The course was aimed at teams with a working idea who want to get a better understanding of the tools to get the product to the market. We didn't limit the ideas only to IT projects but also encouraged more traditional businesses to come and get a training in startup-minded launch. The team of Estonian and Georgian mentors went through the lifecycle of a startup from validating your market to engaging your costumers, also working on a prototype and presenting it to investors. The 4 days was full of lectures and hands-on assignments to give the participants the tools for launching a startup.
The teams
Augep
Augep is an application based on augmented reality features. It allows restaurant customers to see visual of all the interesting dishes for him, ingredients and calories before ordering. It helps to make reasonable decision in case if you don't know or never tasted some of the dishes at the restaurant.
Our mission is to advance relations between customers and restaurants, through creating realistic expectations (for the customers) and improving operational efficiency (of restaurants).
Gradient
Gradient is a team from a previous hardware hackathon in Tbilisi. They are building a prototype of wearable glasses for blind people. The glasses have sensors that warn the person from obstacles around them and let them know with a soft vibration. The app helps to set down a route the user wants to take. The idea is to make this as cheap as possible and accessible to as many blind people as possible.
Dassy
Dassy started at the first Garage48 sofware hackathon we held in Tbilisi. They have been building their product since then and are testing on small group of students. The product is a knowledge aggregator by students to create study groups to collect related materials. The idea rised from a real problem that the team lead had - how to organise and manage his students in study groups.
Bazinga
Nowadays many people make crafts. There are more than a hundred pages on Facebook about handmade items. More and more people try to craft something really useful and nice and then sell it. But their only way to sell their work is to promote it on Facebook. Our idea is about the creation of an app for handmade items. App users will be able to choose, which item they would like to purchase and then see people who create these things, also users will be able to see the existing works or order new ones. In addition users will be able to rate each creator and write a review about their work. This app will make the purchase of crafts easy for everyone.
Admove
AdMove is the easiest way to make money on the road short of finding it in the street. It is an advertising platform connecting drivers and brands to create powerful on-vehicle advertising. AdMove’s platform is a mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationship between empowered car owners and leading edge marketers. Through its proprietary mobile application and technology, AdMove gives drivers an easy source of extra income, plus the power to choose the marketers and their car’s “look”: full, partial or panel advertising. Brands receive the security of control and benefit of trackable results. Advertisers and drivers share access to powerful tracking, analytics and reporting, which chronicles campaigns, pushes notifications, gathers insights, offers scalability, and promotes and accepts bonus offers. AdMove is a revolutionary way for everyday drivers to effortlessly get the secondary source of income while performing their customary daily activities, while AdMove’s advertising platform allows businesses and advertisers to connect, collaborate and create revolutionary economic value.
Dags.ge
Dags.ge is a project started by a team who met at one of Garage48 hakcathons. They have dropped their first idea and are now working on a totally different thing. Dags.ge is a platform to connect street artists and street art enthusiasts. It gives the "silent artists" an opportunity for their art to be known. There are pictures on the platform with the author shown or anonymous and the users can vote and comment on the pictures.
Panda Card
Panda Card is unique discount card that works in Tbilisi. The company was launched in March and has already 300 customers. By presenting the card, the user gets a unique discounts, for example: SPA salons, yoga, solarium, swimming pool, a sushi bar, a beer pub, fitness and many other locations. We want to make the platform more easily useable and engage more costumers.
Knit Decor
Knit decor is not an IT business but still considers themselves as a startup. The main idea is to gather the community of women making beautiful handmade things and give them an opportunity to sell them through a functionig and easy to use e-store (app and web). The e-store is already functioning. However, participating in the program will be next step of out startup. We have a desire of learning new IT tools, worldwide experience, basics of tech etc.
Conclusion
The whole event was an intense learning experience. The teams were encouraged to share their experience and learn by doing and all 8 teams gave a very convincing presentation in the end of the 4 days. The plan in the future is to put on more such events also in other university towns and future startup hubs in Georgia. We want to give the teams started at our hacktahons the biggest chance to succeed and we want to thank all our partners for all the support and the amazing participants for their can-do spirit.
See you at next events!