Michael Carrano

StartupBus NY 2014

Published by Michael Carrano on April 06, 2014

Recently, I participated in the 2014 StartupBus. I took a bus from New York City to San Antonio and then spent a few days in Austin for SXSW. I had an unforgettable experience and look forward to being active in the StartupBus community.

A simple way to explain StartupBus would be: A hackathon on steroids with lots of unknown side effects.

There are buses from all over the United States that compete in creating, developing and launching a startup, all within 72 hours while driving to San Antonio. Most people on the bus will meet for the first time on the morning the bus heads to San Antonio. Everyone on the bus will be given an opportunity to pitch their idea and afterwards, it is time to hustle and put together a winning team.

The New York bus had five teams all working on interesting ideas and the one I worked on was Sttack. Sttack helps you simplify introductions between the amazing people in your personal network.

I worked with four other incredible people that I had never met before until I got on the bus the morning we left. We all worked really well together and I think one of the benefits for our team was the fact that none of us had overlapping skill sets. We each knew exactly what parts of the project we were responsible for developing or designing and got to work right away.

I was responsible for all the Android development and you can download the version that we released onto the Play Store.

StartupBus has taught me a number of things about myself and these are lessons I will take with me into the future as I continue to work on Sttack and other side projects.

• When you are focused, you can get an incredible amount of work done.

• It is okay to cut corners when you are simply trying to put together an MVP of an idea.

• When you are with highly motivated people, it is easy to trust they will do their part.

I just want to thank the conductors of the bus, Nate and Alice for being awesome the entire time and making sure we have nothing to worry about. I also want to thank my teammates for being awesome and working hard the entire time on the bus. Lastly, I want to thank the rest of the members on the bus, as well as, the larger StartupBus community for being amazing. It is truly an honor to be a part of an incredible group of talented individuals who love what they do.