Startup Weekend Des Moines: The winner is ‘Unleash Heroes’
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:
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.
ARCHIVED COMMENTS
Congratulations once again to all the teams that participated this weekend. I was only able to stop by briefly, but it was wonderful to see the excitement in the air around these ideas.
Well done at the final pitches tonight, congrats and best of luck to all 10 teams moving forward!
Thank you very much for all the support. I'm very grateful for every single one of the Unleash Heroes team!
It was great to meet and work with a lot of awesome people this weekend. It's really amazing how good all the teams are and how far they've gotten in just one weekend!
Watch out world! Silicon Prairie is on fire! :)
Excellent job, Robert and Unleash Heroes!
Robert did a great job on pitching the idea, forming a great team and presenting a winning final pitch.
Thanks Robert for having me be part of this great opportunity!!
Lets go unleash some more heroes!
It was an amazing weekend. It was a great opportunity to connect and learn from so many amazing people. Congrats to the 10 Teams and everyone involved.
Thanks Silicon Prairie for the coverage!
Great idea, Robert. Loved working with the team. Good luck to you all as you continue on!
The weekend was great. Loved meeting other people and learning, which I did a lot of. Looking forward to doing it again sometime. Thanks to Shane, Jon (of DSM Amp), mentors, and judges!
Congrats to Rob and the rest of the Unleash Heroes team. Congrats also to the other nine teams that formed this weekend. I expect to hear some announcements from each of you over the next few months as you continue building your products.
Big thanks to SPN and DM Amplified for the coverage, plus to this whole community that's SWDSM. Never learned so much in such a short amount of time. Looking forward to moving forward with this team and being intentional about my idiocy in the process.
Wow, great idea. Congrats to everyone.
Great job Unleash Heros Team!