Being a founder

Being a founder 4 - Go to entrepreneurship events like Startup Weekend

By Ted Pin ⋅ July 27, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

I mentioned Startup Weekend in a couple of posts in this series, but I never really got into the details of how it actually worked for us. I promised an honest, nitty-gritty blog about starting up, so here are the details about how events like Startup Weekend can really change the course of your dream. (And if it sounds like I’m pitching for Startup Weekend in spots, I am. It was just that awesome.)

What is Startup Weekend (from a founder’s viewpoint)?

Their website defines it as “an intense 54 hour event bringing together brilliant tech minds (developers, designers, marketers, ect.) together to create a company (or as many as the community wants) from concept to launch!” Well, from a founder’s standpoint, it ended up being a lot more than that.

Startup Weekend actually began as a kind of “traveling Y-Combinator.” If you’re not familiar with Y-Combinator, they run annual gatherings of startup companies that Y-Combinator fund at a seed level and helps them get going. Y-Combinator then takes a small share of those companies. One of the biggest drawbacks for founders is that Y-Combinator is stationed in CA and not all founders/startup-teams can get out there for a couple of months at a time. In contrast, Startup Weekend holds events in all parts of the country (as determined by vote) and no longer take a financial interest in your company. They gather a group of incredibly generous  local volunteers like Laura Fisher who organize and manage the event, which basically gives you a space, an Internet connection, and a bunch of willing people to throw stuff at (and believe me, they will throw stuff back at you, too).

For Intermz.com, it was definitely intense, and it is definitely helping us go from concept to launch. But I want to share with a lot of the other more subtle (and less subtle) benefits that a founder can gain from events like this.

Self-selected crowd

This might seem really obvious, but if you are a founder looking to recruit people to get behind your vision, you can waste a lot of time sending emails and trying to convince folks to actually join your team and do work for your idea.

Imagine being able to give your pitch to a room full of people who have already said, just by being there, “I’m here to work. Just convince me your idea is worth working on.” Then it’s simply up to you to give them a good reason. Intermz ended up attracting one of the largest groups at Startup Weekend which had a diversity that is became the major factor in our progress.

Energy, inspiration and momentum

This is the soft stuff that I don’t think gets talked about enough. Don’t discount the soft stuff. Startups are based almost entirely on passion and energy. Why? Because you’re probably not going to have any money in the beginning and the work is going to be really hard–and your statistical chances for success barely register. The only thing that keeps people (including the founder) working on an idea is love for it and how much belief there is in it.

As I see it, entrepreneurship events help ignite and sustain that belief in one most-important way: When you see that other people believe your idea, it makes you, the founder, believe in yourself. That belief translates into apparent commitment, which signals to the team that the people are in place to make it really happen. Before Startup Weekend, I began to have doubts about my idea, which made me doubt myself. But the response Intermz received at the event gave me, and us all, reason to row in the same boat.

Network

So you’re in a room full of other like-minded, enthusiastic people. If you wanted to talk to, get advice from, and get help from like-minded, enthusiastic people, why would you not go to an entrepreneurship event? Always keep in mind that these events are full of self-selected people who are like you. Help them and they will help you.

Opened up

I would wager that how you think you can achieve success before you attend an event like Startup Weekend, and how you think you can achieve success afterward are going be shockingly different. Not only that, I would also wager that after such an event, the plan will be clearer, the goals better defined, and your confidence will go up. (This all assumes of course that you had an idea that attracted enough help.)

You may not enjoy the process of getting your mind opened, but if you’re not uncomfortable, then you’re probably not learning. Engaged people are going to ask the tough questions that help you focus and understand.

Entrepreneurship events make this kind of eye-opening a very good thing because: 1) You’re getting feedback from people who presumably want the idea to succeed (or they wouldn’t be there), and 2) they aren’t you.

Who entrepreneurship events are not for

These events are not for people worried about non-disclosure agreements (NDA) and the like. There is an implicit code at these things that if you come up with an idea, no one will try to rip it–otherwise these events wouldn’t work. If you go to one and expect people will sign your NDA, don’t count on getting people to join your cause.

The reality

To make your web-startup, or any startup for that matter, succeed, you’re going to need people with ideas, passion, and the willingness to work. Without them, you can only go so far. I challenge you to find a better way to recruit more of those people in one place than by attending an entrepreneurship event like Startup Weekend. Go find one and give them a good reason to join you!

Good luck, and go get ‘em.

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