Startup Weekend

Posted by Startup Weekend Crew

1 Picture Game with Linked in Contacts
2 Clever Keeper HR Wizard
3 Too Many Graphic Designers
4 Phone app: Language Translation
5 Public Polling for movie casting
6 Map Based Dating
7 Personalized Search Results- CISS
8 Long Content blog Writing
9 Best Foot in the Door
10 Merchant Feedback
11 T-Shirt Mosaic for Twitter
12 Social Network Charity – I-Give
13 API For Twitter – Tweet Impact
14 Meeting Place – Mutual Location
15 Phone app: Share Language & Video

Good luck to all those involved!  We’ve got some great ideas coming out of this weekend and we can’t wait to see how they form up at Sunday Demo!

Posted by Startup Weekend Crew

Startup Weekend is hitting San Francisco and Redmond simultaneously this weekend, and as a “veteran” of this awesome event I thought I’d share some tips and tricks for getting the most out of the time spent.

The Key: Everyone should code – with the possible exception of your “marketing lackey” (see more on that below).  Most people can do HTML or CSS, or can learn it quickly, for non-technical people this is your chance to stretch!

For those of you who don’t read long posts, here is the summary:

Maximize Productivity

• Bring your own internet (MiFi, iPhone tether, broadband card, something!)
• Use free tools like Wordpress, Google Apps, Google App Engine etc. to get up and running quickly.
• Get a “marketing lackey” to do anything that isn’t coding.
• Remove all barriers to productivity for your engineers, period.
• Don’t be afraid to fire people if it isn’t working out.

Manage Expectations

• The first 10 hours after your team is formed will be “wasted”, deal with it without getting too aggravated.
• Pad your estimates – build trust with new people, don’t let them down.
• Skip the titles, equity, etc. conversations until after working proof of concept and biz model.

Build a Culture That Launches

• Recruit developers first, poach the best people if you have to.
• Focus on getting to proof of concept fast with just a few features.
• Pick an idea you know how to build, add cool experimental features later if you have time.
• Get customers right away – learn from them, treat them like gold.
• Start planning your presentation/pitch early, it will help clarify your vision.

Maximize Productivity

Bring your own internet connection. Without fail, every Startup Weekend I’ve been to has had problems with internet connectivity, and if you’re building your project using cloud services for everything then you’ll be very frustrated with slow upload speeds, spotty connectivity, etc.  The MyFi pucks from Sprint are great.

Use Wordpress. Unless your website is your service (and even if it is) use a self-hosted Wordpress install (Dreamhost does a great one-click installation) to get something out there as early as possible with information about your team, your project, etc.  Get a Twitter account and start talking.  This is going to keep your team focused – and will also increase your chances of launching at the end of the weekend.

Use Google Apps to host your email and calendar and actually USE these things.  Having a separate email address and calendar for your team means they won’t be distracted by being in their person inbox.

Get a marketing lackey. Use a smart non-technical person (there are always a few hanging about looking for a way to contribute) who is savvy with blogging and content creation to work on this full time, and then use them to do random tasks like QA, project management, etc. as needed.  Engineers should not be doing anything but code, everyone’s else job is to create an environment where they can be productive and uninterrupted.

Don’t be afraid to fire people if they are wasting your time.  At a Six Hour Startup event in Seattle (which I sadly wasn’t at), Marina Martin is (in)famous for firing everyone who raised there hand when she asked “who are the project managers”.  Those who were offended left, and those who stuck around went on to launch the product as useful contributors.  That’s brutal, but if someone is in the way or more trouble than they’re worth you’ve got to do it out of respect to the rest of the team.

Manage Expectations

Expect the First 10 Hours Will Be Wasted, because they will – accept it.  This is kind of like being a poker player who only plays well when they’re on a comeback.  You’ll actually end up getting more done overall if you’re lagging behind on Saturday so don’t work.  Focus on keeping team motivated, otherwise you might be surprised to find the developer you were counting on doesn’t show up Sunday morning.

Pad all estimates. So you think you’ll have that feature coded up in 2 hours?  Plan for 4, you’ll be glad you did and your teammates will trust you more when you get it done in 3.  Remember, these people have never worked with you before and you’ll have to convince each other to do all sorts of things and make a lot of group decisions so building trust should always be on your mind.  Under-promise, over-deliver is the name of the game.

Don’t get into long conversations about titles or equity, the odds that you’ll turn this into a business are really low and these conversations involving money, power, etc. can really get you off track.  If you’re talking about this, it should be because you’ve successfully got a proof of concept and a business model.

Build a Culture That Launches

Make sure you recruit developers first, without them nothing else happens.  If you’re short on talent make sure to keep recruiting through the event, there are disfunctional groups falling apart and re-forming the entire time.  Snap up the best people by whatever means necessary.

Focus on getting to proof of concept fast with as few features a possible.  There is going to be all sorts of conflict, you’ll be working with people you’ve never met before, and there’s a learning curve for that.  You have to protect your team against anything demotivating – so try to get tangible results to celebrate as soon as possible.  Even if it is broke ass ugly, it’s better than nothing.

Pick an idea you know how to build, over an idea that it just effing cool. Take an inventory of the skillset of your team members to make sure your idea is realistic.  Bonus points if it could conceivably be a business with revenue unrelated to advertising.  You might find that by building something simple first you actually end up with enough time to also add that other cool stuff that was icing on the cake.

Get customers right away, don’t wait – use other attendees, etc. to test out your product and give you feedback, or recruit customers using social media tools.  Create a beta user list with Google Docs and treat those people like gold.  The more information you can process and iterate on, the better your product is going to be.  This might seem obvious, but a lot of group try to be really secretive.  The truth is no one cares what you’re building, they’re busy working on their own stuff.

Start thinking about how to present your product early, on Saturday night if possible.  This exercise of explaining what your product does to other people will actually help your product development process, pointing out parts that are confusing or overly complex.  If you are going to do a live demo practice A LOT – it’s Murphy’s Law that something will go wrong, plan to roll with it.  Slide decks are pretty boring, live demos are better.

I’m realizing the event is close approaching and there is still a lot left to say, but I’m going to post this and tweak it as I go… kind of like what you should do this weekend.  If you’re in SF, see you there – if not, my best wishes to everyone in Seattle – I hope you launch!  Drop me a note on Twitter @DanielleMorrill if you want to make sure we connect while we’re there.

Posted by Startup Weekend Crew

Hi, I’m Aaron Evans. I am an independent software tester with 10+ years experience.  In 2005 I quit my job and moved to Fiji, then sailed to Australia. But I came back for the girl I left behind.  We got married, moved to Ecuador, and had a son named Harmon. We currently live in the Seattle Washington area.  Here is my pitch for #swredmond

Pitch for #swredmond

Posted by Startup Weekend Crew

Meet Guillaume Pelletier, he currently holds the distance record for this event!  Guillaume is flying in from France just to attend Startup Weekend @Bizspark!  Here is a little more background on him.  Founder of http://www.dotvision.com/ and Streetlightvision http://www.streetlight-vision.com he s the guy who did that website http://www.defiwind.com/ expert in silverlight and .net micro framework.

Thanks for making the trip!  Coming in at a distant second is Bruce Onder who will be flying in from Chicago!  Bruce won’t be here until Saturday morning but sent his pitch to me in advance.  Thank you Bruce and Guillaume for making the trek!  If you know of anyone else that is flying in let me know, you guys are awesome!

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Get your TWEET on! This event is shaping up to be quite impressive! Bizspark is pulling all the stops on the level of support they are willing to offer to the community. Julien Codorniou with Bizspark has arranged for a mind numbing level of support for teams that are developing on the Microsoft platform. Startup Weekend is open source, we are the face of the community, and we like this approach! Give the teams that develop on your platform all the support and resources you can! It is really cool to see a large corporation open their doors to small entrepreneurs in an effort to support their endeavors. We’ll be working hard on establishing more relationships like this in the future and hopefully other companies will follow Bizspark’s lead and open their doors to entrepreneurs that are working on their platform with little to no support. Bizspark, if you’re listening this is cool!

Posted by Startup Weekend Crew

H-Farm in Seattle has announced they will be in attendance on Sunday to award up to $5,000 to a team of their choosing. In return, they will ask for an equity stake in the startup and have pledged more capital and support down the road after reaching additional milestones. Additional options for teams to consider is a great thing! Thank you H-Farm! This offer taken in conjunction with Microsoft’s offer to award a $5,000 prize (to a startup on the Microsoft stack) and in house counseling to teams will make for a Sunday Demo night to remember!

If you don’t have the time to attend for the entire weekend join us on Sunday at 5pm for drinks and watch the teams demo their new startups! Click “Register” and buy a DEMO ticket!

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Come check out Scott Guthrie who will be kicking off Startup Weekend Redmond! Scott is Microsoft’s Corporate VP in the Microsoft Developer Divison.

Get your tickets now! Tickets are going quick!

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Dan McComb will be onsite speaking and filming for his film SHINE.    Click here for more info on it https://biznik.com/shine

About The Film

SHINE is a collaborative film project born from the efforts of more than 100 volunteers. On May 6, 2009, 400 entrepreneurs gathered in Seattle’s largest film production studio to tell us why they work long hours, for low pay, facing great uncertainty.

We took the most compelling stories and conducted dozens of additional interviews, in search of the larger story about entrepreneurship in an economy where, by some estimates, as much as 90 percent of all new jobs are being created by small, entrepreneur-driven businesses. Along the way, we discovered that many cherished beliefs about entrepreneurship are in fact myths:

Myth: Most entrepreneurs make a lot of money.
Reality: Most entrepreneurs make less money than the average employee.
Myth: Most entrepreneurial ventures take a lot of capital to get started.
Reality: Most businesses are started with $25,000 of an entrepreneurs savings.
Myth: 90 percent of all new businesses fail within a year.
Reality: Half of all businesses last 5 years.
From a toothless cowboy poet to an entrepreneur who sold his business for $500 million, SHINE introduces you to the people at the heart of the American Dream.

Posted by Startup Weekend Crew