ARK Challenge (@ARKChallenge): Week 10

If you would like to hear me read this blog post to you, please click below.Only four weeks left to pull this business, our pitch and ourselves together for the big Demo Day on September 5th. We are cranking out the details and hyper-focused in the coming weeks. Here is what happened this week:

• We started recording video and audio everyday. We are currently handling this ourselves, as we are in the beta period. This has been a period of trial and error as we figure out exactly how long it takes to record, edit and upload videos. As a result, the number of videos, the method and the style have varied each day. This is expected during the beta period. You can see the beta site (our minimum viable product, MVP) here.
• We had some one-on-one time with Mike Smith of Innovate Arkansas to walk through out pitch deck and get advice on strengthening it with some re-organization, addition of content and general approach.
• Lane Becker, author of Get Lucky, spoke to our group. He spoke about ways to get more creative, spur additional ideas and find opportunities. The book is great and I highly recommend it (you can read my review here). His advice included: (1) generate more chance opportunities in order to spur creativity, (2) organize the opportunities, and (3) take action on the ones that matter.
• Thursday and Friday was all about Mentorcamp. PressBaby only participated in the Friday portion of Mentorcamp. Mentorcamp is an opportunity for startups to have one-on-one speed-dating sessions with mentors after we all give our pitches. We had two rounds. In the first round, we met with April Seggebruch and Thor Muller (one of the authors of Get Lucky). April and Thor encouraged us to focus on the local aspect of our product opportunities and look for the path of least resistance for rapid growth. In the second round, we met with Permjot Valia and Randy Hurban. Jody and I had already spent a lot of time with Permjot, so he was well-familiar with our product. Permjot is not sold on our business because he sees newspapers as dying, period. However, since we are pursuing the business regardless, he provide the following advice: find another supplier to papers to help us sell the business to publishers (paper suppliers, for example) and find something bigger to do with audio, positioning ourselves as the "provider of worldwide written content to audio." Permjot's point is that we are creating a market and that is something that is really hard to do. His warning: the way things are written to be read and the way things are written to be spoken is different."

I am not going to lie: it was a rough week in terms of getting positive reinforcement for the business that we are creating. But, we are not discouraged. A lift in our spirits came this week when Jeff Bezos purchased The Washington Post. This has spurred a lot of conversation, observation and speculation about what the future holds for newspapers and Bezos may be a driving force in taking newspapers digital. One of my favorite quotes from a Forbes article on the subject said, "When you see smart people doing something you think is stupid, it is time to re-evaluate your assumptions." And this article from Mashable sums it up nicely: "We don't know if Bezos bought the Post as an act of altruism or business genius, or something in between. What we do know is that, at Amazon, he learned, and taught, the right lessons. 'The three big ideas at Amazon are long-term thinking, customer obsession, and willingness to invent,' Bezos said recently. Precisely the ones the news industry now needs."PressBaby may be ahead of the market. Or perhaps, we are creating a market. But we believe that newspapers are worthy of saving and just need help doing it. And we believe our products and services will help them take leaps into the future. Consumers want quality content, localized content and in-depth content. Newspapers deliver this, just not in a format that consumers prefer in this digital communications age.