We are happy to announce a partnership with Samsung and the launch of Qminder Connect on Samsung Smart-TV.

Qminder, queue management system, has been built to be as easy to setup as possible. A key part in this has been to use hardware that is easy to find and that people are used to.
Samsung was the obvious choice, as they offer beautiful hardware for every part of the Qminder system.

Most of you know that you can download our free smartphone app for remote queuing on Android.

Samsung tablets are also a good choice to set up our simple name based queuing option, where visitors can type in their name into the tablet and are inserted into the waiting line.

Now available in the Baltic markets you can also show the waiting line information on Samsung Smart TV. Just download the app and pair it with your location. Call people by names or numbers – Smart TV displays both of these options wonderfully.

This feature is not limited to Samsung Smart TV’s, but downloading the Smart TV app is one of the easiest way to set up a waiting line management for your location.

To learn more about this options, take a look under our features page.
Or if you happen to be in Latvia you can get a presentation of Qminder from Samsung Showroom in this week at EUNIS expo.

The video points out how not be the so-called "Oh, by the way" patient, who after the appointed time-slot suddenly remembers a new problem they forgot to mention before. But because most people will probably still continue to do that, please share Qminder to your local establishments! We will smoothen the process!

For a queue management system like Qminder, the competition isn’t usually another technology, but instead a set of unwritten rules.

„Who is last in line?“ is the common practice when entering a waiting area in a hospital or in any other more quiet queuing situation for that matter.

This is a situation with no alternatives. You cannot go to a competing shop, you just have to wait there patiently.

The questions is – does your time have to be filled with anxiety and nervous fidgeting?

Are all those people in front of me? How long will it take? I came 8 a.m. sharp like my doctor told me to, how can there still be so many people before me? Do I have to pay extra for my parking? What if I want to go to the toilet? Could I finish another procedure before? The guy next to me is coughing really intensely – I bet it’s that latest flu strain that I saw on the news.

In a barely, but still functioning situation with no other alternatives, people tend to accept the status quo. Why bother? Why improve on a „functioning system“? Who cares?

This kind of thinking will not do anymore! When doctors are being paid by performance and more than 65% percent of reviews on doctors include something about the waiting times, - the doctor, the hospital, and you as a patient should care and do whatever you can to improve on the matter!

Some of you who haven’t been to the doctor’s for a while, might think that with „all kinds of online-bookings“ and other improvements waiting surely must have gone better over the years?

Annual Analysis of Average Patient Waiting Times finds that actually we’re waiting longer!

US doctors reviewing site Vitals that gathers reviews and ratings for more than 870 000 doctors found that the shortest average waiting time to see a physician has actually increased more than a full minute.
Read more about the results from vitals.com

The first progressive doctors are using Qminder’s Queue up by Name.

They have installed a simple iPad with Qminder, where patients can queue up by typing in their name.
This way, doctors don’t have to check whether there is a line behind the door, who is next in line and what they want. Distractions by knocks on the door or even worse - people rushing in the middle of an examination are also things of the past with Qminder.

Let your doctors know about Qminder! We know that we can help them and with your help we can spread the word.

Qminder remote queuing and waiting line management in the cloud is amazingly lightweight and easy to take on compared to legacy systems. Queue management used to be available only for public offices and banks that could invest thousands into systems that will become obsolete within a year or are thrown out after a simple office layout redesign. Things have changed!

Building Qminder Connect iPad app for merchants to easily set up a queue management, we have seen the adoption and testing from some pretty unexpected locations: a jeweler in Bangkok or an IT helpdesk for 7000 people in house employees in Manhattan. What they had in common was the question about iPad setup.

You might know that you can set up Qminder Connect as a point of entry for visitors, in order to insert their mobile number to get an SMS-ticket or just their name to be called when their turn is up. But does the iPad have to be on the wall? On a desk? Mounted? In the concierge’s hand? Or just taped to a pole?
Although all of these options work, we now offer a more professional solution.

Qminder partnered up with premium tablet cases manufacturer Bouncepad.
Bouncepad is the choice of high-end brands.You might have seen their cases while visiting The London Eye or Paramount Hotel in Times Square, they are also the choice of well-known brands like BMW and Vodafone.

Contact us or Bouncepad directly for the best solution for you. They offer a wide selection of tablet cases form complete floor stands to standard VESA wall mounts to lightweight but safe table-top versions. The product range combines functionality, aesthetics and security.

Queue management systems used to be only for “managing” crowds and chaos, but taking the mobile approach, we see that waiting lines can be addressed everywhere where the merchant values its visitors and work flow.

Affordable and now even easier to set up. Give it a try!

We all mind waiting!

Solving the problem of waiting lines with smartphones and tablets has been a road with polarized opinions and feedback.
It has been heart-warming to see people’s eyes light up when they realize it will be possible to skip the queue, get a ticket remotely and what other amazing possibilities it can be extended to.

At the same time, adoption of a system has to be as frictionless as possible and equal to all. And it is difficult to shift a standard or overcome a habit… We are of course talking about paper-ticketing.

(A magazine’s photoshop creation from Austria that went an extra mile in order to make Qminder even more clear-cut to their readers.)

Today we are happy to announce a partnership with Star Micronics, one of the leading POS printer manufacturers.

Embracing the mobile wave, Star was the first printer manufacturer to offer Android and iOS support to their printers.
This allowed us to quickly add the functionality to our business side tablet application Qminder Connect.

It means that you can now easily connect Star Printers with Qminder and offer paper tickets for the non-smartphone users.

One of the best use-cases for mobile queue management that always springs to mind is the waiting line for a local mobile service provider when wanting to buy a new phone or sign a contract. But what about the problem with a broken/lost phone?

To buy a star printer, contact us or seek out your local distributor.
The setup is as easy as you would expect from us ;)

Let’s take queue management to the next level, step by step.

We all mind waiting!

Qminder App offers remote queuing from smartphones. It is a convenient way to get a ticket up-front and from a distance or obtain the freedom to be mobile and not be forced to stand in the waiting-room for your number to be called out.

This location-based mobile feature has made quite a few people draw a parallel with “checking-in” with Foursquare.

Foursquare is a location-based social network which has more than 25 million users, 3 billion check-ins, with 6.2 million added daily.
Besides people sharing their whereabouts, they also share photos and tips about worthwhile locations and Foursquare makes wonderful recommendations based on that information.

(Did you know you can Sign-Up for Qminder with Foursquare and if you have claimed a venue we will pull venue information automatically)

We in Qminder are all familiar with Foursquare. Some of us use it daily to check in, others just to Explore new locations. And it is not just for personal use either – more than one million businesses are using their Merchant Platform.

This weekend, they held a #4sqhackathon, a weekend hackers’ event, which in essence is similar to Garage48, where Qminder got started.
We didn’t make it to NYC or SF for the official event on that occasion, but that didn’t stop us from taking part.

The problem of waiting lines is clear from their platform as well.
Warnings about waiting lines, lengths of queues, and some of the most frequent “tips” and comments left about locations. The #HateOfWait is a powerful thing!

So to give power to the people, to make your cries heard, we are a trying a new feature in Qminder App where you can vote for place that should use Qminder.
This gives us the information where you want to see Qminder, and it’s a clear sign for the businesses how unhappy their customers are about waiting lines.

We have already data coming in around the world.
We haven’t been to South-Korea, but we know where their waiting lines are.

We all mind waiting!

Solving the problem of waiting lines with the help of smartphones and tablets has put us into a slightly different state than any of the other queue management systems out there.

Besides the added flexibility that using commodity hardware provides, we are at those amazing stages of our development, where people are suggesting new ideas and asking us for solutions for queuing-problems that have never been addressed before.

Yes, everyone can imagine or has used the queue management system at a bank, a governmental building, or at a hospital – but what about seasonal events or even one-timers, such as supermodel castings, the beer stand at a rock-festival, X-factor auditions, or the launching of a new iPhone ?
For the last 2 weeks we have seen an increase of interest from the US and although Black Friday shopping craze and waiting lines for days and nights were to thank for some of that, the curiosity did continue.

It wasn’t until today that we talked to a specific client and realized that we couldn’t ignore the Christmas carols any longer – whole families are waiting in lines for hours at a time, in order to just get to meet Santa.
They wait for so long that there are online tutorials to help with the process.
We have been talking to European shopping malls to relieve gift wrapping stations from waiting lines, but indeed – why stop there, why bother the elves, when Qminder, the mobile queue management, can help manage the stressed out parents way more efficiently?

And any elf will be able to set the system up all by themselves, as it really is that simple.

In the spirit of holidays you can get the system for FREE until the end of the year. All you have to do is register your venue and send us an e-mail with the subject heading “SANTA”.

We all mind waiting! Especially when there are gifts to receive.

We all mind waiting!

This was the simple idea, that brought six of us together, who shared the pain enough to act on it. Then we hacked together a modern day solution for queue management based on smartphones. Thinking of ourselves as our own customers.

As many of you know, Qminder continued on with great speed and support. Our problem and solution was recognized by Europe’s leading micro-seed investment fund and mentoring program, Seedcamp. Which invested in us, in less than 100 days from inception at the Garage48 hackathon.

Next week is the flagship event of Seedcamp‘s program and a great time for us to take a step back and remind ourselves and everybody else why we are doing this?

As Seedcamp is more than just a “program” and often mentioned as a family, we got help from another Seedcamp company called Teleportd. They helped us find and use real-time relevant crowd-sourced photos from the smartphone generation, to easily visualize why we are doing this.

Take a look at some of the latest photos shared on Twitter, Instagram and other platforms. You can see that waiting in line is a big problem and feel the cries for help

Furthermore, as Apple hasn’t yet signed up for Qminder to manage the iPhone 5 queues, we suggest you take a look at our other friends from Seedcamp, who are in the business of getting anything done by trusted, friendly people nearby – Milkly. They have kindly offered to wait in line for you.

Stay tuned for updates during Seedcamp Week by Following us on Twitter or on Facebook - its going to be a blast!

And of course, if you know or own a venue that has a waiting line, Sign-Up and start using Qminder today.

We all mind waiting!

After a hectic first half of our first year since winning Garage48, getting into Seedcamp, participating and winning Startup Sauna and travelling the world, news of our doings have been limited. Partly because we had a lot of catching up to do but also, because we have been working on something new based on our learning and feedback. When we started with Qminder, we had a highly end-user focused approach. The app for remote queuing was clear for everyone and people loved the idea. Just based on a couple of screenshots, we got covered in Russia, Switzerland, UK, Japan, Brazil, and other places.

Although the smartphone market penetration is high and rapidly rising throughout the world, we have always taken into account that we want to solve the problem for visitors of all kind – even the ones without a smartphone! Making our app work with the machinery of the world’s largest “offline” queuing management company Qmatic was the answer to potentially more than 51 800 businesses. And while we still offer to integrate and work with locations that have already installed the system, we saw that the need was far greater than anticipated and we wanted to address that market!

Introducing Qminder Connect – a tablet application to cover all the queuing needs for the businesses.

It is a versatile tablet application available both on iPad and Android tablets that transforms the affordable tablet into a tool for your business! As mentioned above, to serve all, you can transform the tablet into an SMS-ticketing dispenser, where none-smartphone users can get in the virtual line just by entering their cellphone number to get an SMS-reminder. With statistics showing more phones that people in existence, we are fairly certain that we cover your clientele.

While push-notifications and instructions on the phones are accurate and personal, an on-site communication to further guide and make the final steps to have a seamless service, we suggest to try out to set up the tablets as Monitors to display the current situation. It could provide answers to questions about which counter, table or teller is serving what number, and where to sit down for service. Escorting and guiding the customer for maximum satisfaction and perfect service.

And not only the customers but your workers as well! Qminder Connect can also act as the Point of Service (POS) scaling to the needs of flexible store layouts and lightweight hardware.

All this is done over the cloud and with installation steps so easy that they could be described as pure magic. Please check it out and let us know what you think!

Sign up here and download the app from iTunes or Google Play!

As many of you might know, Qminder started at a weekend hackathon Garage48.
Since the next event is taking place this weekend and we are getting more and more pings and questions about our experience, we offer a quick overview of Qminder’s first 48h and hopefully some useful tips:

Briefly on the concept of Garage48:

Garage48 events usually start at 5pm on a Friday evening. All participants gather together in a big room and pitch about 30 to 40 ideas on stage. Each idea is put on the wall and everyone can choose their favourite idea and team. Usually, about 12-15 ideas will be selected and teams start working.

Friday

…or even before Friday - Do your homework! - although a common guideline for these kinds of events suggests that no work should be done beforehand.
The Garage48 ideas are posted in the participants’ Facebook group, listed, tweeted and presented in some form before the event. Getting familiar with these ideas is not cheating, but rather common sense to speed up the process on-site, in order to find the best suitable idea for you. Because the way the teams are formed can only be described with the word ‘chaos’.

When you are pitching and trying to attract talent – it gets even harder. Not to get into the intricacies about the art of pitching, suffice it to say that you have to make sure it’s clear, visual and offers information on who you are looking for and what you hope to establish in 48h.

This was exactly the case with Qminder:
Our design and concept author Markko Karu listed the idea and thus made it a no-brainer for me, Rauno Rüngas, to approach him before the event started, as I had had a similar idea written down a few months prior to the event. This glimpse of mutual vision helped us gain confidence and form the team more quickly. And again on the subject of preparation: Markko’s one-pager in its visual glory was miles ahead of the pitches that consisted of “here is the word document – read it”.

Don’t hold back on forming the teams! Furthermore, you need to make sure that there are enough people in your team to handle the different sides of the project. It may vary according to your goals – depending on whether you want to start a business, have fun, challenge yourself or just find that one person who is willing to work with you .
But you have to take into account that even the brightest idea and the most elegant code will fade fast, if it has no face or it is not backed by someone who can communicate it all to the audience.

Pro-tip: There is no shame in targeting your initial 48h prototype to the direction of sponsor prizes.

In our case, it was the Nokia Prize. To win a couple of development phones, we had to ship something on the Nokia Meego platform. We did exactly that and won the phones, regardless of it having a low groundwork value for the future development and platform. It still provided us with a solid prize for further motivation, a fast reward for the developers and having a smart and hands-on sponsor representative close during the whole time. Most of all, the developer who we recruited last, “who had done something on Qt/Nokia platform 7 years ago” and was willing to “give it a try”, wound up being one of the most valuable assets – our CTO Siim Raud.

Once you get working: if possible, sit behind one table! As many of these events are held in auditoriums and classrooms, don’t fear to mess around and quickly form a conference table.

Pro-tip: leave a chair empty, door open, pathway seen to project manager/marketing guy, so that people can visit you. They could be organizers, mentors, journalists, event sponsors or whoever. This can be summed up into the simple fact of keeping an open mind-set, keeping the dialogue going and being available to spontaneous others.

A big part of Friday will be planning, but that does not mean that you have to decide the platforms, frameworks, the name, domain etc. then and there.
Brainstorm, and if something is left undecided, just mark the deadline for the next morning at 10:00.

Pro-tip: Getting everybody under the same roof definitively helps bond the team. So, if you have floor space in the same city where the event is held, be ready to take in nomad team members. Aside from making sure nobody sleeps in after a long night, it speeds up the process of continuing where things were left off the previous evening.

Saturday

Make no mistake – you do not have 48 hours! You have Friday for preparation and Sunday for finishing up and polishing – to get something done, you actually only have the one Saturday!

By noon, the plan has to be almost solid, so that everybody could focus on their work and get into the zone, get wired in, be in the moment or whichever term suits best – everybody has one. This is the time to be on the top of your game.
For the project manager, it means a clear plan and following it, for coders and designers, it means focusing on the creative effort, for the ones responsible for marketing, it means calling/going to potential customers and partners.

In our case, it meant hustling people on the last weekend of the summer – demonstrating that there are no excuses to be made on the customer development part! Validating the idea and preparing for the future is just part of that – in 48h having that extra confirmation and validation on Saturday evening to motivate a tired and a newly formed team is priceless!

Tip: Use whatever resources you have. Your job is to make it happen in 48 hours. That is difficult. That is what great men have taught for ages:
“All is fair in love, war and Garage48″. For Qminder, it meant forcing a friend to pick-up the machinery from a potential partner we had called, and to drive 2o0km to Tartu, where the event was held.

Pro-tip: If as a project manager/marketer you want to motivate the developers to give all they have on that Saturday evening , you’d better know what time the nearest pizza place closes, deliver it, leave them alone to not over-manage and hope for the best.

Tip: If you are the guy having to pitch the next day, maybe give an interview, talk to customers, mentors etc. – get some sleep, you don’t have the privilege to be grumpy, tired, smelly or anything the like on the next day.

Sunday

By Sunday morning, the product will most likely not be ready, your vision on the other hand had better be ready. You have to know what you are going to pitch, what is the plan for the day, the coming weeks etc. This will all change anyway, but while talking to visitors, mentors, or judges on the last day, you have to have a plan – they cannot help, advise or comment, if you don’t have the plan. We are now talking about the plan that is the mix of the naive vision you had on Friday, the harsh reality you experienced on Saturday (both tech, bizdev and custdev), and a plan that has to win the hackathon and keep the team together even after they go back to their daily jobs on Monday.

On the last day, the project manager really has to step in, evaluate what has been done, what can be done in the last hours and how to gain the maximum out of all the options. To get a working demo for example. To see what he or she can pitch on the stage in the evening.

Tip: Don’t change the pitch at the last minute. You might have gotten some great new idea, but changing a pitch that you are doing for the first time at the last minute, will most likely mess everything up.

Unfortunately, this was the case with Qminder. A pitch within the time-limit was completely restructured at the last minute and basically collapsed on stage.
…But it didn’t matter:

Pro-tip: Don’t worry about the pitch – DEMO! Show the progress, show what you did, communicate how the customer reacted and what the partners said. Nobody is taking your short pitch word by word giving information about the made-up numbers, about the market size and what you THINK customers need. Surely after 48 hours you can’t know that (even if it is true, they will not be convinced). The only thing that matters is a working demo with every validation point you can get your hands on: a customer testimony, letter of intent or partnership.

Be sure to have a webpage up with a clear call-to-action and conversion plan. The hype and traffic you get will most likely be the high point for many weeks or months.
For Qminder, the primitive webpage with a couple of screenshots and e-mail collection fields was the only thing visible for the outside world for almost 4 months.
Good thing we had great designer on board who created it, because the prototype you ship within 48h will most likely suck pretty badly and will not be operable anyway, so all you have is the design. The design of the plan and the design of the webpage.

Tip: Help others! Although this might contradict the strict “All is fair in love, war and Garage48″ postulate, don’t forget that this weekend is also about networking and proving with hundreds of other people, that times have changed and shipping something within 48h is possible. The benefits of having connections and helping others should in general be clear to everyone anyway.

How to win a hackathon,
how to get the maximum out of the weekend,
how to connect,
how to form a team,
how to pitch,
- these are all subjects demanding discussion and experience-sharing.

… in the end it just comes down to #JFDI

Just F****** Do It!

]]>

As many of you might know, Qminder started at a weekend hackathon Garage48.
Since the next event is taking place this weekend and we are getting more and more pings and questions about our experience, we offer a quick overview of Qminder’s first 48h and hopefully some useful tips:

Briefly on the concept of Garage48:

Garage48 events usually start at 5pm on a Friday evening. All participants gather together in a big room and pitch about 30 to 40 ideas on stage. Each idea is put on the wall and everyone can choose their favourite idea and team. Usually, about 12-15 ideas will be selected and teams start working.

Friday

…or even before Friday - Do your homework! - although a common guideline for these kinds of events suggests that no work should be done beforehand.
The Garage48 ideas are posted in the participants’ Facebook group, listed, tweeted and presented in some form before the event. Getting familiar with these ideas is not cheating, but rather common sense to speed up the process on-site, in order to find the best suitable idea for you. Because the way the teams are formed can only be described with the word ‘chaos’.

When you are pitching and trying to attract talent – it gets even harder. Not to get into the intricacies about the art of pitching, suffice it to say that you have to make sure it’s clear, visual and offers information on who you are looking for and what you hope to establish in 48h.

This was exactly the case with Qminder:
Our design and concept author Markko Karu listed the idea and thus made it a no-brainer for me, Rauno Rüngas, to approach him before the event started, as I had had a similar idea written down a few months prior to the event. This glimpse of mutual vision helped us gain confidence and form the team more quickly. And again on the subject of preparation: Markko’s one-pager in its visual glory was miles ahead of the pitches that consisted of “here is the word document – read it”.

Don’t hold back on forming the teams! Furthermore, you need to make sure that there are enough people in your team to handle the different sides of the project. It may vary according to your goals – depending on whether you want to start a business, have fun, challenge yourself or just find that one person who is willing to work with you .
But you have to take into account that even the brightest idea and the most elegant code will fade fast, if it has no face or it is not backed by someone who can communicate it all to the audience.

Pro-tip: There is no shame in targeting your initial 48h prototype to the direction of sponsor prizes.

In our case, it was the Nokia Prize. To win a couple of development phones, we had to ship something on the Nokia Meego platform. We did exactly that and won the phones, regardless of it having a low groundwork value for the future development and platform. It still provided us with a solid prize for further motivation, a fast reward for the developers and having a smart and hands-on sponsor representative close during the whole time. Most of all, the developer who we recruited last, “who had done something on Qt/Nokia platform 7 years ago” and was willing to “give it a try”, wound up being one of the most valuable assets – our CTO Siim Raud.

Once you get working: if possible, sit behind one table! As many of these events are held in auditoriums and classrooms, don’t fear to mess around and quickly form a conference table.

Pro-tip: leave a chair empty, door open, pathway seen to project manager/marketing guy, so that people can visit you. They could be organizers, mentors, journalists, event sponsors or whoever. This can be summed up into the simple fact of keeping an open mind-set, keeping the dialogue going and being available to spontaneous others.

A big part of Friday will be planning, but that does not mean that you have to decide the platforms, frameworks, the name, domain etc. then and there.
Brainstorm, and if something is left undecided, just mark the deadline for the next morning at 10:00.

Pro-tip: Getting everybody under the same roof definitively helps bond the team. So, if you have floor space in the same city where the event is held, be ready to take in nomad team members. Aside from making sure nobody sleeps in after a long night, it speeds up the process of continuing where things were left off the previous evening.

Saturday

Make no mistake – you do not have 48 hours! You have Friday for preparation and Sunday for finishing up and polishing – to get something done, you actually only have the one Saturday!

By noon, the plan has to be almost solid, so that everybody could focus on their work and get into the zone, get wired in, be in the moment or whichever term suits best – everybody has one. This is the time to be on the top of your game.
For the project manager, it means a clear plan and following it, for coders and designers, it means focusing on the creative effort, for the ones responsible for marketing, it means calling/going to potential customers and partners.

In our case, it meant hustling people on the last weekend of the summer – demonstrating that there are no excuses to be made on the customer development part! Validating the idea and preparing for the future is just part of that – in 48h having that extra confirmation and validation on Saturday evening to motivate a tired and a newly formed team is priceless!

Tip: Use whatever resources you have. Your job is to make it happen in 48 hours. That is difficult. That is what great men have taught for ages:
“All is fair in love, war and Garage48″. For Qminder, it meant forcing a friend to pick-up the machinery from a potential partner we had called, and to drive 2o0km to Tartu, where the event was held.

Pro-tip: If as a project manager/marketer you want to motivate the developers to give all they have on that Saturday evening , you’d better know what time the nearest pizza place closes, deliver it, leave them alone to not over-manage and hope for the best.

Tip: If you are the guy having to pitch the next day, maybe give an interview, talk to customers, mentors etc. – get some sleep, you don’t have the privilege to be grumpy, tired, smelly or anything the like on the next day.

Sunday

By Sunday morning, the product will most likely not be ready, your vision on the other hand had better be ready. You have to know what you are going to pitch, what is the plan for the day, the coming weeks etc. This will all change anyway, but while talking to visitors, mentors, or judges on the last day, you have to have a plan – they cannot help, advise or comment, if you don’t have the plan. We are now talking about the plan that is the mix of the naive vision you had on Friday, the harsh reality you experienced on Saturday (both tech, bizdev and custdev), and a plan that has to win the hackathon and keep the team together even after they go back to their daily jobs on Monday.

On the last day, the project manager really has to step in, evaluate what has been done, what can be done in the last hours and how to gain the maximum out of all the options. To get a working demo for example. To see what he or she can pitch on the stage in the evening.

Tip: Don’t change the pitch at the last minute. You might have gotten some great new idea, but changing a pitch that you are doing for the first time at the last minute, will most likely mess everything up.

Unfortunately, this was the case with Qminder. A pitch within the time-limit was completely restructured at the last minute and basically collapsed on stage.
…But it didn’t matter:

Pro-tip: Don’t worry about the pitch – DEMO! Show the progress, show what you did, communicate how the customer reacted and what the partners said. Nobody is taking your short pitch word by word giving information about the made-up numbers, about the market size and what you THINK customers need. Surely after 48 hours you can’t know that (even if it is true, they will not be convinced). The only thing that matters is a working demo with every validation point you can get your hands on: a customer testimony, letter of intent or partnership.

Be sure to have a webpage up with a clear call-to-action and conversion plan. The hype and traffic you get will most likely be the high point for many weeks or months.
For Qminder, the primitive webpage with a couple of screenshots and e-mail collection fields was the only thing visible for the outside world for almost 4 months.
Good thing we had great designer on board who created it, because the prototype you ship within 48h will most likely suck pretty badly and will not be operable anyway, so all you have is the design. The design of the plan and the design of the webpage.

Tip: Help others! Although this might contradict the strict “All is fair in love, war and Garage48″ postulate, don’t forget that this weekend is also about networking and proving with hundreds of other people, that times have changed and shipping something within 48h is possible. The benefits of having connections and helping others should in general be clear to everyone anyway.

How to win a hackathon,
how to get the maximum out of the weekend,
how to connect,
how to form a team,
how to pitch,
- these are all subjects demanding discussion and experience-sharing.

… in the end it just comes down to #JFDI

Just F****** Do It!

]]> http://www.qminderapp.com//startupnow/ http://www.qminderapp.com//startupnow/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.qminderapp.com//startupnow/

To inspire others – here is a nice collection of lessons learned from 2011 Seedcamp participants. Including Margn , GrabCAD and ourselves.

#startupnow teams

The ebook is free to view and download from: http://slidesha.re/startupnow11.

You can find our small contribution on page 29.

Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

]]>

To inspire others – here is a nice collection of lessons learned from 2011 Seedcamp participants. Including Margn , GrabCAD and ourselves.

#startupnow teams

The ebook is free to view and download from: http://slidesha.re/startupnow11.

You can find our small contribution on page 29.

Startup Now: A Guide from the Seedcamp 2011 participants

]]> http://www.qminderapp.com//hello-world/ http://www.qminderapp.com//hello-world/#comments Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.qminderapp.com//hello-world/

In the 21^st century, it is outrageous to be having the need for physically standing in lines and waiting for service, when we have the technology that could do it for you and relieve both the end-users and the venues of unnecessary nuisance.

“Wait in line without wasting your time” was a simple idea that gathered 6 people to work on it in a Garage48 hackathon in August 2011. After having an explosive start by making the prototype in 48 hours, landing a pilot customer and two partnerships, our success raised the big question of whether this was a one-weekend-wonder or the beginning of something much more.

Today, ending the 6 week intensive development cycle in Startup Sauna, we are proud to provide you access to the simplicity of the basic functions. As agility and openness are our core values, we wanted to provide you with the option to play out the use cases while we are still making some finishing touches. Although we are waiting behind Apple’s approval of Qminder for AppStore, we are already in progress of setting this up with our pilot customers, adding and rejecting some features –we didn’t want to make you wait any longer. Because it is You we want to show it to and hear from!

As an end-user, you can download the application from Android market or view it from your mobile browser. We will show you how easy it is, and ask you to tell us where you would like to use it first.

If as a business you value your customers and hope to provide them with stress free queuing, we kindly ask you to tell us more about your specific needs, so we could take it into account and cater to your particular requirements!

Seeing that distributors from around the world are interested in speeding up the processes of adaptation and are contacting us based on the little information that was previously available, we are confirming that as a local reseller, we are most willing to cooperate with you and looking forward to hearing from you.

Because in the end,

everybody freaking hates to wait.

]]>

In the 21^st century, it is outrageous to be having the need for physically standing in lines and waiting for service, when we have the technology that could do it for you and relieve both the end-users and the venues of unnecessary nuisance.

“Wait in line without wasting your time” was a simple idea that gathered 6 people to work on it in a Garage48 hackathon in August 2011. After having an explosive start by making the prototype in 48 hours, landing a pilot customer and two partnerships, our success raised the big question of whether this was a one-weekend-wonder or the beginning of something much more.

Today, ending the 6 week intensive development cycle in Startup Sauna, we are proud to provide you access to the simplicity of the basic functions. As agility and openness are our core values, we wanted to provide you with the option to play out the use cases while we are still making some finishing touches. Although we are waiting behind Apple’s approval of Qminder for AppStore, we are already in progress of setting this up with our pilot customers, adding and rejecting some features –we didn’t want to make you wait any longer. Because it is You we want to show it to and hear from!

As an end-user, you can download the application from Android market or view it from your mobile browser. We will show you how easy it is, and ask you to tell us where you would like to use it first.

If as a business you value your customers and hope to provide them with stress free queuing, we kindly ask you to tell us more about your specific needs, so we could take it into account and cater to your particular requirements!

Seeing that distributors from around the world are interested in speeding up the processes of adaptation and are contacting us based on the little information that was previously available, we are confirming that as a local reseller, we are most willing to cooperate with you and looking forward to hearing from you.

Because in the end,

everybody freaking hates to wait.

]]>