Photo: “The best part is the fact that I started with an idea in my head just a couple of months ago and now I get to launch an app in Vegas; I didn’t expect that,” said Niger Little-Poole, during his visit to the Communitech Hub
You have an app idea, but now what?
The hard part is turning the idea from a few sentences on a piece of paper, or a sketch that looks like it was done by a five-year-old, into reality.
Dandy, an alumni company from the Communitech HYPERDRIVE program, proves it can take an app idea and crowdsource it to completion with today’s launch of PictureThis.
“You may have an idea, but you don’t have the 100 different things that you need to really build what you are talking about,” said Niger Little-Poole, winner of the Dandy 60 Challenge and Picture This founder.
Little-Poole, a second-year engineering student at Columbia University in New York City, turned a gift idea for a friend into a trip to Las Vegas for this week’s Consumer Electronics Show during a break between semesters.
The app, which he said is “like a scavenger hunt meets Instagram meets Reddit,” was born from sending his photography-enthusiast friend all over New York to capture interesting pictures for a new scrapbook.
Dandy crowdsources ideas for apps, then turns them over to its online community to vote on everything from the name and logo to features and even the business model. Revenue from an app is shared with the person who suggested it, voters who supported it and contributors of ideas to improve and enhance it.
After submitting the idea to Dandy last April, Little-Poole forgot about it until he was contacted in November with news that he had won the Dandy 60 Day Challenge.
Although at the time Little-Poole thought he had a good idea, he was more interested in getting feedback from the Dandy community than winning.
“There was a lot of interesting feedback; people suggesting other ideas, additional features, things that they thought were cool,” Little-Poole said.
Over the next couple of days, Little-Poole and Dandy co-founder Matt Scobel are participating in CES to promote the launch of the app and get the word out on the Dandy community.
“Dandy is perfect for those who don’t have the technical ability to build out an idea by themselves,” Little-Poole said.
PictureThis launches on not just three, but four platforms today; Android, BlackBerry 10, iOS and the exclusive Google Glass.
"Without the support of HYPERDRIVE and the Communitech ecosystem I honestly don't think we could have gotten to this point this fast,” Scobel said.
