Defend Your Life! On MAAC Event. How Was It?

Mobile App Acceleration Camp (MAAC) is supporting program provided by AppCampus in Finland. Basically, program was established in cooperation with Aalto University in Finland, Microsoft and Nokia to support promising apps distributed on mobile devices powered by Windows Phone.

AppCampus offers support in form of technical, business and financial support for selected teams (from 20.000 up to 70.000€).

There are 36 MAAC events all around the world and Budapest was host of one of them. And we were pretty excited from the day when invitation from Budapest MAAG organizers had arrived. Thanks this we spent great time from 7th until 8th of April in Demola.

Day 1

Little bit stressful time because of just 3 minutes. To be more concrete: each of every 10 teams had 3 minutes to present their projects. When we had seen conditions for the first time we were pretty scared. We thought we are not able to introduce ourselves not even such complex game like Defend Your Life! in 180 seconds.

But well, that is how does pitching usually goes. There are so many projects, so many upcoming apps and if yours is not attractive enough to give great impression in a moment, well, you are out. Nobody has time to “anatomize” your project and not even potential investors who are usually people still running out of time.

Fortunately for us if presenter passed few seconds nothing wrong happened. And the best part – investors. They were there not only to sit and criticize our projects but help us improve it, that´s why was their official event title “mentors”. And must be said they did the best. Specialists from business, development, UX and online marketing gave us constructive and valuable feedback during 20 minutes individual sessions.

Day 2

And this feedback generated essential info for second day. Our task was simple (or actually sounded simple): take all feedback in consideration, summarize gained knowledge and implement it into the final pitching session.

Same scenario like first day – 3 minutes talk in front of judges (transformed mentors, you know). Our presentation was totally different in compare with the one day before. We tried to come up with ideas based on mentor´s feedback (mostly related to too complicated or rather disarranged UX and seemingly not very comprehensive business plan).

Also, it is very useful to bring concept which uses all advantages and opportunities delivered by concrete platforms. For instance, working on game for Windows Phone? Think about using XBOX Live. The only advantage like “there is no such app on WP/iOS/Android/whatever” is really not enough. You have to think of your user mainly.

And result? We were successful! Our team passed and with other 5 teams was selected to apply for final two weeks AppCampus event. So, cross your fingers everyone!

What pleases us the most is fact that everyone liked the game, the concept of human body realm and graphic design. It was interesting how almost everybody reminds Once Upon a Time… Life cartoon series. And it was superb to hear from mentors that they will definitely install one of our games for their children.

Special thanks

We would like to say huge thanks to all mentors for their feedback, advices and support as well. We really appreciate that and doing our best to use gained knowledge in most effective way.

We cannot forget to say thanks to Bálint Tóth – organizer of the Budapest MAAC event – for his patience with only foreigner team, business angel Péter Záboji for his invitation to First Monday Social Event – great way how can start-ups in Budapest meet entrepreneurs and just chat with each other. And last but not least – big thanks for great time with AppCampus representative Toni Perämäki and awesome people from another selected team – Tep.

Alda Games, 15.04.2014 | Brno, Czech Republic