The Sportlyzer Blog

We write about sports coaching, club management, training, and our software updates.

How To Make a Startup Whiteboard?

August 19, 2010 - Posted by

What a startup definitely needs is a WHITEBOARD. It supports your brainstorming and keeps important things always in sight of the team.

Thus, the very moment we moved into our office, we started looking for a whiteboard. In  a stationery shop we could get a small metal plate for a lot of money . And that was definitely not something we were looking for, because we had imagined a huge whiteboard for a little money.

So we decided to do a whiteboard ourselves.  On our request guys from a printing company kindly tried a whiteboard marker on their vinyl material they use for making banners. And for our delight the response was that it was possible to wipe the marker off. We bought 5 meters of vinyl material for 15 Euros, borrowed an electric drill and screwed the vinyl on our office wall. It was a real dream come true – almost the whole wall was now our whiteboard.

Vinyl roll-material didn't work as whiteboard.
Vinyl roll-material as whiteboard.

We did our first brainstorming on Sportlyzer design and guess what – our great new whiteboard was a total FAIL. Whiteboard marker came of only with white spirit and the next day it didn’t come off at all.

But we didn’t give up and started looking for an alternative. Our UI designer Kalmer said, they had a kapaplast whiteboard at his last workplace. Quick enquiry showed that 3×1,5m sheet of coplast is remarkably more expensive (81 Euros) than vinyl, but still cheaper than the small whiteboard in the shop.

This time we did a preliminary study and took a small piece of coplast for testing. Test was successful and we bought it. Transport and montage took us 1 hour and voila – our whiteboard is up and IT WORKS.

Coplast whiteboard.
Coplast whiteboard.

If you’ve got a better version/idea about how to make a cheap startup whiteboard, would you please SHARE IT WITH US?

How to make a startup whiteboard?

What a startup definitely needs is a WHITEBOARD. It supports your brainstorming and keeps important things always in sight of the team.

Thus, the very moment we moved into our office, we started looking for a whiteboard. In a stationery shop we could get a small metal plate for a lot of money . And that was definitely not something we were looking for, because we had imagined a huge whiteboard for a little money.

So we decided to do a whiteboard ourselves. On our request guys from a printing company kindly tried a whiteboard marker on their vinyl material they use for making banners. And for our delight the response was that it was possible to wipe the marker off. We bought 5 meters of vinyl material for 15 Euros, borrowed an electric drill and screwed the vinyl on our office wall. It was a real dream come true – almost the whole wall was now our whiteboard.

Photo

We did our first brainstorming on design and guess what – our great new whiteboard was a total FAIL. Whiteboard marker came of only with white spirit and the next day it didn’t come off at all.

But we didn’t give up and started looking for an alternative. Our UI designer Kalmer said, they had a kapaplast whiteboard at his last workplace. Quick enquiry showed that 3×1,5m sheet of coplast is remarkably more expensive (81 Euros) than vinyl, but still cheaper than the small whiteboard in the shop.

This time we did a preliminary study and took a small piece of coplast for testing. Test was successful and we bought it. Transport and montage took us 1 hour and voila – our whiteboard is up and IT WORKS.

Photo

If you’ve got a better version/idea about how to make a cheap startup whiteboard, would you please share it with us?

Coach Character Contest – Win $300

August 17, 2010 - Posted by

To make Sportlyzer technology more human, we need a trustworthy Coach character to consult our customers’ workouts. Our dream-coach is respected and loved, but all human – a little weird and gossiped :).


If you are good at drawing characters and impressions, you are welcome to join our contest at 99designs.com.

Need help? Contact us now