Our First Launch

One of our goals at Don’t Panic Labs is to help launch great companies for Nebraska Global by serving as a “people incubator”. On June 1, we celebrated the launch of our first product by our first company, ICORA (www.icora.com). But it wasn’t that long ago that this product was merely an idea that only existed in our imaginations.

The idea for what would become the first ICORA product, Mako XRM, was conceived by a few of our Don’t Panic Labs members. From there, the idea grew into something that we felt met a need and made for a very marketable product. So with that, active development began in January.

By April, the product was really taking shape and was ready to be shown to a larger audience. ICORA president Allison Jensen and software engineer Paul Bauer headed down to Atlanta, Georgia to attend the 2011 Microsoft Convergence conference, a meet up for Microsoft Dynamics Partners and Customers. Their goal was to get the ICORA name, and their vision of this customizer application, out to the Dynamics community.

The whirlwind of development continued through May as feedback from a group of beta testers pointed out what changes should be made and provided feedback that validated our belief that this product had potential to make a real impact in the growing Microsoft Dynamics market.

By using some of the talented individuals from inside Don’t Panic Labs and bringing in the necessary talent to help drive the company, we were able to launch a company and get its first product released in less than five months. I can’t think of too many places where that can happen.