Image courtesy of Daniel Terdiman/CNET
It bears all the hallmarks of the usual road trip – a group of sleep-deprived adventurers, journeying interstate to reach a foreign destination, meeting people and soaking up new experiences along the way.
But in a unique spin on this classic rite of passage, fellow digital eskimo Diana Mounter will spend the next 48 hours on a bus travelling through California en route to Austin, Texas, working to conceive, build and launch a viable business startup. Six buses filled with teams of hard-core tech entrepreneurs (or ‘buspreneurs’) will depart from various locations across the States and travel to the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival. Along the way, they’ll pool together their energy and talent to create the highest value startup pitch they can in the time it takes to reach Austin. Teams will be competing against eachother on the Startup Bus Stock Market – the startup with the highest net value by the end of the trip – wins.
The brainchild of Di’s team is ‘Bouncr’ – a solution to the problem of providing throw-away email addresses for Web service sign-ups or to people you don’t really want to hear from. Basically, Bouncr lets you take control of your email spam, and also makes email links shorter (useful for tweeting etc.) It’s a bit like bit.ly – but for email. Bouncr is already leading the charge in the stock market, with it’s stock price being one of the strongest performers. CNET have also covered the team’s progress.
One of the few women on the Startup Bus, Di will be bringing her formidable Considered Design skills as an Experience Architect to ensure that the service they create is designed and built from the end user’s perspective.
To support the Startup (and help them win), play the StartupBus stock market game and invest in their company.
To hear more about what’s happening on the bus, follow Bouncr on Twitter for the latest updates.
