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Over the last year we’ve reached a few milestones we’re all proud of here at Deadman Heartbeat, and what better way to share in our success than to chronicle our start up journey and experiences and share back to all the entrepreneurs, start ups and IT communities.
Through our journey we’ve hit a number of failed efforts, and through those experiences we’ve learned a lot, and applied these learnings to achieve the successes that has gotten us to where Deadman Heartbeat is today.
One of these ‘learnings’ our team has grown from is the news that Deadman Heartbeat was not selected again as one of the semi-finalists for the 2012 AWS Start-up Challenge.
I want to share our journey and experience with AWS, and provide insight for future entrants on what AWS looks for in selecting its finalists, and the start up learnings many entrepreneurs will face and grow from.
Over the coming weeks leading up to the finale celebration we plan to run a 6 post series related to the AWS start-up journey, AWS application experience, and the AWS challenge itself. Keep checking back, or better yet follow us above on LinkedIn or Twitter to get the latest updates.
We at Deadman Heartbeat have entered the AWS start-up challenge the past two years in a row and we learned a lot going through the process each time. When we entered the contest two years ago it was a different story than entering the 2012 AWS challenge this time around.
Back then we had our target beta launch date lined up with the AWS contest submission deadline in October 2011. Let me tell you, it was good to have a deadline to aim for as it pushed our development team significantly and we actually beat the launch date by two days!
This time around, we were already out of beta (July 2012), built up some audience adoption within the system and application monitoring market, influenced a few investors to knock at our door, and secured some big name customers in our beta-run. To say the least, it was a busy last few months, so this time around we felt our chances for the AWS Start-up Challenge were much better at getting attention from the Amazon selection team.
We also attended the AWS re: Invent conference in November in an effort to get more insights into the inner workings of the Amazon and AWS engine. We would like to impart in you what we have learned about the application process, and what it actually takes to get selected as a finalist. We hope this will help start ups and future entrepreneurs succeed.
Update: See our second post of my six part series on the AWS Start-Up Journey – the AWS Challenge Judging Criteria.
Please comment and provide feedback on this series of articles. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and questions about this topic.
