I had the privilege of participating in Startup Bus 2019 on the Florida Bus — and the team I was on, Hyve, made the top three! Here are Hyve’s official videos from our adventure…
Meet Team Hyve!
In addition to the pitch competition that took place in clear view, there was also a behind-the-scenes game in which all the Startup Bus teams could partake. The game was made up of activities that teams would perform for points, and the bus that earned the most points would receive special mention at the finals. The activities were effectively a checklist for teams to follow as they created their startups and applications on their buses.
One of the activities was to make a team video, where team members would introduce themselves and explain why they’re participating in Startup Bus. We recorded this on Wednesday night at NC State in Raleigh.
Pitching Hyve to a stranger
Another action item in the behind-the-scenes game was to pitch our idea to a stranger in one of the towns where we stopped. We pitched the Hyve concept to the Lyft driver who took us from NC State to our hotel. Here’s how it went…
Practicing our pitch
In addition to building the business and the app on the bus, we practiced out pitches at regular intervals. Here’s Tracy practicing his pitch as the bus raced towards New Orleans:
The qualifying round
The qualifying rounds took place on Saturday, July 27th at New Orleans’ Propeller Incubator, where all the teams from all the buses — the Advancing Black Entrepreneurs, Florida, Mexico, New York, Ohio, Silicon Valley, and Washington DC teams — made their pitches.
Every member of every team had to be ready to pitch, because in the qualifying round, the judges chose two people from each team to make their pitch, one at a time. They tend to choose the least confident-looking team members, and a couple of them already knew me. We did well, though, with Rina doing the “set ’em up” pitch and Tracy doing the “finish ’em off” one:
The finals
We’d have to wait until the next day to find out who made it to the semifinals, but we were among them! Even better, we made it to the finals. We re-worked our pitch for the finals judges with the help of the Florida Bus Conductors — Akira Mitchell, Nick Price, and Shane Needham — and here’s the result:
The winners
Once all the finalists made their pitches, the judges sequestered themselves, and shortly afterwards, they made their announcements, which included Hyve!
Just the bit about Hyve
Just because I love that bit about walking the line between good and evil, here’s just the part about Hyve: