“Earn this” – Achoo, the €2000 prize and motivation

We applied to the Estonian Ajujaht upstart competition with Achoo, and got selected to pitch at the finals in May. This also earned us a €2000 prize that we’ll happily put to work for the site.

This vote of confidence had an interesting effect. It didn’t trigger a celebratory mood, because the success of this venture is not up to any jury to decide, but users (also, €2000 is not enough for three people to retire on). Rather, it had a positive effect on the motivation because failing to do a great public beta launch soon would not only make our team look a bit silly, but also the people in the jury that voted for Achoo instead of many of the other ideas.

The emotion wasn’t quite as strong as in the finale of Saving Private Ryan, but I like the effect this had, and cheers to Shy CTO for nudging us to apply to Ajujaht.

On a side note, we’re bootstrapping Achoo for the time being – but I guess I’ll know more about “motivation through indebtedness” if and when we raise funds for Achoo.