Startup Weekend: How to Take a Company From Concept to Creation in 54 Hours by Marc Nager, Clint Nelsen, Franck Nouyrigat
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sound different—sometimes entirely dissimilar—from the pitches on Friday night. Some ideas change so completely because participants must undergo the process of discovering what customers want, and what real needs are out there. This is actually all part of that risk mitigation. But the great thing about Startup Weekend is that you can go accomplish this process in 54 hours instead of five years.
The blogosphere and scores of social networking websites have profoundly changed the way we transmit information. Nowadays, you have at your disposal the ability to test ideas, reach distinct communities, and talk to specific customers. One of the reasons the last Internet bubble ended up being a bust is that people were taking risks without gathering, and utilizing, enough of that kind of feedback. Sure, there were a few big successes. But much smarter companies are being built today. It's entirely possible to think to yourself, “Hey, I'd like to try out an idea. Let's see if the market will like it.” And you don't have to wait years or months to find out whether your plan will work; it's a matter of days or even hours. We predict that this kind of information gathering will lead to a real entrepreneurship boom.
One startup veteran told us that he was particularly appreciative of the “brutal feedback” he got from other Startup Weekend participants: “[It's] the kind of feedback that makes you reexamine everything that you are doing, [and] that makes you restart and redo everything you've done over and over again.”
The team that built the Internet-TV application decided not to have a live demo of the video chat feature when they introduced their product Sunday night. They reasoned that everyone knows this technology is available. Therefore, they decided to focus instead on getting the application (which displayed what someone's friends were watching) up and running, and then just show people via a slide where the video chat would pop up on the screen.
Allocating Tasks
Once you determine as a team what you can get done in a weekend, you then need to allocate the tasks amongst members. In some cases, it will be obvious who should be doing what. Coders will code. People who specialize in business development will research what else is out there and get customer feedback. Design people will probably be pulled into various different projects. But ultimately, we recommend coming up with a list of discrete tasks and displaying it where everyone can see.
Some teams use the concept of a scrum board in order to show what has been done, what is being done now, and what needs to be done. One advantage of this approach is that everyone on the team knows where things stand. It means that if you want to begin working on a task but feel you can't get started until someone else completes his task, you know to whom you should talk. You keep the workflow going and don't allow it to get bottled up in any one place.
* A basic scrum board shows the status of many tasks that are in a team's pipeline all at once.
Another idea we recommend is an urgent and important matrix : a diagram of four squares with one axis labeled important and the other labeled urgent . Looking at where tasks fall in this matrix makes it immediately obvious what you should be working on right this minute .
Here Is the Order in Which You Should Complete Tasks:
1. Urgent and important
2. Important but not urgent
3. Urgent but not important
4. Not urgent or important
Once you prioritize as a team, everyone should be clear on what he or she should be doing individually. Giving each person his or her own area in which to work means that everyone will take ownership of their respective tasks, and feel empowered to complete them.
We also recommend that each person only work on one task at a time. The more people are distracted by other priorities, the less effective they will be. Everyone should
The blogosphere and scores of social networking websites have profoundly changed the way we transmit information. Nowadays, you have at your disposal the ability to test ideas, reach distinct communities, and talk to specific customers. One of the reasons the last Internet bubble ended up being a bust is that people were taking risks without gathering, and utilizing, enough of that kind of feedback. Sure, there were a few big successes. But much smarter companies are being built today. It's entirely possible to think to yourself, “Hey, I'd like to try out an idea. Let's see if the market will like it.” And you don't have to wait years or months to find out whether your plan will work; it's a matter of days or even hours. We predict that this kind of information gathering will lead to a real entrepreneurship boom.
One startup veteran told us that he was particularly appreciative of the “brutal feedback” he got from other Startup Weekend participants: “[It's] the kind of feedback that makes you reexamine everything that you are doing, [and] that makes you restart and redo everything you've done over and over again.”
The team that built the Internet-TV application decided not to have a live demo of the video chat feature when they introduced their product Sunday night. They reasoned that everyone knows this technology is available. Therefore, they decided to focus instead on getting the application (which displayed what someone's friends were watching) up and running, and then just show people via a slide where the video chat would pop up on the screen.
Allocating Tasks
Once you determine as a team what you can get done in a weekend, you then need to allocate the tasks amongst members. In some cases, it will be obvious who should be doing what. Coders will code. People who specialize in business development will research what else is out there and get customer feedback. Design people will probably be pulled into various different projects. But ultimately, we recommend coming up with a list of discrete tasks and displaying it where everyone can see.
Some teams use the concept of a scrum board in order to show what has been done, what is being done now, and what needs to be done. One advantage of this approach is that everyone on the team knows where things stand. It means that if you want to begin working on a task but feel you can't get started until someone else completes his task, you know to whom you should talk. You keep the workflow going and don't allow it to get bottled up in any one place.
* A basic scrum board shows the status of many tasks that are in a team's pipeline all at once.
Another idea we recommend is an urgent and important matrix : a diagram of four squares with one axis labeled important and the other labeled urgent . Looking at where tasks fall in this matrix makes it immediately obvious what you should be working on right this minute .
Here Is the Order in Which You Should Complete Tasks:
1. Urgent and important
2. Important but not urgent
3. Urgent but not important
4. Not urgent or important
Once you prioritize as a team, everyone should be clear on what he or she should be doing individually. Giving each person his or her own area in which to work means that everyone will take ownership of their respective tasks, and feel empowered to complete them.
We also recommend that each person only work on one task at a time. The more people are distracted by other priorities, the less effective they will be. Everyone should
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