Philly Startup Weekend

The idea for Slopes was born much earlier in the year, but this was the weekend I went from "maybe that'd be cool" to actually doing it. Almost didn't work out, though.

I went to PSW with a really sheep-ish pitch about what I wanted Slopes to be, nervous as all hell. Got up, gave the pitch, and practically nobody voted for it to be one of the projects worked on for the weekend. I wasn't too surprised, this only reinforced my self-doubt on the idea.

The group I ended up working with, though, turned things around. We had all had our ideas rejected, and weren't particularly drawn to any of the others (or the groups had filled up). We were left without a project so we decided to pick one of our own to work on, eventually landing at Slopes ("Slopes" at the time being my project name in Xcode, I never thought it'd stick as the brand).

Turns out I had a much better time conveying the idea behind Slopes and why it might work when I had more than 30s or so ;).

Over the 48hrs we worked on it and helped bring to life some of the ideas I had a hard time articulating - like a mockup of the 3d rendering of a ski run and how that might work for the users. I had to work hard during the weekend on refining my pitch, market research (I had done none), and why it was a worthwhile project.

Slopes went on to come in 1st place for the weekend. Helping to put images to words, and refining my pitch like crazy, turned everything around.