What's lower than an underdog?

How about this? A few months ago, we applied to the Vodafone Mobile Clicks competition, with nothing more than an idea. We were competing against live products and technologies like Layar or Mobypictures, products with existing customers, and we had, basically, just an idea. Sure, we had Woobius, an existing business with customers, with industry knowledge and 2 years' worth of technology, but when it came to our VMC 2009 application, we basically just had an idea.

I'm the first person to agree that ideas are worthless. Without execution, ideas are just wind, here today and gone tomorrow, ethereal wisps of nothing. As an external observer, I wouldn't have rated our chances very high.

And yet, we're through to the finals.

What's more important and exciting, though, is what happened in the few months since our application to the competition. The idea became reality. More importantly, the idea became real in a smooth, efficient way that I would not have thought possible.

So how did we do it?

A sketchy start

When we gave our first presentation, the message from Vodafone was clear: "We like you, but please do come up with something a bit more concrete next time". Then they hit us with a curve ball: the judges will be watching the blog; make sure you post blog updates weekly on our site, and include videos too! Just what we needed with already over-stretched resources. And yet, this curve ball was a blessing in disguise. Within two months, we posted seven blog posts with as many videos. Each post developed the product further, with new ideas, new materials, and new screenshots. In the end, this collection of posts became a blueprint for our second presentation.

Yet we were worried, because by now, we knew who our competitors were, and we knew they all had existing mobile products, available already, whereas we still only had photoshop mock-ups, cleverly chained together with a bit of iMovie wizardry.

Yet, we got through.

And then Vodafone threw another curve ball: there was to be a public vote for the final.

Sprint for the finish

After spending some amount of time sulking (how are we going to find time to do that as well?), we put our heads down and said "let's do it". In order to get votes, we had to get people to know about us. We didn't even have a working prototype, all we had to show was a series of screenshots - how were we supposed to get people to be excited enough to vote for us?

So we set ourselves an impossible target: two weeks, two prototypes; one on the desktop, one on the iPhone. And not much sleep. Of course, it wasn't enough to just build it. To get the votes, we also had to tell people about it. Last Sunday, while some of us scrambled to put some finishing touches on the prototype, the rest of the team were busy producing a script to best show off our technology (that some had never yet seen, because it was still traveling on the train from Colchester to London).

Yet, we made the video. Would it surprise you to find out that the video was mostly edited on the bus back home?

As a result of this somewhat involuntary approach, we've progressed extremely fast on Woobius Eye, on both a technical level and a customer development level, and here we are, one week away from the finals. We now have a working prototype. We have a lot of user interest. We have a lot of extremely positive feedback. What was just an idea has grown into a creature of its own, with momentum, energy and life, and the truth is, even if we don't win the Vodafone competition, we will continue developing Woobius Eye (albeit not as quickly as we might be able to with more resources).

There's just one piece left, really: after this long journey of turning an idea into a reality, a beautiful conclusion to this chapter in Woobius Eye's life would be, quite simply, to win the competition and take the prize.

So this is my appeal to you, the Hacker News community. Please vote for us here (the vote closes on Friday). The public vote is only part of the deal, but it makes a difference. You can make a difference.

Thanks,

Daniel (Friday, 3am)