Startup Bus: Day #1

This morning, at 7am, over 30 geeks left from Fort Lauderdale Beach for Austin, TX.

Over the next 4 hours, everyone who had an idea pitched it to the rest of the bus- 17 in total.

By the time we left the Turkey Lake rest stop, just north of Orlando, we were down to our 6 teams and everyone started to get down and dirty fine-tuning their idea and starting on their milestones:

1. Forming a Team
2. Have an end goal and share equity agreed upon
3. Registering a domain name of the startup
4. Create a repository
5. Create a team Twitter account
6. Create a team blog
7. Created a 30 second elevator pitch developed in text
8. Creating an official press release that can be distributed by the media
9. The teams’ product launched and having it accessible on the internet
10. The teams’ video presentation uploaded and ready for viewing on the internet

Now we need your help, giving you a chance to be a part of the voting process.

In order to add a level of competition, StartupBus has set up a Stock Market Game where you, the general public, are given the opportunity to virtually invest in not just individual teams, but also specific individuals.  Both the buspeneurs and you, the general the public, can vote with your virtual dollars to buy and sell shares of stock in these startups.

Initially, you start with $100, but anyone who plays can earn additional bus dollars in various ways:

• Every hour a player receives bus dollars based on their firm’s experience level. Upgrading your firm’s experience level (from your profile) will give you more bus dollars per hour. There are six firms you can achieve in the game, starting from Novice and ending with Guru.
• Every badge you achieve gives you money based on difficulty. You can see a list of all badges and their achievement status on your profile.
• Every time you get a unique click through your referral link, you receive $1.

Below, we have listed all the Miami-based StartupBus teams, who they are, what they are building,their employees, and their referral links.  To support a specific individual, feel free to click on their referral link.  If you just want to invest in a specific company, you can go directly to http://startupbus.com/game and log-in using Facebook Connect.

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In addition, you can help StartupBusMiami as a whole, to beat our national competition, by Tweeting, blogging, and tagging using any combination of [#startupbus #miami] (has to have both) and any of the following sponors:

• #xero
• #twillio
• @boxdotnet
• #wepay
• #microsoft
• #att