How to Succeed at Startup Weekend
For years I've heard amazing stories about Startup Weekend but I've never been able to attend because they always seemed to be scheduled on weekends when I had previous engagements (like the birth of my son). This past weekend I finally had the opportunity to participate in a Startup Weekend event in Seattle and I was not disappointed. The organizers were fantastic, Madrona Venture Group were wonderful hosts and the attendees were all top notch people. In the end, my team and I built a platform for community sorted data called Crowdsort.me and we were awarded first prize for the weekend.
If you've been considering attending Startup Weekend, I would highly recommend it and I'd like to offer the following pieces of advice so that you too can have an awesome experience.
Find a great team in advance
I had previously met several of the other Startup Weekend attendees and I had even previously worked with a small handful of them. After hearing the opening pitches on Friday night, I looked for the best combination of a compelling idea and a team of people with whom I felt comfortable. Ultimately, I joined a team comprised mostly of guys with whom I had already worked and that turned out to be a big benefit. Not only are those guys (Hi Matt, Joe, Scott, and Harold!) straight-up ninjas but they are also among the most humble guys I've ever met. We were able to be amazingly productive and collaborative at least in part because we didn't lose any time arguing or engaging in petty squabbling. We made decisions quickly and we trusted each other's instincts.
Simplify, Simplify, Simplify
When the weekend got started, we were all starry-eyed about the amazing things we'd be able to do with our product once it was built. Daydreaming like that is great fun but you should very quickly return to reality. The first task shouldn't be figuring out all the cool features you could add but rather how many features you can strip out before you simply don't have a product anymore. One example from our team was whether we wanted to require users to sign-up for Crowdsort.me before they could use it. We talked briefly about the benefits of having user accounts (e.g. customer segmentation and data security) but we soon realized that we didn't really need them for our simplest possible version and in fact we never ended up adding them to our product at all.
Get it working ASAP
One of the biggest points of emphasis of Startup Weekend is "customer validation". The faster you can get to a working example, the faster you'll be able to show it to potential customers and get their feedback. We had our first (extremely crude) version of Crowdsort.me running by 5pm on Saturday. Not only were we then able to start demonstrating our product but when we reached that milestone it provided a huge jolt of energy to our team. Our idea was alive and we could now start talking about where to take it next.
