Startup Weekend

Posted by Startup Weekend Crew

Get ready for Startup Weekend to be back bigger and better than ever!

There are so many amazing things happening in Santa Monica since the last event, and we’re so excited to announce the next event will be:

OCTOBER 15th – 17th at the CoLoft again!

Tickets are live, Register Now! Make sure to register early since we sold out last time.

We are activly searching for more speakers, sponsors, and a few volunteers to help with logisitics. If you are interested, please email Marc at marc at startupweekend dot org.

Posted by edmondmwu

Day One + Two: (just click through to download)

Day Three: (just click through to download)

Posted by Marc Nager

LA, you guys have an AMAZING culture growing in Santa Monica. Be sure to keep this incredible energy in the community going and support one another. Start by blogging, facebooking, tweeting, following, etc about all of your peers and their teams listed below!

Thank you to all of our sponsors(look to the right), speakers, and judges (look to the left)!

So here are the results for those that didn’t make it to the event:

Overall Prize:

1st place: Tetherball

2nd place: CrowdPhoto

3rd place: HireReal

Most Unique & Creative

CrowdPhoto

The Million Dollar Idea

FrugalFoody

The Most Fun

Roll.io

Posted by Startup Weekend Crew

Startup Weekend Los Angeles

View more presentations from startuplawyer.

Posted by Startup Weekend Crew

Here is a really quick update from each team to show you just how much has been completed less than a full 24 hours into this!

The order of the video & be sure to check out/follow your fellow SW’ers:

Intro – Avesta – The Coloft

1. FrugalFoody.com – @frugalfoody – “Good food, better prices”

2. HireReal.com – @hirereal – “Pitch the REAL you!”

3. Roll.io – @roll_io – “A better food truck finder”

4. CivicRipple.com – @civicripple – “Take action to create action”

5. Crowdphoto.net – @crowdphoto – “Photos anywhere, anytime”

6. Pointville.mobi – @pointville – “Check in. Get free shit.”

7. Wishlist – “We make your wish come true”

8. TextCard.com – @textcard – “Simple & universal way to share contact info.”

9. My16thBirthday.com – @my16thbirthday – “My 16th birthday… Join the party!”

10. Tetherballapp.com – @tetherballapp – “Social decision engine for friends”

Posted by Startup Weekend Crew

We chowed down on some yummy Startup Waffles this morning!

Posted by Startup Weekend Crew

We had 33 ideas pitched and here are the 14 teams that are under way right now after a round of voting! Lots of energy and some great things happening here.

Posted by Startup Weekend Crew

Ok, this might officially be the most fun we will ever have at a Startup Weekend!

I just got to the CoLoft and it’s amazing! We’ll be doing a BBQ poolside and rooftop Saturday 2 blocks away from the CoLoft thanks to Wil Schroter and Sara Sommer.

Posted by Startup Weekend Crew

We’re happy to continue a tradition started by our friends at TheStartupDigest! This is open to anyone and everyone on Saturday morning from 9am-10am as we kick off the day.

Get the full history of Startup Waffles here, and be sure to sign up for StartupDigest.

Posted by tylerkoblasa

A few weeks ago I was on a call with Marc Nager discussing the next Startup Weekend LA taking place at Coloft in Santa Monica. Marc runs the event and asked if I would write up a blog post to recap our experience at the last Startup Weekend LA this past November. My name is Tyler Koblasa, founder of Mingly, a new Santa Monica based start-up, and winner of the last Startup Weekend LA. Following Startup Weekend, Mingly presented at this past January’s Twiistup, Los Angeles’s premier startup and tech conference.

Startup Weekend LA is only a few days away, running from April 30-May 2, and I had been hoping to get this article out a bit earlier. Unfortunately, the post turned out a bit lengthy but hopefully helps you get more out of the upcoming event. It’s written towards those that plan to pitch ideas and lead  startups. If you’re not planning to pitch your idea, it will still be helpful to give the article a skim in order to get an idea about what may be expected from each team member and how to increase your chances at having a successful Startup Weekend.

If you’re reading this article, hopefully you’re already familiar with SW and will be attending next Friday. If you’re not familiar, read more and register at la.startupweekend.org. There’s a line-up of some exceptional speakers, including Mark Suster (@msuster) and Ryan Roberts (@startuplawyer). The event is almost sold out, so if you do plan to attend, be sure to register immediately. We’re fortunate to have the main coordinator, Marc Nager leading this Startup Weekend LA.

Startup Weekend events are attended by a diverse group, with on average about 50% coder/tech and 50% design/business/marketing folks. During the last Startup Weekend LA, we had engineers from Google, Microsoft, and the Rubicon Project as well as attorneys, senior level designer/JS guys and MBAs from top schools, including Harvard. SW brings together a truly talented and unique group of folks interested in startup and coding.

Startup Weekend has gained significant momentum as a platform in the past few years and recently expanded its reach all the way to foreign cities such as Dubai thanks to its awesome program design and leadership. Multiple companies have come out of Startup Weekend events and been launched, such as Mingly; acquired, such as “Learn that Name” (acquired by Gist several weeks ago); and funded, such as “Foodspotting” a new Foursquare type “foodie” app (invested in by Dan Martell @danmartell).

Over recent years, I’d heard of Startup Weekend a few times, specifically the event that takes place in Boulder. My good friend Joshua MacAdam mentioned that Startup Weekend would be coming to Los Angeles in November and that he was thinking of attending. We both signed up, and Josh, a fellow native Los Angelino, flew out from Ohio to attend. We grabbed a drink at Father’s Office in Santa Monica before heading over to the opening evening of SWLA and chatted about current ideas we were playing with as well as the concept of a “Social CRM” that I’d been working on over the past year. I’d already invested in and developed the product to a certain point. By the end of our drinks, we concluded it couldn’t hurt to pitch Mingly, and in a best case scenario, the “Social CRM” business would go further toward coming “alive” — maybe even with a little traction.

Friday evening kicked off with an introduction by event coordinator Nick Seguin and a few talks about entrepreneurship and startups in Los Angeles with about 70 Startup Weekenders in attendance. Following these presentations was the idea pitch session in which everyone is given the opportunity to pitch his or her idea for about 30-60 seconds. Each idea is written down on a large sheet of paper. Once everyone has been given the opportunity to pitch a concept, the floor is opened for anyone to pitch a second or third idea. At this point the room is essentially “pitched out” and the top 7 ideas are selected for the weekend. Everyone is given the opportunity to cast a vote for a favorite few ideas, which are then noted and tallied up. Luckily, the “Social CRM” was one of the concepts that received the most votes and selected for the weekend.

At this point, teams are formed. This is one of the most critical times during the weekend — as is team formation of any company. Unlike a company that’s hiring and usually has weeks to make a decision on a new hire, you’re on the spot here to create a winning team, in about 30 minutes! Teams are then solidified by the end of the evening and a working space gets selected as the home for your team. See more on teams below.

We went  around the group to do formal intros to make sure everyone had a good idea of who they were working with. The “Social CRM” team was made up of: Josh MacAdam, Maria Wich-Vila, Andrew Lin, Eden Li, Julian Bryant, Brad Gilreath and myself. Our team then came up with a slightly more interesting, stealth name for the “Social CRM” which was then coined “Project Kennedy” — in connection with Ted Kennedy. Senator Kennedy was known, as a true master of relationship building and networking who touched many party members from both sides of the aisle. The “Project Kennedy” team came up with a brief plan and broke for the evening.

Everyone met back at the “Project Kennedy” working space on Saturday morning at 9 AM. We worked on the project until around 10 PM when the building was locked up. Sunday morning rolled around and the rush was on. Final coding needed to be concluded by around 5 PM to provide a few hours for testing, rehearsal and tuning for the evening presentation.

And now for how to Prep for and Win Startup Weekend…

The 6 Steps to Prep for Startup Weekend

1. Pick the Idea

First, you need to pick one idea and start to push it from being just an idea to being a business. Bounce your idea off as many folks as possible who know the space and also may have experienced the problem your idea is solving.

Regardless, if this is an idea you just thought of hours before Startup Weekend or something that’s been bouncing around in your head for years, you need to get feedback and input The more prep and input in advance, the better.

2. Define Your Value Prop and the Business

What value does your product bring the customer or user? Does your product solve a specific problem? Is this product valuable to a specific niche? Is it vertical? Does it appeal to the masses?

Think through why someone would take their time to try out your product. It needs to make sense and be obvious. Spend an hour and go through an example pitch deck (for a great example, Google “10/20/30 Kiyosaki deck”) to at least get the various necessary components of the business in mind. Dedicate your focus specifically to the following questions: What is the problem, what is the solution, how does it work, what is the secret sauce, and who is this for? How many people out there may want your product (market size)? Why would Startup Weekend attendees and judges get excited about your product?

If you do end up with the winner  from the weekend, you should have a good idea as to how your business will make money, what your roadmap may look like, and what your next steps may be.

3. Practice The Pitch

This is one of the, most important times of Startup Weekend. From the pitch you will determine if A) your idea will be one of the selected projects for the weekend and B) who may be joining your team.

In order for your idea to be selected and to end up with a rockstar team, you’ll need to think through your pitch and practice it. Over and over. Pitch in front of as many people as possible, even if they don’t entirely understand it. You are focused on the “ah ha” moment that your audience will experience when they think about your concept and how it solves the world’s problems. See if you can describe it in one or two sentences, maybe even with a tag line.

If this is an idea that has been resonating with you for quite sometime, you may already have a good amount of experience with the “elevator” pitch, having already pitched it many times to others and been refining it. If the idea is just an idea and has not been “pitched” before — go find one, two, or ten others you can pitch it to and get their feedback. Practice rehearsing your pitch in front of a mirror, in the car, on the phone.

A Startup Weekend pitch needs to contain the following (in 30 seconds):

Intro – your name, the name of your idea (smile and be energetic)

More about you – why are you a good person to solve this problem? What have you done before that makes you ideal to lead the project?

A quick 10 second description of your product – this is your elevator pitch (if you were cut off here, hopefully your audience would remember this part and you)

Problem – make sure you describe the problem you’re solving

More detail – a bit more in detail on how the product would work

How you came to the idea – describe the problem through your personal experience

Something memorable – maybe a joke? a question for the audience? a clever statement?

Inspiration – lead, sell yourself and your idea to the audience and soon to be teammates

Lastly, after you’ve created, practiced and refined your pitch, make sure it sounds natural and “real” while still conveying the right message and accurately describing the product.

4. Consider a Fancy Demo and/or MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

This is an interesting dilemma. Mingly has recently faced this problem more and more however you should spend a few minutes thinking about both versions of your product for Startup Weekend.

A “fancy demo” will act more like demoware, properly demonstrating the core function of your product, that also tacks on a few sexy, cool features that get folks excited and saying “wow”. This is used to attract interest in your product, like fancy peacock feathers. The “fancy demo” sometimes may be made entirely in Photoshop and/or Flash with a few minor integrations that get the point across (maybe an API call to Facebook or Twilio).

The MVP (Minimum Viable Product – publicized by the Lean Startup movement) however is the most simple, stripped down version of a usable “alpha” form of the product. At this point you can create an account and get it in the hands of a user to begin hands-on feedback. The core of the product will be functional and actually useful to a very limited extent to allow for some “tire kicking.” In most cases, VCs and Angel Investors require at least this.

Generally speaking, you will need to have both the “fancy demo” and the MVP. Think about what your MVP may actually be and start by building this but more as a “demo” (it doesn’t need to support multiple users). For the final Startup Weekend presentation on Sunday night, you should have a fancy demo that runs reliably, looks good, is easy to understand, and gets the “ah ha!” moment across.

5. Come to Startup Weekend with Product Design (mockups, wireframes, screenshots)

Assuming you’re serious about your startup idea and have been working on it for some time (days, weeks, months), you may already have made wireframes, diagrams, prototypes or other drawings that illustrate the product. Make sure to bring these with you. Also make sure your team understands the level of thought and development that went into the project before you get started Friday evening. Startup Weekend is only a few days away but you still have time. Prep prep prep. If your idea is selected and you want to “win”, it helps to have good product design in advance. You want to come to the event with the most “mature” and developed concept possible. A half-baked idea may pick up enough votes to be selected, however, you have much better chances at being selected and winning if you’ve already invested in product design in advance. This could be as simple as drawings on a legal pad that you’ve shown around.

6. Take It Seriously (but have a good time)

Think of your startup as a real business. Most, if not all relevant rules, tips and processes that apply to a startup also apply during Startup Weekend (within reason).

If your idea is selected, you now have the chance to do everything in your power to harness your team’s amazing talent for the next two days. Where else can you find a team willing to dedicate a weekend to work on your idea?

You should be prepping and thinking about winning. In VC Mark Suster’s blog, Both Sides of the Table, Mark writes about “playing to win.” If you’re going to set forth and build a team around a concept you believe in, you should do so to win. If you are going to launch this as a real startup, your only option is to win. Investors don’t invest in the second place pick or the loser. If an investor is going to invest in your startup, they want to win and win big.

Be a leader. Some of those on your team may be there just to enjoy the weekend, but chances are that if you select talented team members, they are going to want to succeed at what they set out to do and build a winning product!

Now at the same time, be sure to still have fun, connect with a great group of fellow attendees and enjoy the experience

The 6 Steps to Winning Startup Weekend

1. Get Your Pitch Selected

You can’t really win startup weekend if your idea isn’t selected. If you are passionate and serious and really want to work on this business during the event, then your pitch needs to garnish enough votes to be a winning idea and attract a winning team. Refer back to the prep section in order to think more about your pitch.

2. Build The Perfect Team

Your team is everything. Without a killer team, you’ll have a much harder time building a great product and reaching the goals you set forth for the weekend. You can’t do it all yourself, so don’t even consider it. Think through the following points when selecting team members or you’re joining a team:

Do they get it? – you want a team that really “gets”  your product, personally wants to use it and wants to win. If they don’t want to win, they don’t belong on your team.

Balance it with left and right brains – when choosing members for your team, you will need a balance of both left and right brained individuals. It’s a combination of creative, high level thinkers and very micro, technical, engineer problem solvers. Figure out if you personally are left or right brained and make sure you have plenty of the other to balance your team. You can read a bit more on critical vs creative thinking here – http://ezinearticles.com/?Critical-and-Creative-Thinking—Key-Factors-in-Business-Success

Keep things lean and focused – It’s not the size that matters here. Be careful of “hanger on’ers” – make sure it’s clear how each member will DIRECTLY participate in your startup. The size of your team has nothing to do with success, and usually, a big group will slow you down. Less is more. Ask yourself, is this someone I would pay to have on my startup?

Figure out who you need – depending on your business you’ll need a team with a break up close to the following (assuming the startup you’re building will be of the “tech” nature and require code to be written). Startup weekend isn’t just a code-athon or hackfest, however in most cases the product will involve a good amount of programming.

Example winning team for a web based startup:

2-3 x “Rockstar” Coders – writing backend code (Rails, Python, PHP, .NET)

1-2 x Front-end Designers (for mockups and final spliced images and HTML)

1 x Javascript/Ajax developer (most sites these days are loaded with JQuery or other Javascript)

1 x Project Manager/general business person – individuals building previous startups are great at this and tend to ground the team. They can also help keeps things moving.

1 x Business person – experience with creating deck’s, presenting, thinking about the viability of the business. Anyone with an MBA is great for this.

“Hire Up” – you may have heard it before but As hire A+s and Bs hire Cs. Make sure you have as many As on your team as possible and your job will be easier.

Find your role (if joining someone else’s team) – Be sure you have a clear defined role and know how you’ll contribute. If you don’t feel you can truly help your team, find another team.

3. Map Your Project Plan – Don’t chew off more than you can deliver on in 30 hours

It’s great to be ambitious and shoot for the moon. There is where your idea and concept should have some type of BHAG (big hairy audacious goal) as James Collins (author of Good to Great) has called it. This is the vision that drives you and your team, aligns your product, and most importantly, sells your startup. It’s necessary to have a BHAG. However, it’s even more necessary to set obtainable milestones that move you closer to the end goal. The worst feeling ever is to reach a hard deadline only to find out what you just didn’t quite make it.

With Startup Weekend, it’s no different. With your team, you should come up with a high-level project plan that’s a basic roadmap of how you’ll spend the next two days and allocate your team’s resources. From the beginning, clearly determine what exactly you want to demo and what your presentation will contain. There’s a problem if half the team thinks you’re developing a stripped down usable version of the product and the other half thinks it will only be purely demo ware but better looking with a little more show.

Next, come up with the individual projects, both technical and non-tech, along with the individual tasks necessary to complete each specific project. Determine who is the best fit for each task.

Don’t spend more than 30 minutes on the actual project plan itself upfront, but use it as a guide and do a team “check-in” to the project plan a few times per day to ensure dependencies and deliverables are aligned. For example, a mockup of your core one or two screens needs to be completed before presentation layer back-end code and HTML/Javascript is created for those pages.

4. Execute – Beware of “committee” style meetings. Keep moving forward and be careful of getting “stuck”

It can be like quick sand: a technically challenging and time consuming feature or architecture decision can grab you and not let go. Hours can easily slip by, leaving you to wonder where the morning went when you have to present in two hours. Be very careful of “feature creep”, where extra features or ideas randomly start to appear in your team’s product. Also, watch out for fancy new technologies that may be fun to work with but may slow down development if your entire team has to learn something new.

Think in form of departments in your startup and be aware of interrupting a teammate that may be hard at thought. If there are tech or architecture related discussions, it’s helpful to make sure all the engineers are on one side of your work area or even outside in order to make sure that you aren’t distracting everyone else.

As a team lead, be careful of your resources and unnecessary discussions and interruptions. It’s easy for one or two team members to turn a less important topic into a discussion with half of your team that goes on an hour or two. You don’t need buy in from the entire team in order to make certain decisions, but make sure your team lead or “project manager” is in the loop.

You’ll be the most effective as long as you make sure you’re discussing and solving the right problems with the correct team resources and keep moving forward.

5. Rehearse – Practice makes perfect.

When it comes down to the last few hours before your turn to present at Startup Weekend, everyone is busy fixing last minute bugs or even adding major features to their product.

The truth is, it’s not about using every available minute to write code and add features. The time spent rehearsing and how you “come off” is as important as the actual demo and product itself. If you stumble describing the product, or if demo has major problems, it’s easy to lose your audience and Startup Weekend judges.

Make sure to give yourself a few hours to run through a dozen or so rehearsals of your presentation. Think about and bullet point out who is going to say what. You can even create a very basic script to memorize (just make sure you don’t sound like you memorized a script! otherwise you end up with “Japanese Jazz” as Tyler Crowley (@steepdecline) calls it). Make sure the person running your demo during the presentation has been running it during the rehearsals, and make sure that “running” the demo is just as rehearsed as whoever is doing the talking.

Select two or at most three team members (including yourself) to do the talking. It breaks continuity and is distracting having everyone describe a slide and shuffle around.

Determine your “demo path” as far in advance as possible. Choose exactly what you plan to click, show or describe to make sure it’s predictable and can be reproduced. Your tech team will be using this as part of their “spec” to make sure the demo goes according to plan.

Avoid demoing potentially “risky” features that you aren’t able to demo reliably. It’s better to fake demo a specific feature to at least get a certain point across or leave it out as opposed to having  it fail onstage. You can “fake demo” a feature by showing a screenshot or mockup in place of real code or product.

When running through your final rehearsals, be sure to have the two or three presenters do so in front of the rest of the team in a more private space if possible. Use a projector to practice if you can. Otherwise, have the laptop upfront, and change slides and show the demo to the rest of your team.

6. Showtime – A solid demo, presentation and Q & A

This is it. This is where all your effort during the weekend comes to make it or break it. A few pointers that seem to help.

Intro and recognize everyone in your team – it’s important to properly introduce yourself, fellow presenters, and the rest of your team. The audience will enjoy the quick background of who worked on the project and of who they’re going to be listening to for the next 10 minutes.

Your driver – this is the person that will run the mouse and “drive” the actual demo. It’s usually one of the developers who worked on the project and is very close to how it functions. If something isn’t working right, they know what to click to get around a potential problem. Choose like life depends on a good driver.

Avoid last minute changes, which only throw everyone off. Avoid them at at all costs. Do not change what you’ve rehearsed.

Look sharp and pro. Don’t forget to smile – if you’re one of the two or three people presenting, it can’t hurt to throw a sport coat, blazer or nice dress in the back of your car for the evening. This is an easy way to enhance how your presentation is interpreted but is not a replacement for the above. Of course, always smile. People don’t like to look at others who are frowning and bored.

Be cool, calm and assertive (as well as confident, even if you actually aren’t) whenever presenting. Be engaging but relaxed. You need to sound the least scripted but still hit all the necessary points. Your audience and the judges will be receptive to a confidently presented demo that runs according to plan, assuming they like the product. As the Dog Whisperer, Cesar Milan says, be the “pack leader” by being calm and assertive.

Lastly, if you’re presenting and a fan of Apple products – imagine you’re Steve Jobs doing the iPad keynote — casually lounging in a chair, demoing the next game changer http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/specialevent0110/ (If you’re not a fan of Jobs because of their recent policy changes, think of someone else that leads great product and you look up to.)

Conclusion

Startup Weekend is an amazing platform and can be a great experience. It can add tremendous momentum to any startup or business concept that is on the edge of getting the ball “moving” in the forward direction. I was very fortunate for the outcome and sheer “luck” that all plans and actions were executed thanks to an amazing group of teammates. Our team was made up of rockstars, and Mingly wouldn’t be where it is today without each member.

But again, the most important is for you to enjoy the weekend and have an open mind. Even if your idea is not selected, be prepared to pick the winning idea you support the most and will enjoy working on. Be all in. If the leader of your team selects you to be on their team, make sure you do everything you can, and if there are true voids to fill, fill them up. Yes you are there to have a good Startup Weekend, but it is long and filled with plenty of hard work. It’s 30 hours long, and you can’t waste a minute. Your team is counting on you.

If you have an idea you are passionate about and have already been working on, go to Startup Weekend and win.

Good luck and have fun. I’ll be at the event as one of the organizers and open to help any team or comment on our experience at the last Startup Weekend. See you there.

Feel free to send any questions to Tyler@Ming.ly or on twitter @tylerkoblasa.