Aaaanyway – there have been some awesomely exciting developments happening with 24hour-startup 2010, as we’ve already got a couple of meetings lined up with potential sponsors. That’s promising, because there’s no way we could get it off the ground without them! (There’s still time to get involved if you’re interested – just email Rob).

A few of these lovely people have asked for an indication of how much it would cost to sponsor the event. So, this post starts to outline the work that we think is required to make 24hour-start 2010 an amazing social-entrepreneurial-competitive-PR exercise for some lucky brand(s)/organisation(s)!

Concept development.

We need to put some thought into exactly how 24hour-startup 2010 will work – in collaboration with our sponsor(s), so that it helps them achieve what they want for their organisation. Our current thinking is as follows, and all subsequent tasks drop out of this, and are of course subject to change as the concept develops:

• 24hour-startup will be run through a custom-built website, which will allow anyone to quickly and easily register a team, and blog about what their team are doing throughout and after the 24 hours.
• Teams will be competing for a prize, provided by the sponsor. This needs to be something brilliant that any group of self respecting entrepreneurs would love to win. Could be as simple as investment.
• There will also be a brief, announced at the start of the 24 hours, which teams must respond to. We can’t leave it as open as the one we worked to; i.e. start any business you can think of because then people will be able to be a bit sneaky and come prepared with lots of ideas! So, the brief is likely to specify and industry sector, or business problem that needs solving.
• One team will be announced as winners by a panel of judges. This panel will be made up of some members of the original 24hour-startup team, some representatives of our sponsors, and perhaps a famous entrepreneur or two. Judging criteria need to be decided; but we think it should be about much more than the eventual sale price of the team’s business on eBay.
• We also need to decide how we go about promoting the competition, both through public relations, and social media activity on Twitter and through this blog.

Obviously there’s a good few more details to iron out, so we’ll need to allocate some resource to working with the sponsor(s) to nail down the competition format, brief etc etc.

Project planning and management

Someone’s going to need to schedule all of the various streams of work that are required, so that everything runs smoothly. We need to do this in conjunction with our sponsor(s) too. The first big job will be actually deciding which 24 hours the competition will run for (not only a calendar date, but also a GMT start time that works well for teams across the globe!).

Designing and building the website

There are loads of bits of awesome functionality we could build. As mentioned, we a need simple registration process and profile page for teams. Most of the other functionality will be giving the teams tools to promote their project and generate as much buzz about it as possible (we like that this is in their interest and that of our sponsor(s)).

For example, we can make it simple for them to plug in Twitter and video feeds, and link to the eBay auction for their fledgling startup – exactly as we did last year.

In addition, the homepage of the site will be used by our team to pick out interesting developments from the teams around the globe, and generate buzz about these. Basically, we’ll need to build a simple interface, so we can act as curators (more on that later).

Clearly the cost of building the site is very variable, and dependent on a specification which we’ll agree with the sponsor(s) – but we will be looking to provide an indication of the ballpark figures for what we have planned so far.

Administering the site

As people enter their teams, we’ll need someone on hand to deal with any issues that are thrown up, and of course a very intense period of admin during the 24 hour window(!) and to a certain extent afterwards too. They’ll also need to be on hand to answer and tech support type queries from entrants throughout this time.

Press liaison

We’ll need to write a press contact schedule, and press releases, and allocate resource for contacting journalists in the run up to the competition, putting teams in touch with local journalists and updating global press throughout the 24hrs. Then there’ll be time required to ensure the media follow-up with articles once the winner is announced.

We got some excellent coverage in the Sunday Telegraph last time around, and this time it’ll be much bigger, better and with lots of time to get journos interested before the big kick-off.

Social media management

This is a biggie. 24 hour startup has the potential to engage thousands and thousands of readers across the main blog and all the team blogs – something we think will be of huge value to the sponsor(s). Plus, we nearly became a trending topic on Twitter last time round (showed up on some UK trends), so we’ll be gunning for that this time.

To do this, we’ll need social media managers to curate the competition. By this, we mean they will spend time talking (probably via Twitter) to the people who are doing the promotional work for each team, and reading their tweets and posts. Then, we’ll be writing summaries for the main blog, linking though to all the team pages (so, each team will have the chance – if they do something interesting enough – of getting major exposure from the homepage).

At the same time, we’ll be Tweeting from @24hourstartup about everything that’s going on, providing an incredibly exciting live feed of everything that’s happening around the world (this is gonna be fun!).

So, there’ll need to be resource allocated to doing this. (One thing to note is that this would probably need to scale up with the no. of teams who enter!)

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We’re currently pulling together ballpark costs for all this work now. Clearly, our eventual sponsor(s) may have the resource to do some of this themselves, or have ideas for different things that will affect the costs. This is simply a stake in the ground.

Sound good? Please let us know in the comments, and get in touch with Rob if you’re interested in sponsoring.

People have asked us if we’d do it again… and while we all thought it was awesome, and would recommend it to anyone, the general feeling is that we’ve done it already, so don’t need to put ourselves through the ordeal again!

Instead, we’ve been thinking about making it bigger and better for 2010. Here’s what we’re thinking for now – we’ll blog developments as and when there are any:

• We want lots of people to be involved. Wouldn’t it be cool if 24hour-startup became a global event?
• In fact we want it to be open for anyone to take part – perhaps we just provide a toolkit / pack to get them started.
• We could make it competitive – teams could duke it out LIVE on a cool website we make, right here.
• It would be awesome if there was a prize for the winning team.
• …and if we’re going to do all that we’ll need a sponsor!

If you’re interested – either taking part or sponsoring – please email Rob and he’ll get back to you.

The entire of the 24hour-startup team, plus a good 50 or so auction followers were glued to the eBay auction, and over-using the “Refresh” button as the auction counted down. Personally, I was on a 3-way iPhone con call with Dave and Nick (that’s just how I roll!!)

The excitement was incredible, because in the last hour – as the bid history shows – the price more than tripled from $1500 to a final amount of $5,100!

Perhaps this had something to do with the boys at The Telegraph writing up the story. Not only did we make their website, but also got onto page 2 of the Business section of The Sunday Telegraph.

(Note to our Mums… you can download a PDF of that article here!) Apart from me looking like a psycho killer, and Robbie giving his cheesiest smile, we think the photo isn’t bad. At least it makes Dr Hue look like the main man, which of course, for those of you who want to Shop By Colur (TM!), he is!

There’s a couple of inaccuracies in The Telegraph’s report – to be expected when conducting a rushed telephone interview, I guess. The two we’d most like to address are:

• As well as Nonsense and White October, the guys at Hutchhouse deserve a mention for their beautiful web design work. (Which, by the way, was all managed through their awesome new bit of software AllWorkedUp – kind of like version control / project management software but specifically for designers – check it out.)
• We’re quoted at saying we wanted £20,000 for DrHue.com! This was taken a bit out of context. That was our estimate of the hours – at rate card price – that had been put into the project. Not that we’d have complained (after all, I’ve got to fund my very important purchases somehow). This was about having an awesome experience together, and an experimenet in how fast a startup can be made (they’re a bit slow sometimes, we thought!).

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We have had contact with the buyers. Apparently they’re a few city types from the same football team who have clubbed together to take on Dr Hue as a little side project. Looking forward to meeting them on Weds evening!

(I think we’ll probably document all that stuff on Dr Hue’s blog.)

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Also, Will made a nice little animated banner / TV ad for DrHue!!!

Nice, eh?

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• Bidding has topped $1,000!
• There are now over 9,500 products on DrHue.com including a LOAD from Tesco.
  + we have been approved by more TradeDoubler feeds, means DrHue could have practically instant access to a catalogue of LOADS of products.
• @Dr_Hue now has over 700 followers – cheers everyone!
• There’s still a day left for you to enter Dr Hue’s “colourful personalities” competition. You can read some of the best entries we’ve had so far on the blog.
  

Anyway, there’s 2 days left on our eBay auction and we just*had* to blog about developments.

Bidding war:

• We got to the office this morning and bidding had doubled overnight - a jump from $660 to $1275! Speculation here is rife that we may be able to each buy ourselves a nice dinner with the proceeds…
• We have since updated the eBay auction page, with more details about what the purchaser gets too. It’s loads of stuff! The DrHue domain names, code base, blog, brand assets, marketing IP, Facebook page, Twitter account (now over 600 followers! With built-in profile pic scanning auto follow reply direct message thingy!) AND IP rights to use all the content on 24hour-startup.com and a 1 day handover session with our 3 top guys!!!!
• We’ve also answered a couple of important questions on the eBay auction that may be relevant to other bidders. (One was about whether we’re up for working with the buyer, and another was about how many sales DrHue has made…)

Hype:

• The press are sniffing around. As well as coverage on the Business Zone site, and Planet Anarky blog, Richard Tyler from The Telegraph has been in touch. So, hopefully that’ll mean DrHue.com will get on their website, and maybe into the Sunday Telegraph itself. In fact, just as I started writing this, they sent a photographer - really nice guy called Eddie Mulholland, pictured here with our hero, Dr Hue!
  

We have a tech spec:

It’s a tad overdue, but we now have a pretty detailed technical description of what DrHue.com does, and what improvements would need to be made by our buyer.

The site is getting EVEN better:

In response to some feedback we’ve had, Rich couldn’t resist playing with the code. So, I’m told that in about an hour, we can expect to see an extra 6,000 products LIVE on DrHue.com (thanks Tesco!), and improved category functionality AND, EVEN BETTER a category management system back-end for the new owner to use. Phew!!!

…AND Will Savage is working on a MPU banner ad he got 90% finished in the time… I’ll update with that later!

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So, 6 more days to go… and what will the final figure be? And more importantly, WHO is going to buy DrHue.com?

The dust has settled and the team have all had the sleepiest weekend of their lives. So, it was nice to come back into the office and see that a lot of people have been talking about us over the weekend.

Thanks to everyone who has written about us, and tweeted about us. We’re all really pleased you liked what we did – it makes the weird sleep patterns this week all worth while! In particular…

• Thanks to Neil Cocker for repeatedly blogging our progress. I know Dave, being a fellow leek-lover, was chuffed we’d hit the big time in Wales!
• We were also particularly pleased with a comment on Web Host Chat – The UK hosting forum. Ed-Freethought described 24hour-startup.com as “A somewhat crazy idea driven my a bunch of marketing men with nothing better to do by the looks of it!”. For the record Ed, the geeks amongst us would like to point out they’re not marketing men, and the marketing men amongst us would like to point out that this has turned out to be quite a good bit of marketing!
• Also, over on Twitter, it was nice to see that someone at our (new) favourite printer manufacture – Brother – was loving Dr Hue!

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Dr Hue’s blogger competition is also bearing nicely coloured fruit too, with people all over the place telling Dr Hue about their favourite colours in a bid to be sent a lovely wee prize.

So pretty!

Some of Nick’s favourite entries so far:

• YELLOW via a big Cambridge United fan!
• A PURPLE diatribe by Seraph…
• Something BLUE, by Keiron!

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We’ve been looking at the numbers, so here’s some stats!

• 24hour-startup.com has been seen in 62 countries and has had nearly 5,000 visitors in just a few days.
• DrHue.com has been viewed in 39 countries already!
• The most popular colour search on DrHue.com is purple.

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All of which has resulted in…

The eBay auction reaching $600 USD by end of play Monday!

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The frantic rush to get a working Beta up

Wow. I think I can honestly say that none of us have ever worked on anything that has come together quite so well at the last minute. And I mean literally the last minute. At 11.59am, the first ever live test of a colour based search on DrHue.com, examining the colours from real pictures of real products pulled into the system, and matching them to the colour selected by the user, then returning that list to the user, was done… and it worked!

We actually cheered! The 4 hours leading up to that moment had been very much “will it, won’t it”. Despite everyone working at 500 miles/hour, we had contingency plans in place for if the image analysis stuff didn’t work (the site still has this functionality – its the “match by description” tab).

Inevitably some stuff didn’t make it. We were agonisingly close to adding a bit of functionality that allows the user to upload their own photo (say, of their living room) for the system to analyse and match products to. (Naturally, the code for that will go to the eventual winner of the eBay auction.)

In the meantime, the design guys had to produce variants of the pages, dependent on what functionality we would actually have in.

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The frantic rush to bring Dr Hue to market

We hadn’t predicted the twitter hype we’d get, so the marketing team were being kept very busy keeping up with everyone’s tweets (we thought the winning bidder would appreciate the effort!). However, there was time to put together a “sweet” little blogger outreach campaign on Dr Hue’s new blog! And, the icing on the cake was the @Dr_Hue twitter account… THE place for advice on products that match the colours in your Twitter profile pic! (Try following @DrHue…)

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The frantic rush to write a business plan

Eagle-eyed blog readers will have noticed the appearance of the “business plan” category on this blog. The intention was to write a set of posts designed to show ebay bidders that DrHue.com is a great product and can make them money.

In the end, we got a good few posts up on this, talking about our thinking behind the product, the brand etc. These still need some work, and we’re going to re-evaluate them this week. So, if you have any questions about the business of Dr Hue, ask away, and we’ll try to address them in updates to these posts.

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The announcement (and the pub).

Here’s a hastily cut video of us talking to the webcam when we were done. It’s mainly Dave explaining how the site works, but we’d like to reiterate here our MASSIVE thanks to the UK Twitterait, who kept us going right through the night with 140 character motivational blurts!

After this, we headed straight to the pub, where a few random fans we’d acquired dropped in. (Hi Chris Titley!!) We all let our hair down, especially @willsavage … if anyone’s found a pair of Prada glasses that fell of his face at some point on his accidental and very sleepy journey to Heathrow and back on the Piccadilly line, please let us know!!!

More often than not online shoppers search for and filter products based on rational considerations such as price, size and popularity. At times this can be pretty uninspiring!

Dr Hue is the alternative to this grey world of online retail offering an emotional splash of colour to your online shopping experience. It makes colour choice the primary filter for search and everything else follows.

Whether you’re after a gift for that friend that simply adores pink, want matching accessories for a red dress, or are searching for a sofa to compliment your striking blue carpet then Dr Hue offers a unique, fun and rewarding shopping experience.

What’s more, colour is becoming an increasingly important factor in both product design and consumer purchasing decisions. Colour is what gives a product its identity, colour is what makes a product unique, and colour is often what makes someone fall in love that product.

Dr Hue is here to quench the growing thirst for colour!

Contents:

The Idea

The Brand and Design

The Technology

The Marketing

The Exit Strategy

Well, our exit strategy is easy – just check out the ebay auction…

However, let’s say for example, while you’re there you place a (whopping) bid and win Dr Hue, the brand, website, business plan and all. And you do run it for a couple of years, growing the customer base and develop it into a well established brand – then what do you do when you want out?

Well, if the above is achieved then you will more than likely attract a host of possible suitors.

Most probably a large site such as Amazon may want to acquire Dr Hue to add to it’s portfolio of sites…

So there you have it! (Of course there are other possible exits however we have neither the time or energy to document them now.)

Don’t make films on 24 hour benders. from NonsenseLondon on Vimeo.