Wow! That’s really the only way to describe Startup Weekend Bizspark, a 54-hour startup event that was held in Redmond a few weeks ago. It was much more “work” than I expected, but I learned a lot around people/project management and demos, particularly. I would absolutely recommend Startup Weekend to anyone who is interested in tech startups and entrepreneurship.
My advice to anyone doing a Startup Weekend
- Pick a project you can actually complete in a weekend. I saw some really great ideas that never came to fruition, because it’s only a weekend.
- Your demo shouldn’t have slides. I saw some great projects, but some of the demos fell flat. You shouldn’t go up and talk about market size/opportunity, how much investment you need, etc. Focus on the weekend. Show people what was made and maybe what’s coming out next.
- Have fun. Work hard, network, and make a really cool product, but make sure you have some fun, too!
Meet FriendMosaic
FriendMosaic is a site that makes awesome mosaics of your Twitter profile picture using the pictures of your friends and followers. You can then share your mosaic with friends via the built in image hosting, and purchase merchandise with your mosaic on them.
The founding team at #StartupWeekend team was @royleban, @hidatch, @scottdw2, @josephch, @zanes, @karenxcheng, and @drigotti (me). The picture above is all of us.
We got our first sales during the demo — we auctioned off the first shirt for $200 and sold another 150 shirts, one for each person in the room, making FriendMosaic one of the few profitable companies at a Startup Weekend demo!
After the weekend, @royleban and @hidatch decided to continue with the concept, and officially launched “for real” September 21st, 2009.
Thanks
A big thanks to the awesome FriendMosaic team, Clint and the rest of the Startup Weekend crew, Microsoft for being such an awesome sponsor, and the many other people behind the scenes that helped make the event a success.
