Ready for some inspiration? Less than a year after the first TechRaising event, Santa Cruz is already seeing 2011 pitches becoming businesses. Early this month, Lauren Gogarty and her team launched All Together Now, the result of Gogarty’s 90-second pitch at TechRaising 2011. Gogarty’s dream — a simple yet powerful project management solution for websites — needed a little momentum, a catalyst to move it from an idea to a reality.
Thoughts of an application designed specifically for the needs of web developers had been brewing at the back of Lauren Gogarty’s mind for quite some time before she heard about TechRaising. Only six weeks before the event, she got the news and knew immediately that she would pitch. When she showed up on Friday, she had a picture of what she thought her invention would look like. By Sunday, she’d demoed animations of the new application and attracted an angel investor who funded her team through a year of development and into launch. She reflects that her team of collaborators at TechRaising formed organically, inspired to create a solution to a frustrating common problem.
The spark of collaborative energy that weekend transformed Lauren’s vision into a functioning web application. All Together Now is the perfect reflection of TechRaising’s goals: the amazing level of creativity, the diversity of talent, and the fact that everyone was there to make things happen. For Lauren, the focused intensity of the weekend was an essential opportunity to start something big, a quick, spontaneous jump-start like a supernova that keeps burning and growing for a long time after it’s done.
We’re less than two months from the next TechRaising! Lauren’s advice to anyone with a tech idea: Get up and pitch. Yes, she was incredibly nervous. But it was only 90 seconds of nerves and it was worth it.
Find out more about All Together Now and the crew who made it happen at getatn.com. Check out our post about our last Meetup, where we discussed how to create an effective pitch. Our next meetup is tomorrow night, Thursday, March 15, 6:30pm at Cruzio. On the table:Attracting Early Adopters and Generating Buzz for your Idea.