Arianna O'Dell

A few weeks ago, my friend Ludo Antonov and I attended the TechCrunch disrupt hackathon with an idea in mind. During the hackathon we build a product that enables businesses to quickly and easily establish a web presence – And so JustAbout.co was born.

During the 24 hour period we were able to build a functional prototype. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been hard at work polishing up the product and killing bugs. Yesterday, we finally launched! For our launch we got a few really nice stories from tech blogs around the web. Here are two of our favorites:

Thanks Jolie!

Thanks Drew!

Since then, a few people have messaged me saying “How did you do that? How can you get written up?”

My answer : You have to fail. You have to fail A LOT.

In the past, Ludo and I have worked on a number of start-ups and products together :
FlyByMusic – An online music streaming site that let you sync songs to your iPod from a web browser. (That got us in big trouble with the RIAA and cost us a ton of money in lawyer fees$$)
Lolzr- A platform we were going to build funny convertors on. Example : “Change your college tuition into beer.”
One Million Tweeps - An idea to get 1 Million Twitter accounts in a book.

Guess what? All of these went tank down and failed. Why?

Because we didn’t know what the hell we were doing!

….and that’s the beauty of entrepreneurship. You jump off a diving board while being unable to see the bottom of the pool. You have to change directions. You don’t know which way the current is going. Or as Pocahontas would put it, whatever is just around the riverbed. You have no idea. You have to go with the flow.

What did we learn from all these mistakes that helped us this time around?

Don’t keep your idea a secret – “My idea is super stealthy!” “Everyone will steal my idea.” 99.99% of the time, no one will steal your idea – stop flattering yourself. In the past, we’ve held off on PR efforts and refrained from talking about what we were doing. This time around, we talked a lot. We asked industry leaders for feedback and we talked about the product with all of our friends. This opened a lot of doors for us because we were able to get great feedback and feature suggestions.

PR, PR, PR – The first time I did any kind of PR I just made it up. I had no idea what I was doing. Now, people pay me to do it for them. This took a solid 4 years of mistakes to learn how to do it correctly. When you launch a product – tell people! PR is a numbers game – not everyone will write about you. Not everyone will care about what you’re doing. The more people and blogs you contact, the more of a chance you have to be written about. Everything in life is a number game.

Be flexible – Your business model isn’t written in stone and blood. You can pivot and change at anytime. Just because one model doesn’t work, doesn’t mean others won’t. Don’t give up – keep trying new things each and every day.

Though we still have a long way to go to reach success for JustAbout.co, we’re confident that this time around, we know how to run a business better than before. And on that note, I’d like to thank everyone who has given us feedback, connected us with industry leaders, and shared the website.

YOU are seriously the best. Remind me I owe you a hug when I see you!

(I’m a loser, baby!)

Chapter 1 : Make Stupid Decisions.

On September 20th, I am leaving Seattle to go live in Europe for a year. This past few weeks have been CRAZY busy. For some reason, I made the (insane) decision to take a quick trip to San Francisco before heading out. I had completely no time to go on this trip but I’m glad I did.

Wait, what? Why San Francisco?

So it started like this : Random conversion at lunch one day with @NateWhitehill of Highlighter.

Nate : Something about how the place we went for lunch didn’t have a menu online.

Me : A few minutes later *light bulb moment* : “Wait, I don’t know why no one has made About.Me for business.”

Nate : “I don’t know, but that’s a good idea.”

A few days later….

Sitting in bed thinking (This is me talking to myself — Yeah, I know I’m crazy)

This is a super good idea.

Wait, why don’t I make this?

But I’m not a developer.

Maybe I can figure out how to build this.

Oh wait, I hate coding.

Oh I can hire one.

No… Wait, Ludo. He’s the best dev ever.

Let’s see what he thinks about this. *Goes on Facebook and messages Ludo*

Ludo the next morning :

Turns out, with my airline miles I had enough points to get a $5 flight to SF. *Tickets booked* #winning!

……until we then remembered we’d need to stay somewhere in SF. So I did what I always do when I’m in a crunch…. Twitter!

I then tweeted out “Yay. Flight booked! Going to Disrupt Hackaton with @Ludo_Antonov. Any generous SF people wanna let us crash on your couch/floor?” I shortly received

I’ve been tweeting at James for a long time on Twitter but it was so nice of him to let two strangers he didn’t know to come crash at his place. James is a founder of a company called Envolve that enables websites to be able to put real time chats on their own site. Envolve is a really spiffy idea and James is a great person to get to know. Great sense of humor and super awesome! Check him out.

Chapter 2 What’s up SFO?!

Ater reaching our destination, we met up with one of our good friends whom we had previously worked together on a start-up with. After a day of hanging out, sightseeing, and eating, we headed to Jame’s place. We got there, chatted a bit, and immediately crashed.

Chapter 3 And It Begins!

The next day after flying in, we made our way to the TC Disrupt hackathon. We quickly got to work building our project, JustAbout.co During the hackathon, I did things like put up a landing page, made social channels, and craft text for the website. Ludo is a freaking boss and coded away on the project (without sleeping once)! During the event, I wandered around and made some new friends! I met a ton of wonderful people who were hard at work on their own great ideas.

Shoutout to the CloudFlare guys! For a portion of the night I hung out with their team and played around with stickers at their booth.

Chapter 4 Zombies

After the 24 hours of the hackathon, it was time for the presentions. We had one minute to pitch and made our way to the stage. After no sleep my brain was fried.  (Prior to getting on stage I chugged a Red Bull.)

Though not my finest presentation, I was thrilled that we had something working (and beautiful) to present. And so http://justabout.co was seen by the public for the first time.

JustAbout.Co is a dead simple way for businesses to create a fast easy website and social media hub. Though we didn’t win one of the prizes, we won the prize of now having a foundation for our new business. Another bonus is that we got written up in Tech Crunch under staff favorites!

#winning!

Chapter 5 Disrupt

Turns out, if you attend the Hackathon, you get a free ticket to the $3000 Disrupt Confrence. w00t w00t. So here I am, sitting in the hall listening to Paul Graham give start-up advice. How cool is that? Great things happen when you get up, take spontaneous trips, and just do it!  See ya tomorrow, Seattle!

To sign up for our project go to JustAbout.co. We still have some bugs, but would love your initial feedback.

Be my friend on Twitter? @Arianna