The name StandBy came about as a play on words associated with radio communication.
After each of the 22 ideas were pitched to a crowd on Friday night, voting began for the most popular including Mr Will's StandBy.
''People just started congregating around the idea and how to execute it.''
Mr Wills was joined by Phil Harris, Justin Scott, Clare Kemeys, Rachel Donald, Rochelle Alder, Mike Jansen and Kelvin Trask.
The team spent the rest of the night working on their minimum viable product - the least you need to go to market with it-and ''sort of smashed it over the next two days''.
''It's a lot of long hours and effort for everyone involved. It's really dynamic, fast and hard but I'd recommend it to anyone,'' Mr Wills said.
Mr Wills works as lead designer at Comvita, Paengaroa.
''Through my career, I work on branding. I enjoy the design thing and taking business forward.''
A meeting has been set up between the StandBy team and Coastguard to discuss the future of the app.
The four judges were Brett Roberts, Candace Kinser, Cheryl Reynolds and Lance Wiggs.
Chief organiser Sheldon Nesdale said the StandBy concept was ''awesome'' because it was about people.
''It was a community-based product that we could relate to. A lot of us have friends and family who go boating and might forget to check in with Coastguard. It's fantastic,'' Mr Nesdale said.
The StandBy team won $4000 worth of accounting services and business advice from KPMG, eight coaching sessions worth $2000 from Catalyst Management Services, a StartUp Law Pack worth $2000 from Loundes Jordon, three-month hot desk in San Francisco worth US$1500 ($1814) from Kiwi Landing Pad and lifetime membership for mobile app mockups worth $1548/year from FluidUi.