It was a conversation that turned into a hackathon

While I can’t remember the exact details of how I brought it up, I had an idea for a product with one of my partners at Hopscratch, Kirk. After a brief conversation, we decided to put in a highly focused, time boxed effort to build the thing. We roped in our other frequent collaborator, Adam.

We had no gigantic aspirations for it. We primarily wanted to see how quickly and cost-efficiently we could develop the thing. Our answer? Super fast and super cheap. In fact, I even wrote an article about the 14 steps to launch an awesome product for $112.99 in less than 36 hours.

Here’s what the homepage looked like in all its original glory (though please know, I do know how to spell “clunky,” don’t you worry).

The flow started with people identifying their list name.

If people wanted, they could edit some advanced settings.

From there, it was an app that was controlled entirely by email. Yeah, it was that simple. It was pretty slick, too.

Since we were focused on building Hopscratch and another startup we joined forces with at the time, we didn’t focus on Upsy beyond that first month, really. So, we sunset the app after about a year—but it was fun while it lasted.

See all you can build with a little focus, effort, and collaboration?