Inside Skookum’s inaugural Nightshift program: 14 weeks, 27 designers & developers, 6 smart business ideas

Skookum Nightshift is an intensive 14-week program that teams participants up to build a real digital product from conception through launch with the help of industry experts, mentorship and hands-on experience. (Agenda’s own Danny Gassaway participated in the program and profiled its creator Stephen Davis here.)

Last Thursday six teams presented their minimum viable products (MVPs) in Skookum’s top floor headquarters (overlooking Michael Jordan’s penthouse, no big deal). Here are the six business ideas and products they built:

(1) Roux Like Tinder for foodies, Roux is a dating app that matches you based on shared culinary interests. Instead of swiping through pictures of potential mates, you swipe through photos of their favorite foods. Like the same food and you gain access to the other person’s full profile and can send messages to set up a date… presumably to eat that food you both like. Vegetarians like me would be seriously so screwed. No one likes my food but me.

(2) KitStarter

Some people are wary of giving cash to charities because they want to see where it goes so they give supplies instead. Instead of donating random leftover items you have on hand or digging through a charity’s website to try and find their current “needs list,” KitStarter keeps an inventory of physical supplies a nonprofit needs and then lets donors buy specific things based on how much money they want to give. Makes donations to the charity more relevant and need-based and clears up any confusion on the donor end about where money goes. Like it.

(3) Who Let the Dogs In? Does one of your best friends have fur and four legs? Who Let the Dogs In helps you find dog-friendly drinking establishments where you can hang out together and meet other dog-human duos. Cats are left out again, I see. (Perhaps the renovated P-Stone property will make the cut.)

(4) Kinnect

If your grandma is slowing your social media roll, Kinnect has a solution for you. Kinnect lets you select photos from Facebook and email them to your non social media savvy old relatives who want to see what shennanigans you’re up to. We got my grandparents a Presto Printer that prints our emails to them out on a piece of paper like a fax machine because they don’t have a computer so I see how this is relevant.

(5) RightStreet Ok so this is brilliant. RightStreet partnered with Speak Up, a street magazine sold by people experiencing homelessness as a way to generate income, to create an online option to buy and read the magazine without having to exchange cash on the street or collect a paper copy. Sellers just hand your a card with a unique URL to their sales page. So good. So necessary.

(6) Vault.io

Who keeps up with all their assorted warranties and receipts and things you don’t need until you need them? No one. Vault.io stores and catalogs your important documents in digital format for easy access when you need them. I’d buy it right now.

Sign up for Nightshift’s mailing list for details on the next round.