From Amit

Notes per our conversation with Amit Pitaru
January 23, 2012, Kitchen Table Studio

DATA FOR GOOD VS. EVIL
Which route do we take: OPEN Own your data vs. CLOSED We sell your data to large companies for marketing

See HackerNews for startup models
37 Signals—builds things people want, then charge money for them
this doesn’t happen in a lot of cases anymore

Two different movements of open source: good (use for good) vs. evil (sell to companies)
Decide your world view on data

OPEN
Own your own photo data: Openphoto.me and Openphoto.org
“If you’re not paying for something, then you’re the product being sold.”

One option: Have an open API for developers then offer our own premium service.
Example: WordPress.com and WordPress.org
With this open API:
- devs can use their own data for their own apps
- people can give their friends access to their data
Do this kind of open thing, but have a service too; it’s important for us to have a service

Open it up, let people see what they can do.
Need:
- landing page
- sign-up page
- state intentions
- the specific services
- 1st code repository (on github)
- build a device to track data recorded (phone)
- API can fish out data
- allows you to get your data
- and you’re friends data (with their permission) on top of it
- every person has an account, that’s how they access their data
We would have user accounts with system on top that allows you to get your data and friends data on top of it.
Data for good: Convince people to give their data to us for bike advocacy

OPTIONS FOR GETTING DEVELOPERS
1. Get investment
- seed money
- investors
2. Kickstarter
- landing page, shows how well thought out the idea is
- need money
- interested in tech co-founder
3. Hack day
- open source project landing page, call to action
- mock-ups
- invite devs to hack together, treat them well with coffee and cupcakes
- start gathering data
- get DOT or bike shops to sponsor

RESOURCES
appannie.com—see how well apps have been doing