Part 1: From Winning the Food Hackathon to App Store!
Guest Post from, Stephanie Quilao, Food Hackathon Winner and Founder at Vibrantly.
In 2012, I transitioned from being a healthy eating food blogger at Noshtopia to Founder of a mobile app food startup. I left Phoenix and moved back to the Bay Area to go for the dream. I had that itch, that burning desire to build something, to be a part of something bigger than myself that would make a difference and help impact people’s lives.
Blogging professionally for 8 years has been incredible and has given me the opportunity to reach and help many people eat healthier worldwide. The possibilities with mobile set my heart on fire. I started to envision ways people could use their mobile devices to help them eat healthier.
I jumped in and did what every wide-eyed excited newbie does when they get to Silicon Valley. I networked, pitched, went on coffee dates, looked for a co-Founder and built an MVP for a healthy living app called One Mile One Meal and launched it on iOS, Android and Windows Mobile, and quickly learned why you do MVPs.
At the end of 2012, I stopped work on One Mile One Meal and started building a new app around healthy eating. However, soon, two competitors came out with similar concepts. A potential co-Founder I had met decided to do something else. I was living in my parent’s house feeling defeated and beat like a low point in a Steve Carell movie. I asked myself, so much for living the dream, right? This is the stuff that most Founders never share but really it happens all the time.
Admittedly, I enjoyed a brief pity party and then got back on the saddle. I’m a fighter. I beat chronic health issues before; surely I could figure out how to manifest this vision in my head. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do. I only knew my new venture would involve two things: mobile + food. I would stay open to any opportunities that smelled of these two things.
One afternoon at the end of March this year, I was randomly checking Facebook when I happen to see a post about the SF Food Hackathon. There it was - mobile + food!
I lit up like a Christmas tree and immediately signed up. I had no idea what I wanted to do at the hackathon beyond that it would involve mobile + food. I decided to take one of the features from the last healthy eating app I was working on and pitch that as an idea. That feature was the ability to search for food based on a color. A common healthy eating tip is to eat the rainbow of colors, so I thought it would be cool to be able to find foods based on the rainbow.
I knew several of the hackathon mentors through my food blogging, but I didn’t know anyone who was actually going to be doing the hackathon. This was a big deal for me because I am an introvert, and social events like this where I know no one honestly makes me a nervous wreck.
I pitched my food color search idea to the crowd, and after talking to a few people, I found no one who wanted to be on my team. I talked to some other people about being on their team and they seemed set with their idea and group.
I felt like I was right back at the high school dance where no one wanted to dance with me, the geeky girl with glasses, braces, and awkward permed hair. I hated that feeling and again, I’m not so good doing the group social thing with strangers so I decided to leave the hackathon.
And here is where destiny intervened.
While I was packing up to leave, I remembered a guy during the idea pitches that mentioned he lost 100 pounds. I wanted to congratulate him. I myself have dropped 40 pounds so I know how good it feels when other people, even complete strangers, acknowledge and congratulate your weight loss.
Philippe and I had a nice chat about weight loss success stories and I asked him what team he was on. His team consisted of him and one other guy, Robert, and they were going to do something around healthy eating habits. I asked to join their team and our trio was formed. It turned out that Philippe and Robert were both iPhone developers. I felt like the universe was conspiring with me.
I had my two things: mobile + food.
Initially, we started on a concept for an iPhone app that would help people develop healthier eating habits. The search for food based on a color was a feature in that app concept. Feeling the pressure of time, we scrapped the healthy habits idea because it was looking too complex to build in the timeframe, and just went with the search for food based on a color concept because it was easier to build and we could use Yummly as a source of content for the search.
The way we divided up responsibilities on the team was simple and worked well. The guys did all the coding of the app, and I did the design and brand development which included coming up with the name Vibrantly. One of the old taglines for Noshtopia was, “Chow vibrantly.” I love the word vibrant because it reflects vitality, being a shining light, and how I want to help people feel, radiant and alive.
The three of us were kind of nervous about the pitch. We were going up against bigger teams. Fortunately, we finished about an hour before the practice pitches started happening. The two guys from the hackathon listening to the dry runs gave us some good ideas to tighten the pitch up.
Their last question to us was, “Did you three work together before?” Our answer was no. We had just met 36 hours prior. The hackathon guys were impressed with how much we did in such little time. In my head, I thought, well, when you have a focused idea and a team with three people with combined work experience of over 30 years, cool things can happen.
Join us at the Future of Food Hackathon, November 16-17, San Francisco: http://futurefoodhack.com
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