Launch a Startup in a Weekend

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Comment by Sid on September 19, 2008 at 6:50am

Cool Sophie! Look forward to seeing you there.

Comment by Sophie Weeder on September 18, 2008 at 7:41am

I've decided I'm in! Saturday morning I have a doctor's appointment, but I can come in after.

Comment by Matthew Camp on September 17, 2008 at 9:46pm

I'm not able to make it this time due to other commitments, but I'll keep my eye out for the next one and will def. participate.

Comment by Shawn Drost on September 17, 2008 at 6:34pm

It's not a choice that either of us are terribly attached to, and might even change, but here's what made it for us:
-Everyone we know is coming is familiar with it
-It's good for rapid web application development
Provided that your project idea is a web application, "can we build this in ruby/rails" won't come up, and in any case, other questions like "can we build this in a weekend" and "is everyone excited about this idea" will be hugely more important.

Comment by Shawn Drost on September 17, 2008 at 6:17pm

Hi all,

Startup weekend is in two days! Here's an update on who's coming and what we've got planned:

Confirmed:
---------
programmers: Sid Savara, me (Shawn Drost), Jacob Miller, Mike Reiter
pr: Carlos Urreta (also does design), James Stilldontknowhislastname

Maybe:
--------
programmers: Dave Burger, Jon Rosebaugh, Ken Mayer (also a badass sysadmin), Nate Sanders, Austen Ito
designers: Sophie Weeder
other/not sure: Judi Clark, Iqbal Ashraf, Peter Kay

There may be others that haven't rsvp'd, or that heard about the event today (Sid was on HPR talking about it).

Here's the schedule for Friday:
6:30 intros
6:45 everyone gets as many 1-minute pitches as they want, we'll compile a list of ideas and pick the best few
7:15 more discussion on the best ideas (~15 mins per), and pick the one we'll run with
8:15 paper prototyping, work breakdowns, schedule milestones to completion
9:30 break for the night

(If you can't get dinner before 6:30, you can bring food, or we can order out.)

I know the pace is kind of breakneck, but we only have a weekend, and everything needs to happen with this kind of efficiency or we just won't finish anything -- which nobody wants.

A few requests:
-If you have a huge whiteboard, please let me know by Thursday, or I'll go buy one on Friday.
-If you have a webcam/ustream setup, please let me know by Thursday night.
-If you want, bring some snacks. I'm also making a shopping run on friday.
-If you have a spare laptop, please let me know. Carlos' video card lost the will to live last week, and there may be others that only have a desktop.
-If you're in the 'maybe coming' category (or have a friend who might come that we don't know about), please rsvp by Thursday night so we can buy snacks and otherwise arrange accordingly.

Again, this is at Sid's apartment, 1296 Kapiolani. (The entrance is on the ewa side of Pi'ikoi, and there's guest parking in the lot immediately on the right after you enter. If that's full, there's lots of street parking on Pi'ikoi and on Pensacola.) Call him when you get there, 310-913-0000. You can also call me at 808-203-7216.

Okay, that's everything. Let me know if you have any questions, otherwise, see you there!
-Shawn

Comment by Sid on September 15, 2008 at 1:53pm

Thanks for your comments Kurt. I think you're right - we need to come up with an IP strategy. In our case, for this event, we haven't, but if we go with the official startup weekend guys they have a lot of experience in that area and bring that expertise to the table.

Comment by Kurt Sussman on September 13, 2008 at 4:50pm

I'm sorry I'm going to miss this, but I found a website that has a great elevator pitch template. I talked to the guy who runs the site (a VC) and he said even though it looks simple, it's is surprisingly hard for most people.

Develop an Elevator Pitch

His second bit of advice was to assign all IP to an entity that will survive disagreements between founders (e.g. a LLC). That may be a little premature for the startup weekend, but something to consider for the ones that continue afterward.

Comment by Sid on September 8, 2008 at 1:38pm

So, after talking it over with Shawn, we wanted to clarify a couple things:

1) We intend to build a web application. That should narrow the scope a little =)

2) All skill levels are welcome, as we'll need people to develop, design, conceptualize, etc. This event is not limited to just coders, though of course that is what I am. In fact it would be helpful to have non-developers, so we don't get shiny toy tunnel vision.

3) Since Laurence mentioned having a specific skillets, Shawn and I discussed that. It is true, we'll need to find common ground for the developers, and are currently leaning towards Ruby on Rails, but are open. The leaning towards is based purely on having Shawn and I thus far on the project, and we are hoping that will provide common ground (or an easy learning curve) for others interested.

Regardless, if you are on the fence about attending, you should come. Nobody is going to judge whether you are a Rails coder, Java hacker or not a developer. It'll be fun, and on Monday you'll be able to show your friends & family look what me and some guys/girls conceptualized and built in a weekend.

Comment by Sid on September 5, 2008 at 12:27pm

Laurence -

Good point. Shawn and I were taking the opposite approach: see who is interested first, and then search for common ground. I can see where you are going though, that perhaps it is TOO broad. I'll discuss with Shawn and perhaps we'll make it more specific, but of course people who don't have the skillset/technology we plan on using would still be welcome to come.

Comment by Peter Kay on September 5, 2008 at 11:33am

That's fair enough, Shawn. I think you guys have a good thing going here. Very cool! Please keep us apprised on how it went.

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