I won’t lie. I’m an introvert, shy and nerdy. I was a bit too nervous to jump in and take part in Cincinnati’s first Startup Weekend, held at NKU. That didn’t stop me from attending presentation day on Sunday though.

Startup Weekend, for those that aren’t familiar with it, is essentially a 54 hour mad dash to launch a startup. On Friday night, people pitch their business ideas and form teams based around the best of those ideas. From then until Sunday, they go to work, validating their new business and designing a MVP. On Sunday at 5 pm, each team presents what they’ve done. It’s pretty exciting, even for those simply watching in the audience.

Over a period of 2 and a half hours, I listened to 14 different presentations, each one impressive in their own way, especially considering that 54 hours earlier, none of these companies even existed.

So what did I see at Startup Weekend Presentation day?

[message_box type="note" icon="yes"]I saw a bunch of rock stars at Startup Weekend NKY. (tweet this)[/message_box]

The Presentations

Drama!ville – Sort of a fantasy football for celebrity mishaps. Each player drafts a team of celebrities and hopes for the worst. The more negative news your team of celebrities manages to garner, the better you’ll do. The pitch was solid, with a nice click through demonstrating exactly how the “drafting” of celebrities would work. It’s meant to be a Facebook game, so you can definitely find them there, or follow their progress on twitter.

BuyAppt - Spas have lots of cancelled appointments, and no good way to fill them at the last minute. That’s where BuyAppt hopes to come in. The idea is to encourage spas to sign up, and list an appointment whenever one is cancelled. That free slot will then be emailed to a number of previous customers who have shown interest in obtaining these (I assume) discounted appointment times. Their site, BuyAppt.com, is definitely worth a look. For 1 weekend’s worth of work, you’ve got to be impressed with the polish and functionality that’s already there. You can also follow them on twitter.

Righting Style – An online fashion democracy that qualifies bloggers for brands. Ok, so what does that mean? Essentially, they’ve created an algorithm to help determine the clout of fashion bloggers. Their hope is to get brands to pay them to sort of play matchmaker between brand and blogs, introducing the brand to (influential) blogs that are the most appropriate for the brand. I personally know nothing about the fashion industry, but it seemed like the founder knew the market well, and that’s what matters. By weekend’s end, they had a beautiful logo and landing page, and had prepared a great presentation, with a nice video element. You can find them on facebook, or follow them on twitter.

Jobseev - A new online job search engine, but geared more towards the employees, as opposed to the employers. From the founder’s viewpoint, the main problem with the big boys of job search (Monster, CareerBuilder, Indeed) is that they pander to the employer, who is their ultimate paying customer. His idea is to create an engine that instead caters to the potential employees by pushing undesirable companies towards the bottom of the list. It would do this by learning from all the site’s visitors what companies are liked and not liked, and then tailoring the search results to each individual customer in a Pandora like fashion. The presentation was pretty bare bones, which is understandable being that Jobseev was the only company formed over the weekend that had but 1 founder. Apparently the founder’s idea didn’t win the popular vote on Friday, but he persisted with it anyway. Although I think the spirit of Startup Weekend is supposed to be more about the networking and cooperation of working with a team to form a company, I still say good for him for sticking with an idea he believes in.

Door Host – A web app that acts as a digital door counter. A problem with venues is that the venue owner/manager often has trouble knowing exactly how many people are in their establishment at any given time. Are they close to capacity, or not? This problem is escalated the more doors there are. A venue with 4 doors would require the manager go to each door 1 at a time and manually add up the numbers. Their solution is simple. Give each door host a smart phone and connect them all to the Door Host app. The ui is ridiculously simple, as was demonstrated in the presentation. The door host presses a green + or a red – as people either enter or leave. The total of all doors is shown live to each door host as well as the manager. There’s one more button the door host can press which is an Alert button, meant to call attention to a problem that needs the manager to come right away to that door. I can definitely see how this would be handy for any venue. Their hope is that venues will think it’s handy enough to pay $30/month for the service. You can find Door Host on facebook, or follow them on twitter.

Polar Bash – First off, what a great name and url. Polar Bash is designed to help people break the ice. It’s sort of meetup.com meets match.com (to find new friends, not dates). By Sunday, they had a website with a nice signup process live and ready to go. First, you indicate what you’re interested in, then you tell them what days of the week you’re available. After that, they’ll match you up with others in your area for fun and adventure. The assumption is that local businesses would be happy to pay for the privilege of hosting these bashes. My guess is that they most definitely would be willing. The other assumption is less of a sure thing – whether or not customers would be happy to meet in this manner. I’m definitely intrigued. In addition to signing up to their site, which you should, you can also find them on facebook, or follow them on twitter.

Remember.me – Another great name and url. Remember.me is a social, online collaboration of friends and family in remembrance of a loved one that has passed. The presentation they did was great, with a nice wireframe (at least I think it was a wireframe) illustrating the process of adding comments, pictures and videos about the loved one. The idea would be to make posting to remember.me as simple as blogging is on tumblr. Their business model is to charge funeral homes and allow them to offer the service to their customers as an up charge to their normal funeral package. The cost they landed on for the funeral homes was 250/use (plus 50 a month?). I’d definitely be interested to hear if they continue with this idea, and where it goes from here. That being said, I can’t find them anywhere. Remember.me leads nowhere at the moment, and I can’t find them on facebook or twitter either.

Badj.us – Easily create and award badges to friends. Easily gamify your existing app with badges. I have to admit: they’re presentation lost me. I couldn’t follow it. I know there was a revenue model mentioned in there, but I’m not sure what it is. Anyone want to help me out here? Also, I can’t seem to find them online anywhere.

Shop in Teams – A platform for creating teams of shoppers where users accumulate awards as part of a team. There would be sponsored shopping challenges that teams could participate in, and loyalty programs they could join. The presentation was good, with some nice mockups. I’m curious how the rewards would be split between team members. Would it be according to how much each individual shopped, in which case how would that be different from individual rewards programs? Or would it be split evenly regardless of how much each team member shopped, in which case why would the most loyal shoppers be willing to do that? Or am I missing the point of the idea altogether? Unfortunately, I can’t find Shop in Teams online anywhere either.

Neighbor.ly – My favorite name and url. I actually tried to buy that exact url a while back for a social sharing idea I had. In any case, their idea is to empower the competition and discovery of local businesses. They would do this by creating games and adventures that make it fun for customers to explore and discover local businesses. Lots of potential revenue streams there. The presentation they gave pointed them all out. You can follow them on twitter.

Nudge – Fun presentation. Nudge is a web app that will send you short SMS messages at random intervals with suggestions like “Buy your loved one flowers tonight”. It’s meant to nudge you to do things that will make your life better, that you otherwise probably wouldn’t have done on your own. The presentation included an early prototype where they sent nudges out to a few preselected audience members, including a nudge to one of their cofounders to stand up and shout “I love startup weekend!” They’d hope to bring in revenue by offering sponsored nudge opportunities to businesses. As fun as the presentation was (and it was), I honestly could never see myself using it. Maybe I’m too grumpy, but I would find random text messages telling me what to do annoying. And they’d be that much more annoying if the message was branded by a big company. In any case, you can follow them on twitter.

ClaimGame - A mobile web app that creates a scavenger hunt in the grocery aisle. The presentation showed a nice click through of what the customer could expect to see and do. First, you select the store you’re heading to. Then you’re presented with a list of deals that you can claim at that store. After selecting an item, you’re presented with a question, the answer to which can be found on the item. For example, “Head and Shoulders: Improves hair and scalp _____ guaranteed”. You have to fill in the blank from a list of 4 choices. Doing so earns you 10 cents. The assumption is that people would find this fun. But… would you?

Winosseur – A mobile app for competing in wine challenges, trying new wines, and tracking which wines you’ve had. Eventually, you’d be able to use the app to find a wine you like, tag it, buy it, and have it sent to your house. The app mockup (or was it a prototype?) looked pretty impressive. The wine market is a massive market of affluent customers, so it’s hard not to like the idea. I’d be interested to hear if they continue with the company, but unfortunately, I can’t find them anywhere.

Dinner and a Movie – A recommendation engine that helps you select a total date experience. Other sites might help you find ratings and reviews of individual establishments, but dinner and a movie seeks to put them together into date packages (ie. First grab dinner at Hugo’s, then head to the Festival of Lights, then grab some hot chocolate at Coffee Emporium). The presentation showcased a nice wireframe or what the user experience might be like. I can’t find them anywhere either.

My Favorites

Personally, I loved BuyAppt, Neighbor.ly, Panda Bash, and then Winosseur. The question is, would the judges agree with me?

The Winners

People’s Choice: A tie! Nudge and Remember.me tied as the people’s choice, which could only mean one thing: Roshambo! After a brutal 2 out of 3 match, Remember.me came away as the People’s Choice Winner.

Judges’s Choices:

3rd Place: Nudge

2nd Place: Righting Style

1st Place: Drama!ville

First, congratulations to all the winners! You did an amazing job. In retrospect, I can understand Drama!ville winning. With the success of social gaming, it’s definitely got huge potential. I personally would never play, but I would never play Farmville either.

Although I wasn’t there for the whole weekend, it was evident from the presentations that everyone had worked hard and accomplished a lot. The presentations were great, and I think pretty much everyone had a good time. If I learned one thing from startup weekend, it’s this:

[message_box type="note" icon="yes"]The midwest startup scene is exploding. Cincinnati is destined to be the next great tech hub. (tweet this)[/message_box]

Next time Startup Weekend rolls around, I’ll be first to sign up. I want to be a rock star too.