Isn’t it funny how your life can change in an instant? Literally! This year I set a series of phrases to define our goals and dreams for Healthy Kids Inc and making an impact on childhood obesity. One of them was “breakthrough.” That phrase had so many meanings for me- breakthrough the mental conditioning holding us back; breakthrough and grow our business to the levels we have dreamed; breakthrough and create a solution that would impact families on their healthy eating journey.
Two weeks ago our breakthrough happened and we didn't even know what hit us.
It all started four weeks ago. The Partnership for a Healthier America (created in conjunction with Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative) was promoting their upcoming conference, a conference that I attended last year and loved! This year they were hosting a Hackathon as a part of their Innovation Challenge.
Hackathons are growing in popularity across the country and bring together entrepreneurs, web designers, and coders to create a solution for childhood obesity. It sounded like an amazing opportunity, but I doubted that we had the experience to apply. Only thirty applicants would be selected to participate. We were out of our league but knew if selected it would be an incredible opportunity to actually “create” a working solution instead of just “talking about the issues.”
I contemplated the application for more than a week and finally, two days before the cutoff, submitted an application. The next morning we received an email that we had been selected. We couldn’t believe it. In just a week we would be on our way to Washington D.C. to participate in our first Hackathon. That alone seemed like accomplishment enough. Little did we know that we were just getting started.
We landed in D.C., ready to embark on an amazing 48-hour experience. The group was dynamic- consisting mostly of people with a technology background. We were clearly the oldest among the group (at 37/38 years old). In fact, they even had a classroom of high school sophomore students from the Academy of Software Engineering in NYC there to participate. These kids were so smart. I watched a student named Ameer solve a rubik's cube in 31 seconds. When I asked how he did it, he told me it was all about the “algorithms.” Yikes! I was in awe over the intelligence in the room. We knew this experience would be a game-changer. We soaked up every second for the next 48 hours.
Our group of 30 would eventually break into six teams focused on one of two categories:
- To help teachers empower students to make healthy choices about the food they consume, whether at home or school
- Create an information avenue that shows families the healthy food options and physical activity opportunities available locally.
HKI is an online meal planner, so naturally we went into the Hackathon preparing to tackle challenge #2. Our thought process changed during the day though and we ended up making a last minute switch to work on healthy food curriculum.
We brainstormed a host of ideas including kids cooking programs in the schools and numerous apps and games for elementary age children to promote behavior changes, but our group of four joined over the idea of creating an app to help teacher’s plant and grow a school garden.
Our little team consisted of Kirk and myself (the strategists), Ameer (the sophomore rubik's cube expert/web coder), and Nicole (an amazing web designer from Rhode Island).
As an entrepreneur this process blew my mind. Our small team of four charted idea after idea for hours. Each idea built on the next.
As a serial “dreamer,” I create new ideas every day. For the first time I was experiencing an idea from conception, to design, to functionality…all at once.
School gardens aren’t new to the classroom. In fact, they’re gaining traction across the country. Our solution would supplement the efforts in place. Study after study shows that when kids participate in gardening, their fruit and vegetable consumption increases. This could have a great impact on kids, but asking teachers to take on more throughout the day is too much so our solution makes it insanely easy for teachers and allows the project to count as curriculum in the classroom.
The more we built, the more we fell in love with this solution as a way to truly impact the classroom.
By 7pm we had named our solution, by 8pm we had created our logo, by 9pm we had a URL to the site, by 10pm we were recording a demo video to accompany our presentation. What may take weeks was now getting done in minutes because we had the right team in place. It was intense as we worked to meet our deadline to wrap the prototype and present it to the judges.
At 6pm on Sunday night each group began presenting their idea to a series of judges. It was an all-star panel that consisted of Larry Soler, President & CEO of PHA; Julie Moreno, policy advisor for childhood obesity prevention with the Domestic Policy Council at The White House; Adam Dole, Presidential Innovation Fellow at the White House; Bill Dietz, the former Director of the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity at the CDC.
Nervous, exhausted, overwhelmed….we felt all of it.
We presented our “Start A Garden” project and WON!
It’s hard to even describe our excitement. We were just thankful to be there, let alone win.
The two winning teams would then return back to Washington D.C. in just five days to present at the PHA Conference to 1,000 attendees and another series of judges (from Let’s Move, Fortune, and Kaiser Permanente). The winner from that would be deemed the 2014 Innovation Challenge winners and receive mentoring hours to take their idea to market.
We went home for a few days, fine tuned our presentation, and then headed back to D.C. Our presentation was early in the 2-day conference so we had an opportunity to present and then network with hundreds of people about our solution. The feedback was incredible!
We have bootstrapped our entire way through Healthy Kids Inc. so to be talking with potential investors about a new project that we just created five days ago was quite the experience. After the first day’s feedback our team decided we were going to pursue our idea regardless of winning the Innovation Challenge. Either way there was a need for this across the country and we were going to make it happen!
On the final day of the conference, and just before First Lady Michelle Obama addressed the audience as they keynote speaker, they announced the Innovation Challenge Winner and we had won!
We won the PHA competition!
Within five days we had created a team, brainstormed a solution that could impact schools across the country, created the prototype, and were now beginning the steps to create a non-profit tech startup.
It’s funny how things can change in a week. Truly this was our breakout moment!
Now our team moves on to start a business, build out our prototype, and prepare to have our solution in schools this fall. It’s a massive undertaking but we are certain it can be done.
It has officially been one week since the PHA conference. The shock has worn off, I’ve had time to reflect and show gratitude, and now with Healthy Kids Inc and Start A Garden, it’s time to make a difference! If this experience has taught us anything, it’s that:
- Don’t sell yourself short. We came close to not applying because we didn’t think we were qualified. Sometimes you just have to put yourself out there and let the Universe take it from there.
- Just Dream! If you dream it, you can do it! Spending time with so many people in the technology industry showed me that. For two years I have been dreaming of a feature for our HKI meal planner to even further help parents with their healthy eating struggles. I found out that my idea can come to life in 20 minutes. I had the idea. I just needed to connect with the right people.
- The tide is shifting. Year after year we are making greater strides in the childhood obesity epidemic. It’s not a single solution that solves this problem. It will take schools, kids, parents, government, farmers, manufacturers, and so many more to right this ship but we’re getting there. Sometimes the best ideas come from the most unexpected places, like a 48-hour Hackathon. If a Rubik's cube can be solved with algorithms why can't childhood obesity.
Stay tuned as we continue to keep you updated on our progress. For sure, it will be an exciting 6 months ahead.