed in parentheses).
- CarScan —A platform for car shopping that enables users to compile and compare lists of cars by scanning VINs or sending them via SMS message (Tom Jenkins)
- Playlist.com — A website that allows for the creation of multimedia playlists and subsequent purchase of items from the playlist (Brent Burri)
- Trajia —A marketplace for local vendors and service providers to trade their goods and services without the exchange of money (Hari Prasad)
- LoyalT.me — A centralized customer loyalty card for local businesses (Kris Nessa)
- ForThePeople — An application with which people can use mobile devices to request the assistance of municipal services (Willis Jackson)
- Craft Wig — A craft website featuring tutorials on how to make crafts and user-uploaded content illustrating completed crafts (Jennifer Hoyt)
- CallMeMeeting.com — A no-hassle conference call service that enables calls to be made without participants using PINs (Tim Barnes)
- My Truth Be Told — An online dating service that gauges compatability using immutable data gathered from sources like foursquare, Twitter and Netflix (Clint Hall and Chad Elliott)
Below are a few photos I took Friday night.
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Check back here later for photos and updates from Day 2 of Startup Weekend Kansas City. You can find more coverage of this weekend’s event courtesy of Think Big Kansas City, Kansas City IT Professionals and KC Hub:
- Think Big Kansas City: “So…What’s Going On at Startup Weekend Kansas City?“
- Kansas City IT Professionals: “First post from Startup Weekend, Kansas City! – Call Me Meeting“
- KC Hub: “Startup Weekend KC – LoyalT.Me” & “Startup Weekend KC – Day 2“
And, of course, you can follow the chatter on Twitter (and tag your tweets) using the hashtag #KCSW.
The lights were low (sorry) but enthusiasm high as Dwolla CEO Ben Milne shared stories of his work with startups.
Bruce Lill (from left), Adam Coomes, Nate Allen and Steven Chau set up shop at SWKC’s unofficial mission control center.
Attendees used Post-it notes to cast votes as 27 pitches were whittled down to eight ideas.
Against the backdrop of the downtown Kansas City skyline, Tom Jenkins outlined his team’s ideas.
Rations were plentiful, providing enough fuel to help teams work past midnight.
Kris Nessa (center) led a meeting of her team, which is developing a local customer loyalty card.
Silicon Prairie News contributor Willis Jackson (second from right) led the team building on the idea he pitched, For The People.
