Hello Apple Tester!

On May 8th, we submitted gpsAssassin to the Apple App Store and waited with baited breath. Approximately 6-8 days later, we saw a new registration in the game & immediately performed a general search for the users email address. Lo and behold! We saw the address affiliated with many (and only) iPhone/iPod websites. We were getting very excited and to put our mind at ease, Jackson suggested we use their GPS coordinates to see where they were testing. Sure enough, we saw them pop up Google Maps at Apple's Headquarters!!!

Unfortunately, the trail went cold after that encounter. The tester only performed a few functions (they never even killed anyone!) and usage of that account went dormant. For 20 days, we waited patiently (except for the begging tweets) in hopes of seeing our application released. We had originally set the release date as May 31st, 2009.

By the time June 4th, 2009 arrived - we were getting nervous. In fact, we even asked for help from our friends at Offerpal & TapJoy. I have no idea if they helped, but by the evening of the 4th - WE WERE APPROVED! The only downside is that our application was instantly made publically available and we potentially lost some marketing steam because we couldn't do a build-up to launch campaign.



Regardless, we're super stoked and now the REAL work begins. We'll be making some final tweaks to the next minor release and once we're done (aka: once people can buy Blood Money or Professional Status), we'll embark upon a significant promotional campaign. Wish us luck!

FastPitch - We won!!!

Assassins was selected as a finalist for FastPitch Nashville (thank you Jackson for getting us to the finals!) and we're happy to report we won $1000 for our 60 sec pitch. Jackson and myself had a great time preparing for the event & we can deliver one mean 60 sec pitch for Assassins :)

The event was superb and personally, I'm most pleased with how we interacted with the judges. In particular, one judge was a well-known VC & he consistently asked tough questions to each presenter. We were prepared & the quality of our answers earned us one of (if not THE) highest score he gave the entire evening. That, above all us, was the highlight for me because he was the most knowledgeable critic of business viability.

We also learned that we need a Facebook Group for Assassins! Jackson and myself have a combined Twitter network of 1000 people - yet we trailed the popular vote significantly because the leading team had a powerful Facebook group. This isn't a mistake I'll make again :)

Assassins: Kill Your Neighbor

What is Side Hobby

Side Hobby is an LLC that was formed by Nicholas Holland and Jackson Miller as a company for them to launch gpsAssassins.