Read Online Startup Weekend: How to Take a Company From Concept to Creation in 54 Hours by Marc Nager, Clint Nelsen, Franck Nouyrigat - Free Book Online
Ads: Link
entrepreneurs tend to be too focused on their actual ideas. We believe that it's the people who will make or break the venture, not the idea. As we said before, ideas are a dime a dozen. That is what makes the action-based networking at Startup Weekend so important. Those who attend will meet the people who can eventually determine a venture's success. Lovell also warns entrepreneurs against concentrating too much on their ideas, or thinking of Startup Weekend merely as a place to go to find people to do some free weekend work on their idea. “When people are married to an idea, it can go horribly wrong,” she says.
One of our facilitators, who has worked with other startup mentorship programs like Y-Combinator, says that these types of programs pick companies to support based on the people who comprise the teams, and expect that the ideas will change along the way. “As a facilitator, I look for attendees on the sidelines Friday night who are struggling to figure out what team to join or [who] feel discouraged because their idea wasn't picked. I tell them to just talk to the teams and join one with people who seem fun.”
Diversity of Backgrounds Is Key
Action-based networking is not only important to individual entrepreneurs; it's also vital to the process of establishing an infrastructure of startups in a particular place. In cities like New York or London, entrepreneurship may seem like old hat. But there are plenty of entrepreneurs around the country and the world who need an effective way of connecting with cofounders and colleagues—people who share that startup spirit. The kind of work that goes on at Startup Weekend allows people to form strong bonds that eventually grow into a community. Typically, Startup Weekend organizers have a lot of contacts in their startup, business, and/or tech communities. So, even though the barrier to entry may seem low, the events often turn out to be composed of a very highly motivated and connected group of participants.
And Startup Weekend's international outreach has meant that entrepreneurs looking to expand their horizons have a resource for finding like-minded people all over the globe. One Startup Weekend participant launched a company that provided beach lockers and electronic locker solutions in Portugal. She wanted to expand to France, but she realized she couldn't do it alone. So she came to a Startup Weekend in Toulouse and met “highly motivated people with diverse backgrounds” who helped her develop the plans for how to proceed in other countries.
The diversity of individual backgrounds is critical to Startup Weekend's success, and is necessary for assembling the right entrepreneurial teams. Eric Lagier is the founder of Memolane, a tool for collecting and organizing photos, music, video, tweets, status updates, and blogs—an all-in-one application. Of the two cofounders whom he met at a Startup Weekend in Copenhagen, he shares that one had very little in the way of formal education, while the other one had two masters' degrees. They were from different countries—his original team included people from Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Denmark—and Eric is convinced that “under normal circumstances, we never would have met.” He also marvels at the range of ages he found at Startup Weekend—from 20-year-olds to people who already had long careers in the corporate world under their belts.
At the very least, Eric says he could have spent six months trying to assemble not only a team with the right variety of skills but who also had a willingness to work with him on his project. “Those guys could have spent their weekend drinking and partying and whatnot. But they decided to spend it at Startup Weekend instead.”
And it was not only his own team that came together like this; Eric has watched others, too. He speaks of one business development marketer who met a project manager with whom he
One of our facilitators, who has worked with other startup mentorship programs like Y-Combinator, says that these types of programs pick companies to support based on the people who comprise the teams, and expect that the ideas will change along the way. “As a facilitator, I look for attendees on the sidelines Friday night who are struggling to figure out what team to join or [who] feel discouraged because their idea wasn't picked. I tell them to just talk to the teams and join one with people who seem fun.”
Diversity of Backgrounds Is Key
Action-based networking is not only important to individual entrepreneurs; it's also vital to the process of establishing an infrastructure of startups in a particular place. In cities like New York or London, entrepreneurship may seem like old hat. But there are plenty of entrepreneurs around the country and the world who need an effective way of connecting with cofounders and colleagues—people who share that startup spirit. The kind of work that goes on at Startup Weekend allows people to form strong bonds that eventually grow into a community. Typically, Startup Weekend organizers have a lot of contacts in their startup, business, and/or tech communities. So, even though the barrier to entry may seem low, the events often turn out to be composed of a very highly motivated and connected group of participants.
And Startup Weekend's international outreach has meant that entrepreneurs looking to expand their horizons have a resource for finding like-minded people all over the globe. One Startup Weekend participant launched a company that provided beach lockers and electronic locker solutions in Portugal. She wanted to expand to France, but she realized she couldn't do it alone. So she came to a Startup Weekend in Toulouse and met “highly motivated people with diverse backgrounds” who helped her develop the plans for how to proceed in other countries.
The diversity of individual backgrounds is critical to Startup Weekend's success, and is necessary for assembling the right entrepreneurial teams. Eric Lagier is the founder of Memolane, a tool for collecting and organizing photos, music, video, tweets, status updates, and blogs—an all-in-one application. Of the two cofounders whom he met at a Startup Weekend in Copenhagen, he shares that one had very little in the way of formal education, while the other one had two masters' degrees. They were from different countries—his original team included people from Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Denmark—and Eric is convinced that “under normal circumstances, we never would have met.” He also marvels at the range of ages he found at Startup Weekend—from 20-year-olds to people who already had long careers in the corporate world under their belts.
At the very least, Eric says he could have spent six months trying to assemble not only a team with the right variety of skills but who also had a willingness to work with him on his project. “Those guys could have spent their weekend drinking and partying and whatnot. But they decided to spend it at Startup Weekend instead.”
And it was not only his own team that came together like this; Eric has watched others, too. He speaks of one business development marketer who met a project manager with whom he
Similar Books
