Pregame: Monday, March 5th

Pre-Launch Party

We held a fantastic pre-launch party at Taps in downtown Tampa thanks to @AbsoluteMobile. (We’ll be going back to Taps for our afterparty, too!)The Tampa Bay tech and startup community came out in full force to support for the buspreneurs.

Absolute Mobile Solutions has been helping organizations develop and execute mobile strategies for over twelve years. Their services include Mobile Strategy Consulting, Mobile Design, and Mobile Development.

Day 1: Tuesday, March 6th {Tampa -> Atlanta}

8am:

We were honored to have Tampa Mayor @BobBuckhorn come out and chat with us about our adventure. Reporters from Creative Loafing and camera crews from ABC Channel 10 News, WFLA Channel 8 News and CTTB News all came out to send us off from the Convention Center!

Morning:

Everyone introduced themselves to one another and pitched their ideas to one another. Almost everyone had one idea and  some had several! Our buspreneurs are all AWESOME! They have diverse talents and backgrounds. Most came from Tampa Bay, but we had some from all over. Sean Steinmarc (of team Give or Dare) flew all the way from New York, but Amanda Blain (of team PopcornU) came the farthest, all the way from Ontario, Canada!

Noonish:

We love connecting with startup communities along the way! Our first stop was the Florida Innovation Hub in Gainesville. They were kind enough to offer us lunch, a tour of their awesome incubator and a space for a couple hours. After the (now well-fed) buspreneurs heard everyone’s ideas, they chatted and divided themselves up into teams.

Afternoon:

We loaded back into the buses and the teams got to work! They brainstormed on names, hashed out functionality, markets, monetization strategies, strategic parters, branding and everything in between. The bus windows doubled as whiteboards and filled up with lists, diagrams and notes.They pounded away on their ideas for hundreds of miles. Some of the teams got all the way to wireframing and coding by the end of day 1!

Evening:

Our night in Atlanta was made possible by @MailChimp and the awesome Atlanta startup community! When we got to Atlanta, we met up with the local Atlanta Startup Drinks crew. They call themselves “a drinking group with a startup problem”. We were sold instantly! We had a fantastic time meeting, eating with and (of course) drinking with the @atlsuds) folks! Thanks for the warm welcome @RichardLeBer & co!

Later Evening:

Our teams arrived back at the hotel. Some worked through most of the night.

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Up Next:

Baton Rouge!

Follow along with our adventures with the hashtag #StartupBusFL, by following @StartupBusFL, by following the Buspreneurs Twitter list and by reading our rad blog posts.

More tomorrow! Mucho Love,
Jessica Barnett / @redheadjessica (StartupBusFL Co-Conductor)