Startup Weekend 2010

I was at Startup Weekend a year ago, but I haven’t felt like I could accurately reflect on the experience until now. The weekend was great and it was the catalyst to putting me on my current path. I want to reflect on things I learned, and what I expect if I went again.

A Great Intro to the Startup World

For me, the best part of Startup Weekend was being able to meet and work with the people there. I had worked on projects with my friends prior to this, including an attempt at a commercial product. The event made me realize how much I didn’t know and showed me where I needed to be if I want to succeed. I learned how different people are involved in startups, success outside of just the big exits in the media, and most importantly, the workflow of very skilled people. I also learned about gift card laws, and certain web companies’ patent protections.

Developers

The biggest thing I could have done before the weekend was to learn Ruby on Rails or improve my iPhone development skills greatly. A lot of the teams wanted to go with Rails as the de facto choice, and it’s too much work to have to pickup a framework and become productive within a day. I had used Rails years ago and could probably get back up to speed with Ruby fairly quickly, but it took me a day to get my environment setup. Rails became a bit more difficult to setup on OS X than the old days.

I had made some basic applications on the iPhone as well, but I definitely was not proficient. Again, I needed to be able to turn around something very quickly, and I just wasn’t far along enough to do so. It’s simply too much to get up to speed in something new, setup the environment, and contribute within the weekend.

My recommendation is to make an educated guess as to what languages and platforms will be in use and make sure the environment is setup and make contributions immediately. If I did end up on a team using technology I didn’t expect, I would either switch teams or simply let them know I’ll help however I can.

Expectations

Don’t expect to come in and walk away as a startup employee or as a founder. A lot of ideas get pitched and worked on, but most don’t go much further. It’s the nature of startups and even more so when trying to execute an idea within the span of a weekend with possibly unfamiliar people. Out of my Weekend, only one startup still seems to be around: Volly, formerly known as Tetherball.

The interesting thing is there were a lot of good ideas that are being actively worked on now. While I never would have thought of those ideas, it’s more anecdotal evidence to me that it’s very difficult to come up with a unique idea, and there is a natural progression in ideas. The two that stand out to me today are Volly and a customer rewards app for merchants.

I don’t know if I’ll attend another Startup Weekend. I signed up for a couple and ended up not going. Coincidentally, both times I was coming back from being overseas and was jetlagged. I’ve been working on my own startup, and realized that I didn’t know if it would be a worthwhile experience for me right now.