Well here I am, back to reality. It feels a little surreal to be back, if I’m being really honest. It feels a little like everything and nothing has happened all at the same time.
In general it was a great experience–I built a a really great product, I got work experience in a medium I’ve never designed in before, I met amazing people (and some equally insane people), I slept far too little and drank far too much (well, for only one night). I’m not sure what I thought would happen when I went into it, but I feel excited thinking about what might potentially come out of it.
DAY 1
Kim and I needed to be up at an ungodly 4:30am to make sure to get to the bus in SOMA on time. Our fellow “buspreneur”, Brandon, lived nearby so we all split a cab together. All I could think about was how painfully tired I felt, and how anybody could possibly be expected to make a good impression at that time of the morning.
As we arrived I felt a twinge of intimidation. I recognized some of the people I had met at the launch party a few days before, but there were a LOT of people milling around that I didn’t recognize, including a Techcrunch videographer trying to document all of the confusion and low buzzing levels of excitement. I could tell everybody felt slightly bewildered–half from lack of sleep, half from anticipating the unknown.
We all climbed onto the bus and immediately starting introducing ourselves to other people sitting next to us. Soon we introduced ourselves to the entire bus via microphone, and quickly after that people began pitching their ideas.
I heard some really interesting ideas that never came to fruition and heard other bizarre ones that eventually became reality, but I was far more interested in who might be on my team than the actual idea that might “win”. If i was going to be working with people for days and hours on end, I wanted to make sure I was with people that didn’t want to make me stab them in the eye by the end of it.
After pitching we stopped in to Elance, one of our sponsors, and had some breakfast while speaking some more with each other. I was starting to get a good feel for who I DIDN’T want to work with, but there were still a lot of people left I hadn’t had a chance to speak to, which was unfortunate because 15 minutes later our next stop dumped us into a parking lot where we had to run around in circles trying to form groups like savages.
This proved extremely hard and vaguely stressful. Only one team had a really clearly defined leader, and I could tell a number of people were compelled toward this immediately. I was having trouble finding the combination of the right people, the right group size, all while avoiding land mines and teams that might already have another designer (there were only so many of us to go around, so I didn’t want to have to fight with another designer on an idea). Then towards the end I found myself trying to be poached by multiple teams, simply because they realized they were all missing a designer. The pressure was on, and I was having a tough time telling people “no”.
I eventually chose to work on Team Expensieve, a mobile expense tracker for freelancers. We had one front end guy, one back end guy, eventually a native iOS developer that deferred from another team, one marketing girl, and myself. We were easily one of the most well rounded and lean teams, having an “expert” in their respective, well-defined role.
After a bit of run around and ironing out the kinks for our product we started building straight away. I was heads down, sprinting through a pile of work. Aside from a quick stop in Santa Monica (still didn’t get to see the pier. dammit.) I don’t even remember anything else until we arrived to our hotel.
DAY 2
Even though I crawled into bed at the earliest possible moment, I had, at best, 5 hours of sleep. With only 4 hours the night before that, I could feel the sleep deficit affecting my mental functions. I felt like I was moving through mud, but the amount of work was pretty motivating, especially because my teammates needed me to pass off assets to they could get started on their end. The moment we were on the bus my laptop was open and I was designing (albeit rather slowly) for the entire day. The rest of the day was a complete blur and muddied by a cloud of exhaustion. I think we stopped at a coworking space in Phoenix for a bit of barbecue, but I have difficulty remembering anything other than getting to know my teammates better while we slaved over our work together. The longer we worked, the more convinced I was with the right team.
The highlight of the day was getting to work Emre, my wee Swedish iOS developer. He taught me so much about designing for native mobile apps, and by the end of the day we had a workable mock on the phone. I was amazed to see something I built come to life so quickly!
We arrived late at night to a hotel somewhere in Arizona with a massive chili out front.
DAY 3
In the first 5 seconds of this Techcrunch video you can see Kim and I stumbling bewildered towards the bus at 6:30am. It was so meta to watch ourselves on videos about startup bus, ON startup bus.
By day three everybody was in one of two states: completely loopy or working in a sheer, exhausted panic. I was favoring the former, especially since the lion’s share of my work was completed on the previous day. We stopped at this rest stop filled with leather goods, and all I could do was laugh hysterically about all of the texas leather goods.
The excitement was palpable as we pulled into San Antonio that evening. We had obligatory happy hour to meet all of the other startup buses from all over the country, and it was the first proper city we had seen in days. I walked along the infamous “river walk”, checked out the Alamo, and headed home for SEVEN HOURS OF SLEEP.
DAY 4
The epic-ness of seven hours of sleep after having multiple nights of 5 hours or less is indescribable. The perkiness was palpable, and multiple people on the bus told me that I had WAY too much energy for the time of day it was. We were heading for Rackspace, a HUUUUUGE coworking space built inside of an old mall.
The event was, delicately put, a mindfuck.
Not to say Rackspace didn’t do a great job welcoming us. They had people waiting for us to enter the door and cheer us on like we had reached the end of a marathon, hot breakfast waiting for us, a huge, dark auditorium filled with fist pumping night club music and flashing lights. In terms of hype, they had it covered. But even with 7 hours of sleep, that type of throbbing night club feeling was the very last thing I could possibly imagine wanting. All I wanted to do was curl up into a ball underneath a warm duvet. I noticed a lot of the more extroverted folks on the bus were lapping it up, though.
I muddled through, and my team and I focused on taking care of all the loose ends for our pitch and product. We eventually bussed to Austin, went to our respective apartments and then met back up for the final sprint to the end of building phase. We finished up at 1:30am (not without a few hiccups and hand-biting moments), and FINALLY, finally went out to try and find a celebratory drink.
DAY 5
We found out we had made it to semi-finals! A delightful surprise to be one of the 20 team chosen out of 60. I had already heavily disconnected at this point as I had almost no involvement with the pitch (and honestly had little optimism about being in the finals. We had built a great, professional product, but our idea didn’t have much sex appeal). I supported my team while the pitched, and then we headed downtown to finally enjoy a bit of Austin, despite the fact that it had been pissing down rain for 2 days straight.
This is where it goes a little fuzzy on my end. Amongst all the celebratory drinks believe I fell over in the bathroom and had a guy walk in on me in the toilet, but otherwise had an amazing night just dancing and celebrating with all of my other fellow buspreneurs. The feeling of camaraderie amongst a group of people who had just gone through such a grueling experience was really…lovely. Everybody just seemed so happy to have gone through the experience.
DAY 6
I woke up to the beautiful, sunny weather I had packed for–as well as a massive bruise on my chest and forehead! I guess falling over in the bathroom was more violent than I had remembered.
Bryan came to pick us up in his car, and we headed out to eat at a quaint little brunch place in the outer areas of Austin. We eventually headed back into town to try and catch the finals, but found out we couldn’t get into the hotel that was holding it. We eventually just started bar/stall hopping. I got a free blackberry tablet, and we partied and danced until 2am!
Day 7
This was a sad day for me. It felt so odd to think that these people I’d been seeing everyday for a week were all leaving and going their separate ways. My team (minus bryan) met up for the very last time at Frank’s and dined on gourmet hotdogs. One by one we left each other, and I packed and headed for the airport.
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Thank you again to everybody on the bus that made my experience so unique and special! I’m so glad I went and can’t wait to see what comes next.
