Taste of starting your own business

Recently I had the pleasure of being part of "Startup Weekend Event". Our team "LetsChipIn" won the first place.

More details can be read from the below sites.

•     http://www.unc.edu/campus-updates/lets-chip-in-wins-uncs-triangle-startup-weekend/
•     http://wraltechwire.com/chapel-hill-s-first-triangle-startup-weekend-delivers-promising-results/13129707/

I wrote a blog highlighting our team composition and a brief description of our business model in the TSW blog. Check this link http://triangle.startupweekend.org/uncategorized/lets-chip-in-crowdsourced-community-gift-giving/.

In less than 54 hours each team need to pitch a business model, form a cohesive unit of business, design and development engineers, and come up with a minimum viable product (MVP). The winning team's final product is a web application. See this site [http://letschipin.co] for more information about the business. There is also a Facebook page [https://www.facebook.com/letschipin]/Twitter handle/Instagram etc. created to bring the social context.

Lessons learnt

Web application development skills are paramount for any business to thrive these days. The web application requires the front end design (using HTML/JS/CSS) + back end database management/service framework to go hand in hand.  The back end can be implemented by picking the right “Web Application Framework [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_application_framework]”/”Content Management System [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system]-Content Management Framework [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_framework]”.

There is quite a good set of free developer tools available online that you could utilize.

Wireframe to model the website layout. This can either be drawn on paper or using the tools like http://balsamiq.com/ and http://moqups.com.

The website was designed using http://getbootstrap.com/2.3.2/

Website can be hosted in servers for a nominal fee. Check https://www.digitalocean.com/.

The payment system was implemented using https://www.braintreepayments.com/.

This link http://startupweekend.org/resources/ lists all the necessary tools to have your high tech business model up and running.

A good web site requires good front end developers ably supported by creative web designers. These are folks who are well versed with Adobe creative suite to design cool things.

On a closing note, Entrepreneurship is all about being optimist and ready to take risks.