Blitzweekend, Reverse Payement (3)
Reverse Payment project at Blitzweekend.
1 – Can you present yourself? What is your background?
Marc-André Lamarche: My name is Marc-Andre Lamarche, I am 35 years old, pure entrepreneur, always the one coming up with the innovative simple ideas that provoke the “wow, why didn’t I think of this” reaction. From my first business I started at the age of 21, an original idea of mine (it was “private micro-radio stations” for retail surface, shopping center, grocery stores, gas stations), to this new project, I’ve always started from the bottom.
Jean-Sébastien Boulanger: Jean-Sebastien Boulanger is a software developer, computer scientist, and web technologies enthusiast. He has been engineering web-based applications since 1998 using a wide array of technologies and languages (Ruby, Java, PHP, C#, ASP, Perl). Jean-Sebastien also holds Bachelor and Master degrees in Computer Science from McGill University. In his research, he worked on technologies related to large dynamic distributed systems (MMOGs) and problems encountered in software maintenance.
Stirling Westrup: I’ve spent most of the 20+ years of my career working for startups and small businesses as a programmer and system’s architect. I was a founding partner, and eventually Director of Research and Development for Strategy First, a Montreal gaming company. I have also worked in industrial control programming, educational software, data communications, Internet client/server information systems, and most recently supercomputer file systems.
My technical interests and experience extend to real-time systems, computer graphics, image processing, simulation, modelling, heuristic programming, user interface issues and cryptography. I am a voracious reader in physics, mathematics and advanced technology, an experienced technology watcher and an Internet research specialist. Above all I like to think of myself as a dedicated student of the art and science of design and an excellent design critic.
2 – Can you describe what is the Reverse Payment project? How did you get the idea? What problem does it aim to solve?
Marc-André Lamarche: Reverse Payment is about making “The safest cash transaction on the web” without the need of a credit card or bank account link, no need to set up an account and give any information about yourself. You just have to click on “Reverse Payment”, copy the unique code generated from our data base and go to a physical location to pay it.
I had this idea back in 2003, I was involved in a multimedia/e-commerce project and I was trying to find new features to facilitate e-commerce transactions… so I wanted to add this as a new payment option and maybe make a spin off out of it… I never had the opportunity to communicate it at the time… so the idea stayed in my mind until this week-end…
3 – What were your objectives regarding Blitzweekend? What did you expect from the event?
Marc-André Lamarche: At first, to be honest, not much. A friend almost twisted my arm to bring me there, telling me I have so many great ideas and Blitzweekend could be a good “lab” and meeting place. I found the programmers on the wiki and didn’t know if they’d show up. On the business/project side, I know what it is to start from the bottom so I didn’t expected to have a business in my hand at the end of that week-end .
4 – Can you talk us about your experience of Blitzweekend? any challenges? How did you overcome problems?
It started well, the programmers showed up Stirling Westrup & Jean-Sebastien Boulanger did a really good job. We had a “big” meeting the Saturday before they started to code, to be sure we were all on the same track and that we were covering every aspect… the chemistry was there, great team work. It was great to see the interest shown by the experts that spent hours asking us questions about what we were doing and where it can go… In fact, I never saw that kind of spontaneous “enthusiasm” around what was becoming a “must be startup” company and .. . that is the biggest problem that came out of the weekend, I don’t have the choice, “they pulled me back in”…Now I have to make it happen!
5 – What is now your objective for the project? Are you looking for co-founders/investors/technology experts?
I forgot that at the end of my presentation last Sunday and I’m glad you asked me that question; I wanted and still want to invite anyone who has expertise, talent, network contacts and money and who thinks they can contribute to making Reverse Payment a success to contact me, you are very welcome.
We are entrepreneurs ourselves and I think it is a good idea to exchange experiences in this painful (yet enjoyable) moment of starting a new venture.
Blitzweekend, Reverse Payement http://tinyurl.com/2wg4u3
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