Shotput, an SMS newsletter product developed by a team of four from the Chicago bus in StartupBus, reached the finals at SXSW after being selected as one of the best startups among 37 other teams competing on five different buses. The team built their MVP in just two days using Ruby on Rails and hosted it on Heroku to quickly scale if needed. They used Twilio's SMS services to send newsletters and had over 100 subscribers in their first few days, with a goal of making their first sale currently underway. Despite facing challenges, the team successfully launched Shotput, a service that could have been even simpler if the idea hadn't been taken by another competitor, and are now looking forward to seeing where they take things next.