Brian McMullin, a product manager here at HubSpot got up and put the idea for To-Do List on the board and pitched it to the 50 or so folks in attendance. The basic idea that Brian brought to the table was to make a list-like app that would allow folks to keep track of their Marketing and other tasks from right within the HubSpot product. From that moment, To-Do List went from a simple pitched idea on the whiteboard to an app that had life and was being worked on.
The app was picked up by a Matt Pirkowski, Christopher O'Donnell and Jonathan Kim, who recently joined HubSpot from Performable and one HubSpotter who had recently made the move from the consulting team to the development team.
In around 4 hours total development time, they mocked up the front end of the app and wrote most of the the Python back-end with the assistance of the Google App Engine framework. Each team member (mostly) focused on a different side of things: the core Python (Christopher), the JQuery functionality (Jonathan) and the front end and UI (Matt).
In speaking with the team, a really key part of their success for getting the app into a state where they could take it live to all users in the HubSpot App Marketplace was to keep the app's functionality simple at the outset. This wasn't a big, feature-rich To-Do List application by any means. The first functionality of the app was to let people enter things to do, categorize them and then keep track of when they were due. That's it, nothing fancy, but a totally useful and effective app.
Just over a month later, the app already has over 320 users and has gotten some great traction from HubSpot customers and other folks in the community. If you want to try the To-Do List or another HubSpot app, check out the App Marketplace (under the Community tab) in any HubSpot portal. If you don't have access to the portal, you can get a Free Trial or use the developer Demo portal.
We're hosting another Hackathon - Hackathon1 around the middle fo September and are trying to get as many people as possible interested in coming, collaborating and building some awesome new apps. If you're interested in attending Hackathon1, please register here: (Admission is free of course, and pizza, beer and sodas will be provided)
http://hackathon1.eventbrite.com/
Hope to see you there!