No Talk, All Action
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It might seem impossible to go from an idea to launching a business in a weekend, especially with people you have never met. But as Helen Baxter reports in this guest MsBehaviour File, that's what happened at Wellington Startup Weekend.
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With the tagline 'no talk, all action' Wellington Startup Weekend (on November 4-6) was always going to be an intense event, and one which all the participants and mentors will never forget.
Startup weekends use ‘lean startup’ principles, a term coined by entrepreneur Eric Ries who was inspired by the Japanese process of lean manufacturing. The idea is come to come up with a ‘Minimal Viable Product’, launch as fast as you can, get customer feedback and then make continuous improvements.
Startup Weekend was founded by Andrew Hyde in July of 2007 in Boulder, Colorado and has since become a worldwide movement. The Wellington event was held at the Biz Dojo, and kicked off on Friday night with the essentials of pizza, beer and lots of ideas. Fifty one-minute pitches were delivered to the room, and then teams started to form around the ideas they were most interested in and the skills they could offer.
The mentors started circling the room, asking hard questions, offering advice, contacts and invaluable experience. Some ideas quickly fell apart and some people left disheartened, others joined different project teams and by the time the doors closed at 1am there were eighty five people working on fourteen new ventures. As with previous events designers were in short supply, with some joining multiple teams to work across two or even three projects.
The teams were back on Saturday morning for breakfast at 7am and when I arrived after lunch you could almost see the brainwaves pulsing through the room. Most teams were using a business model canvas to work through their ideas, hitting the streets with surveys and making phone calls for their customer validation.
The teams had to come up with new brands and business models, design prototypes, create websites, intellectual property, equity, legal, financial and marketing plans. Pitches were practiced and honed by a series of sessions with a stellar line up of mentors. By Sunday afternoon the room was electric as the clock counted down to the 5 pm pitch deadline.
I was fortunate to be on the judges panel alongside entrepreneur Mike DelPrete, Richard MacManus from Read Write Web, Ruth McDavitt from NZTE and Stefan Korn from Webfund/Hyperstart. The judging criteria was based on customer validation, the business model, and execution of the idea or product. After the five minute pitches came five minutes of questions then we retired to the judging room to deliberate on the merits of each startup.
All the winning ideas were mobile phone applications with ‘Well Done’ in third place which uses games and rewards to help toilet train kids. In second place was ‘Conscious Consumers’ with an app for swiping bar codes in shops to check special dietary requirements for Vegans or ethical products.
The winner was ‘USnap.Us’ a phone app for guests at wedding to send all their candid camera moments in to a central live image stream. The founder of USnap Us had the idea in the bath on Thursday night and was surprised that other people liked his ‘silly idea’, and how ‘suddenly he had a company.’
The best way to learn is by creating, and a startup weekend is an excellent way to cultivate the skills you need to be an entrepreneur. Thanks to the organisers the weekend ran smoothly with excellent food, a great venue and collaborative spirit. There is a Startup Weekend Christchurch pencilled in for 24-26th February so keep an eye on christchurch.startupweekend.org for more details.