August 22, 2016
Attendees
Tate, Ben, Jason, Dima, Kip, Dean, Jose, Wolf, Rizwan, Ruby, Kris, Mike, Acacia, Cimarron - hosting, Michael - notes
Intro
Attendees quickly introduce the idea they want to talk about.
Tate
- Whiskey taster jars
Jason
- Volunteer community business
Jose
- Launching an incubator for greater Vancouver neighbourhoods
Dima
- No idea
- Worked with startups, here to help
Dean
- Cafe, bar, vintage clothing retail (Fashion) focusing on SEO
Kip
- Music AI software
Rizwan
- No idea
- Plays music BCMP
Michael
- No idea
Ruby
- No idea, here to learn
Kris
- Cold brew coffee popsicles
- Grant list
Cimarron
- Garden optimization data optimized business
Wolf
- AR framework for DJ mixing deck
Ben
- No idea
- Ruby on Rails programmer / Elixir
Acacia
- Coparenting app
Idea development
Jose
- Off the record: Incubator
Wolf
- Alternative reality for DJing
- Building viable product: a DJ game for kids
- Platform based on cameras and object identifying
- Framework is platform agnostic, Unity
- Working with various DJs to come up with features
- Adapting product to kids
- Focusing on the educational part for children
- Riz: Why only kids?
- Less expectations from kids
- Kris: Is a demo available? -> bring it to the Social Hack Night
- It’s demo ready!
- Riz: Teaching on the platform?
- Currently focusing on the basics
- Tate: Provide it for free to kids, charge parents
- That is a planned feature
- Dima: Product for kids requires high engagement
- Process also complicated for kids
- Ben: Kids like repeating media
- Ben: Licence music?
- Open source music
- Ana: Working with children under 8 year olds. Centers are interested in having presentation. -> Conact provided
- Riz: Friend who teaches kids to DJ
- Need to interface with new AR platforms
- Kris: Focus on product market fit to focus on demand
Dean
- Cafe, bar, vintage clothing retail (Fashion) focusing on SEO
- Revenue streams
- Membership system
- Client membership box: 10-50 CAD / month
- Artist membership: offering services
- Events organizing as customer acquisition
- Riz: Ideas meeting group may not be target market
- Riz: Vintage fashion contact thefrench75.ca
- Ruby: Is there an online service attached to the cafe?
- Ben: Use Shopify as e-commerce platform
- Kris: Space lab : nerd cafe + antique store
- Tate: You can introduce time limits on items to drive traffic
- Riz: Value proposition: What value are you providing in exchange for the subscription?
- Kris: Might work for complements like tie / shirt sharing
- Jose: Boxes with art and clothes -> receive box and buy what they like and return the rest
- Tate: People don’t like returning art
- Membership and you can take whatever you like (Parks and Recreation)
- Riz: Focus on key aspects and core model
- Cimarron: Tools to help on business planning: Business Model Canvas
- Kris: Try to make the first sales
- Riz: Do things that don’t scale
- Cimarron: Evaluate memberships to estimate revenue
- Tate: West Pender and Hamilton
- Ben: Freemium membership. Get emails from landing page.
Ruby
- Website like meetup.com to connect people in Real Life
- Meetup focuses on events
- Michael: Similar to Jason’s idea
- Quality of people: skill level or interest
- Exchange skills and knowledge
- Riz: hates meetup.com -> ready for substitute
- Looking for programmer
- Wolf: How general is the concept to be: can get complete like understanding natural language
- Kris: Need for additional commitment on top of FB events
- Cimarron: Skills or event base?
- Focused on collaborating on crazy things.
- Kris: Build something to try -> Social hack night
Ben
- Astronomy: Virtual planetarium on laptop
- NASA, Google, University of Toronto collected sky photos and built a system to locate them in the sky
- Used by amateurs to build planetariums
- 20M market cap for competitors
- Older population market
- Riz: Open sky as name
- Riz: VR planatarium
- Kids and seniors
- Jose: Kids and seniors like everything
- Riz: Limited market, not general population -> Astronomy is complex
- Interesting for astrophotography
- Competitor: Stellarium
- Riz: Talk to universities and researchers
- Jose: Do crowdfunding, landing page or launch MVP to get feel of the market -> get traction
- Keeping the app free to have
- Cimarron: How does it work?
- Map groupings of stars to identify position in sky as comparison to index (40GB)
- Machine learned process -> high volume would require subscription
- Jason: How big of a telescope?
- Any size
- Jason: Events for astrology. Kitsilano has an open access to the telescope on Saturday 8 to 12
- Kris: Flikr pictures as source to build index or content
- Jose: Forums and Facebook pages in which to share idea
- Jason: Talk to observatories
- Riz: Publication journals have different policies on data sets
- Jose: Focus on kids and seniors as an activity to do together
- Riz: VR for space is more appealing
- Kris: RASC
- Jose: First scholarship award for the idea!
- Important to keep aesthetic
- Kip: Previous work on mars
- Kris: Heavens above Identify intense stars. Map it out in app
Tate
- Whiskey tasting business
- Kris: Cocktail scene: 3-4 tiers of whiskey pubs. Some have waiting list.
- Michael: Start a club
- Kris: Intoxicate Vancouver
- Jason: Whiskey tasting club
- Kris: Pay what you like club. Talk to D.
Jason
- Community for volunteers
- Kris: difficult to monetize
- Trisha: Attribute system for casual labour and monitize through premium businesses or build used items market within with user review system
- Kris: Challenging space as comp taskrabbit.com, iamexec.com, magicnow.com
- Kris: Accio in Victoria trying to compete
- Trisha: Vouch system a la Couchsurfing
- Trisha: Shared economy community
- Ruby: Rewards to incentivize
- Trisha: Selfies on Instagram potential
- Riz: most impactful ideas as choice
- Trisha: Protect against unpaid resource for internships
- Kip: Hootsuite had an issue unpaid interns
- Kris: Groups of people I know on something fun or place with expertise missing
- Trisha: connect it to Facebook to have a larger perceived community
- Ben: Schools as client
- Riz: Inside global education
- Kris: Gamification and effective altruism has an effective marker
- Riz: NAC: skilled based certification system, AMP, HIVE
Acacia
- Coparenting finding app (non-romantic)
- Based on user input to match similar people
- When kids more time to find right partner
- Churn from successful users expected
- Pay to play model
- Psychometrics testing to match candidates
- Kris: entry level starting points?
- Testing gender preference and personality
- Jason: Matchmaking rather than dating. Just for lunch
- Need for matchmaking is covered
- Kris: Tests like 36 questions
- Riz: Facebook quizes