This is a guest post written by Anand Iyer, a fantastic dude from Microsoft. If you like this post, you should check out the BizSpark program.

StartupWeekend brought together around 200 of the most talented people from the San Francisco Bay Area together at Microsoft’s offices in SF this past weekend - all with the common goal of building a startup in a 54 hour time span. Andrew Hyde, the founder of StartupWeekend, kicked off the event at 7pm on Friday which was followed by an introductory discussion by a set of speakers, some very familiar and popular names in the valley - Connie Chan, Dave McClure, Katherine Barr, Mark Jacobsen and Christine Herron. Tyler Willis, one of the main organizers of this event, did a great job of moderating this discussion.

[photo credit: antoniocapo, kyeung808]

Following the discussion, Hyde moderated a series of lightning pitches from the audience - essentially anyone who had an idea for a startup got the opportunity to propose their idea to the audience in a short 30-60 second pitch. There was absolutely no shortage of ideas (there were probably around 30 pitches). What made this lightning pitch session exciting however was the real time feedback the expert speakers provided to those pitching. There was some great learning to be had here. For example, Antonio Altamirano describes McClure’s style of an ideal pitch: “Take 80% of the time to describe the problem and 20% describing the solution.” Once the ideas had been pitched, the originators of each of the ideas went around seeking team members to work on these ideas with over the weekend. This was a stark contrast from StartupWeekend last year, where everyone voted on one idea to implement over the weekend and split up in to groups of development, project management, marketing, biz dev etc. This go around, there were several teams working on several startups.

[photo credit: antoniocapo, kyeung808]

About 50 or so hours and several cups of coffee and later, the teams pitched their ideas to another full house. There were 23 pitches in all, and honestly, I’m in complete awe with the number of ideas that were implemented this weekend. This is truly the startup capital of the world.

FounderShack is a website that helps you find co-founders. It’s for people who are passionate about solving a common business problem. The website looks trivial to use – users submitting ideas have to short videos of their pitch and to be matched the other party has to do the same thing. Hopefully the next StartupWeekend will use FounderShack to connect people at the event. http://foundershack.com
“Digg for Deals” (working title) is making bargain hunting easy. The site helps you narrow down on the deal you love. The opening page shows you deals, with an initial filter. Then you click on either “Warmer” or “Cooler” and you get two more products that are similar in nature, but are probably more like deals you may be looking for. When you click on an actual link for a product, a little built-in toolbar appears on the top of the webpage (like the new Digg toolbar).
BigPonzi– this was more of a demo for the sake of a demo. Huge shout out to Dylan Field and Daniel Brusilovsky, a couple of teenagers for putting the demo together.
DemoClarity helps bring clarity to the process of ‘democracy’. The site offers a summary of different legislations, media relevant to the legislation, discussions relevant to the legislation etc. At the bottom of the page are two buttons using which you can either Support or Oppose the proposed legislation. You can also sign a petition and spread the word with your friends. The site also lets you stay informed, and see more issues that are related to the legislation you are perusing. The site provides real value by serving public interest and educating the public. http://democlarity.com
Hubb.Me is like bit.ly or tr.im, but it lets you share more than just one link. You can create a ‘hubb’ on the site, and share it via twitter. When users click on the’hubb’ link they can then check out each of the links in that hub. Hubb also provides an easy tab navigation bar as you start visiting each of the sites in the Hubb so that you know the next site you need to visit. The site integrates with Google Analytics, and you can create a ‘Hubb’ in seconds. http://hubb.me
TwitFitLog lets you use twitter to send fitness logs using pseudo tweets (”@fitlog #run 3 miles” for example). Twitfitlog then records your tweets and presents it to you on a website in a clean manner. FitLog will eventually introduce some game elements, like challenging yourself or challenging someone else, which I believe will draw users to the site as well as retain current users. http://fitlog.pbwiki.com has a lot of what the team has thought about. http://twitfitlog.com
SnoozeMail lets you “snooze on your email”. Users can go to snoozemail.com, register on the site, authenticate (IMAP is a requirement at the moment). Emails that you have snoozed will re-pop up in your inbox (via another email) thereby sending it to the top your inbox. I seem to be the only one in this boat, but this is a service that I don’t see myself using any time soon and that may be because I have (unfortunately) found the most efficient way to work through my email. I think services like these, while very clever, are still band-aids on top of this very broken problem called ‘email’. The presenters mentioned that they may look at a ‘freemium’ model for monetization in the future. http://gosnoozemail.com
OurBlockTV provides a crowdsourced approach to “neighborhood watch”. The idea seems to have cropped up when one of the founders tried this himself by setting up a webcam outside of his apartment window. The hope is that a community based network of webcams will empower citizens to help fight crime and save lives. Users of the service can upload their videos, which will go in to a moderation queue and eventually get published on to the site. Apparently users can get weatherproof cameras for fairly cheap ($49). I can see some legal problems cropping up here, but apparently the initial feedback seems to have been really good. http://adamsblock.com
Img.gr is a photo tagging tool for twitter. It is very similar to facebook photo tagging, but you tag users in their photos using their twitter handles. Once on the img.gr website, you can draw a rectangle around what you want to tag, which brings up a drop-down of your twitter friends so you can tag them. Here is their presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/driveafastercar/imggr-san-francisco-startup-weekend While questions around untagging and some other concerns arise, regardless, I can see myself using this service in the very near future. http://twitter.com/imggr
LiveCut is an ambitious project that helps you get legal downloads of music from the concerts that you see. Let’s say a group of friends go to a concert, on either side of the stage will be a song number or a ‘performance id’ that you can then text message to LiveCut. LiveCut will then respond with a viable way to acquire the song. The model has been well fleshed out with monetization capabilities (and therefore incentives) for artists to want to use it. LiveCut wasn’t developed this weekend, the founder was simply pitching it this evening. http://livecut.com
FeedTheChef is an RSS reader for an average internet user. The interface looks nifty, with an inbox feel in the left pane, and a view based on “importance”. There isn’t a requirement to know about feeds or RSS – you simply key in the URL on the website, and it automatically brings in the feed for you. FeedTheChef is basically bringing together an online version of a personalized newspaper. If the UI is done right (and I think we got a sneak peek of a very slick horizontally scrolling UI), I think they can easily attract users. http://feedthechef.com
MonkeyCalling lets you ask questions and get answers instantly by calling phones of people you want to survey thereby helping you get ‘fresh responses’. MonkeyCalling works on the basic premise that the phone is still very much the most immediate form of communication. The founders described the service as a “personalized call center in the cloud”. MonkeyCalling has used @twilio for the voice integration, and as creepy as the text to speech sounds I can’t wait to start spam-calling my friends through this service. http://monkeycalling.com
RadioKi shows you radio stations online that are currently playing the music that you want to tune into. Once on the site, you can simply type the name of an artist or a band, and the site automagically sifts through several radio stations to show you which radio station (online or not) is currently playing that artist’s song. The founders are using Yahoo Pipes underneath to exercise a giant workflow to sift through all the different channels. Eventually, they want to pull in information from other sources like Wikipedia etc. to show content relevant to the music being played. My big question is, if you know the name of the artist or the song you want to listen to, why not use imeem? http://radioki.com
Gabi is a native desktop application that is about “Greater Access, Broader Independence”. Gabi provides technology for aging independents. Gabi plans on selling subscription services to care providers which provides basic video conferencing, mobile components (to help track via GPS), a video assistance center that contacts care providers in case of emergencies and much more. Gabi was another company that wasn’t developed this weekend and was simply pitching. They are looking for $300K in seed financing. http://Gabinow.com
CheapParking is a mobile application for finding low cost parking using location based services on your mobile phone. The application provides mobile applications to find real time parking information. There are solutions out there help you find garages, but not necessarily the cheapest garage. Using the app, you can find the cheapest one based on proximity, with the list always sorted by the cheapest match first. Their first cut is an Android based app. It is likely for large events (like ballgames) that cheap garages are sold out, but the founders tell me that they plan on incorporating capacity information as well soon enough. The app will sell for $1.99, and $4.99 for “multiple” cities. http://cheapparkingapp.com
KivaiPhoneApp does exactly as the name sounds. The application allows anyone with an iPhone to become a social investor. The app gives existing kiva users a cool way to stay in touch with their investees. http://kivaiphoneapp.com
ProdNv lets you give better gifts, and get better deals. Their first implementation is using BestBuy’s APIs and a Facebook application where you can track products you want to either get or give. Using the application, you can navigate to bestbuy.com, and add a product to your “envylist” for example. This will add the item to your Facebook productenvy page, which you can share with your facebook friends. The founders also demonstrated a twitter based app, whereby you can send a tweet to the twitter bot, @prnv which processes your pseudo-tweet. http://prodnv.com
Encritter tries to solve the twitter privacy problem – wouldn’t you like to twitter something to just a subset of your friends? Encritter tries to introduce layered privacy on top of twitter (the founder calls it ‘EaaS’ – encryption as a service). Using the web app, you can encrypt (using 128 bit AES) a message that will look something like this: “?encritter_XXX” that you can tweet to the twitterverse. Your friends would have to know the key that was used to encrypt the message to decrypt and read it. The real question is, how do you share the key (or password) with your friends? Or more importantly, what happens when twitter introduces “groups”? http://encritter.com
Beer2Peer – ugh, I spilled my coffee and totally missed this demo L I heard a lot of cheering and rara from the kitchen though. http://beer2peer.net
TinyUPC lets you register every UPC for every product you make or use or distribute so consumers can easily find out all information about that product. The site lets you generate a Tinyupc.com/UPC. I didn’t quite gather the practical application of this or why producers out there would want to use something like this however. http://tinyupc.com
indinero is Mint.com for businesses. That’s it. I couldn’t tell what was unique about the service for businesses per se, but the founders tell us that ‘cash flow analysis’ for example is something that Mint.com cannot provide you with today. http://indinero.com
Yoola is Yelp for EULAs. The founders of Yoola claim that you’ve probably accepted over 1000 EULAs not having read them entirely. Yoola gives you the facts of a EULA in 0.03 second. All you would have to do is copy-paste the EULA from a site on to Yoola.com and click on ‘Get Facts’. If the site has a similar EULA in its repository, it will tell you what the pros and cons of the EULA are. The refreshing fact about Yoola is that the information about the EULAs is crowdsourced. I’m very transparent about my favorable bias towards Yelp, so when the founders mentioned that they were a Yelp for EULAs, I was immediately sold. If a certain EULA is not already on the site, you can create the thread.
Spelunkr (working title) lets you get detailed information about your twitter friends. It lets you analyze your followers and more detailed analytics will be provided in future releases.

So there you have it - approximately 200 people, 23 (or so) startups, one weekend.

“ai“

PS: Maybe the event should be called “StartupsWeekend”?

founderShack team

It is now 4pm, 3 hours to the end of startup weekend. Like Andrew Hyde said Friday night, startup weekend is like a year in real startup terms. I’ve certainly learned as much as I would have learned in a year of a real startup. Here are some of the highlights.

Best roadmap:
1.    Clarify the customer problem first
2.    Once you’ve done this, brainstorm all the possible ways you could help your customer with the problem
3.    Figure out associated features
4.    Remove all the features that are too ambitious for the weekend and/or first core launch. Better to do a few things well rather than too many things that don’t work
5.    Clear front end design before you proceed any further—make all flows and page inventory clear. Don’t leave the designer guessing. This also helps the developer. The clearer your flows the simpler it is for your developer founder to make your visions a reality
6.    A good rule of thumb for estimating total development time post the weekend is break down features by high, medium, low and days taken in development to 3,2,1 respectively

General team practices:
1.    Have fun–we went out for ice cream mid-day
2.    Lay down the law—enforce goal orientation. This means enforcing a time limit on disagreements and the importance of factors/decisions being discussed. Different people will take this role at different times.
3.    Make sure you have a legal agreement on ownership by end of the weekend
7.    Don’t put people into buckets. Focus on explaining your ideas well and listening equally well. Openness allows individual learning and team expansion into better newer perspectives
8.    Keep domain names lowercase in planning. Or not. You can start with FoundersHack and end up with FounderShack

FounderShack

My team mates are Ludmil Trenkov and Themios Carabas. FounderShack, is your shack for finding passionate cofounders. It revolutionizes the way you look for startup founders by connecting you with founders who are passionate about solving the same business problems that you are. Unlike other startup social networks, the conversations at founderShack are based on approaches to a problem and people’s pitches for how they solve them as well as how they can be good additions to your team. This eliminates days of browsing through a countless profiles that look the same, or spending copious hours at networking meetings. Now you simply post your problem and see who you’d like to work with based on their ideas and personalities. Makes it simple doesn’t it. We will be working on this after this weekend and will let you know of the launch date. Hope to see you at founderShack!

Do follow us on twitter @founderShack. Use this to send us feedback and remain updated on launch and new features on founderShack.

The Dick Principle: A big dick does not matter until it affects someone else. Specifically, for the “What’s in it for me?” crowd, a big dick only does good when someone else is enjoying it.

This is a personal principle. And it is a business principle.

In bed, it’s self-explanatory (I hope).  Unlike bedtime antics, however, in business, being a big dick can be a casualty. Unless you follow The Dick Principle. You can be a big dick (bad), but if you advance the needs of others, being a big dick in business can win you points, it wins them points, and you emerge Big Dick in the Conference Room (BDCR)  in a good way by turning potential collaborative turmoil into a reason to know you more.

Case in point -  Start Up Weekend Day 1:  I met two big dicks.

One I want to have dinner with. One I hope to never cross paths with again. The difference?

Big Dick #1: The Good Kind – Dave McClure

In all fairness, just in case this is taken out of context, I have to say Dave is the anti-dick. I have no opinion on his personal measurements, but in the business sense, he is a powerhouse and he isn’t afraid to show it. (Incidentally, Dave has a neat presentation on how to give a VC a hard-on.)

So, how was he possibly in Big Dick territory and how did he turn it around? During the first evening, each Start Up Weekend SF participant got 30 seconds to pitch an idea. A panel of VCs, including Dave, graciously gave feedback not on whether the idea itself sucked, but if the pitch sucked… and how to make it better.

Dave wanted to make a point and he would grabbed the microphone and repeated mercilessly, braving being seen as a dick so that we learned how to pitch better (and make sure VCs got what they needed so we could get what we needed). His point: You have 30 seconds. For the most effective pitch, focus 80% on the problem, 20% on the solution. Katherine Barr, of Mohr Davidow Ventures, explains a concise reason why: With her extensive experience, she (and other VCs) have a good sense of what a problem might be worth, but not necessarily the worth of the specific solution. VCs are interested in market potential. Market potential = problem.

Dave repeated his mantra so much (in fact, he stopped several participants and made them rephrase their pitch more clearly in this “Problem / Solution” framework) that he apologized during the pitch session and afterward just in case he came across as a dick.

Dave: You are not a dick. And, if you were, you were a Dick with not only Heart, but Brains. You gave 200 very smart people an elegant framework for pitching: Relate.

Pitching Power Insight: When you pitch, by prioritizing the problem, you help people focus on a human truth: everyone’s suffered. Everyone may identify with a desire, a need, a frustration, or a fear. They get it because they’ve been there. If you only focus on solution, you run into another truth: Everyone thinks they have the answer. Or at the very least, they don’t have to like yours. Focus on solution too soon, and you give someone else more time to poke holes on your solution. Start with problem and you engage.

The Big Dick Principle at work: A big dick does good when someone else is enjoying it. Or, even though some of us may have writhed at being told what to do, in the long run, this is wisdom that will make us stronger at heightening excitement when it’s crucial.

Big Dick #2 shall remain anonymous, but she fell in the latter Big Dick category. I watched as she cut off someone mid-conversation because they weren’t what she needed. She was in it for herself. We’ve all met those kind of people, who only have time for what they need (or they think they need).

However, in a situation like StartUp weekend where it’s all about collaboration, relationships are key. You can take the chance differently: Listen more deeply, imagine possibilities, risk thinking outside of box about how to create new opportunities.

As you may have gleaned, the Dick Principle is not about individuals. It is about collaboration and how to stand out while having positive impact. Think about it: 200 amazing people in one room with strong personalities, ideas and passion… things will get loud, hot and heavy.  By remembering the Dick Principle is not about one person, but teams, you can  succeed in what you came to do: work it up, work it out and start up — not only 23 amazing companies (the count at the end of the weekend) but also the relationships that make it happen.

We may not end up with an idea that lasts, but we will remember the people we meet, and if we want to work with them again.

The Dick Principle: A big dick does not matter until it affects someone else. Specifically, a big dick only does good when someone else is enjoying it.

This weekend (or in any business situation), if you do need to be a big dick, think of the people you can impact and  be a Big Dick For Good.

]]> http://sf2.startupweekend.com/uncategorized/collaboration-thedickprinciple/feed/ http://sf2.startupweekend.com/uncategorized/what-do-vcs-ponzi-schemes-and-beer-have-in-common/ http://sf2.startupweekend.com/uncategorized/what-do-vcs-ponzi-schemes-and-beer-have-in-common/#comments Sat, 04 Apr 2009 20:15:05 +0000 Antonio Altamirano http://sf2.startupweekend.com/?p=155  

Come participate in the creation economy! Create and innovate this weekend and then apply to Women 2.0’s PITCH, a unique startup competition.

When Tyler told me about Startup Weekend, I immediately was intrigued. Most of the Women 2.0 community is creating, innovating and preparing to launch new startups. The concept of weekend of accelerated innovation and creation resonates perfectly with the mission of Women 2.0. Startup weekend is like a mini economy, creating future opportunity, albeit only for one weekend. Startup weekend is the only ecosystem with smart developers, marketeers, deal makers and leaders, creating and fueling future economic growth - a valuable concept!

To also fuel the future, and to support the growth of more women co-founders in Silicon Valley and beyond, each year Women 2.0 hosts a startup competition called PITCH. Participants are those with a startup with a prototype or beta, and one female co-founder. We’ve seen a range of submissions from Web 2.0, mobile, clean tech and bio tech over the years - not just from the Valley but from around the US, Canada, the UK, India and Singapore. They compete for the chance to win a suite of startup resources including marketing services, legal support, office space and most importantly a meeting with iconic investor, Michael Moritz of Sequoia. Whether the participants seek feedback or funding, PITCH is designed to fuel the growth of more women-led startups and of course, contribution to this creation economy. (learn more: http://pitch.women2.org)

So maybe you have an idea, but haven’t been able to build a prototype?

This is where Startup Weekend can accelerate your innovation. Come and meet up with intelligent team members and build that burning idea, quickly over the weekend. Suddenly you have a chance to participate in PITCH and, at the very least, get reactions to your idea as you pitch it to the startup weekend attendees on Friday night.

Therefore, Startup weekend + PITCH = the next generation of economic prosperity through the launch of new, successful startups.

Male and female, alike, if you have a passionate idea, I sincerely encourage you to come to startup weekend – most tickets are sold out – but if you are developer, specifically a female developer, I encourage you to join the creation economy at Startup Weekend this weekend.

During these times it is imperative that you discover your hidden value. The folks you work for are looking not for great but for incomparable value. If you are a marketer, a sales person, a developer, designer and especially if you are in the C-suite of a bank. You need to see beyond the present and start preparing for the opportunities ahead. That would mean that you need to put the time to learn and become the best in the world (your own definition of world that is) at the stuff that you are working on and to really prepare for what you want to do next. The key here is that you define what you do next.

In an earlier post I wrote about the process of innovation and recession partly inspired by the Jason Calacanis email letter (now posted in his blog) and what I have quoted above. That is one of the most authentic and straightforward simple statements that I’ve read in a while. That got me thinking about how innovators and entrepreneurs look at a down market and about a way to build value in a down market. Mostly a downturn it is looked at as an opportunity rather than a handy cap.  This made me look for opportunities where I can build community and sync up with other like-minded folks that would help me become smarter about the way one should look at the existing opportunities.

Yesterday I went to hear Robert Scoble speak about social media and his experience in technology markets. Robert said something very interesting about Twitter. He said that it feels like back in 2000 when Google was widely used but not making any money. We all knew there was something there but we did not know what it was. It feels like Google before it made any money. That statement within itself is mind bending given the economic situation. But that’s the thinking that made Google and that created the frenzy of startups created with Google as the sole exit strategy.

That is the kind of out of the box thinking that Startup Weekend is trying to maintain alive by building community around the idea that a group of strong willed, smart and capable individuals can build a startup in a weekend. Startup Weekend has come back to San Francisco again. Check it out and help us build community and killer startups.

Uncov-worthy headlines aside, I’m really excited to bring Startup Weekend  back for round two in the city. It’s time we grow our tight-knit family of Startup Weekend SF alumni to include new faces! Last year, I organized the event by myself (well, with help from the big wig at the national office), but this year I’ve got the help of an amazing team of co-organizers and partners. They’ve asked me to provide a recap of the last event and share with you my excitement about this one. Before I start, we got on techcrunch, but it was pretty much the least remarkable thing about the weekend, so if I say that I can’t explain how great the event was, I hope you’ll believe me and try it out for yourself.

My involvement in SWSF was as an organizer. I contacted Andrew Hyde after reading about SW: Boulder and he asked me to organize the details of a SF event. I secured the details of the event (sponsorship, ticketing, promotion, etc.) fairly easily with the wind of the Startup Weekend brand behind my back and the help of Andrew.

About 150 people showed up throughout the weekend, friendships were built and the end product, which launched with only seconds to spare on Sunday night, was www.helphookup.com. To be frank, the work has stopped since the weekend, but this is not a failure, the point of it wasn’t to build the application — the (not so) secret goal of this event is to build community, which it has done in SPADES. You get to know people better by seeing them in stressful situations; and the pressure cooker environment of Startup Weekend supplies plenty of opportunities to see how people react when the chips are down.

Going out to tech events now almost guarantees seeing 3 or more SWSFers, who are likely to be closing down the event recounting memories. We have developed a gang of tight friends (several of which are returning this year as organizers) who continue to work and play together (at least two companies had their co-founders meet at SWSF). This event has been the best at connecting people that I’ve ever been a part of (or even attended). I’m proud to say that I’m able to continue to help throw this event.

Come on down, join the family. Click to read more if you’d like to get some good wrap up links from SWSF07.

Want to check out the information from SWSF07? Look below for a fairly good list of links:

We talk about us:
http://sf.startupweekend.com/
http://twitter.com/helphookup

The internet talks about us:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/18/startup-weekend-san-francisco-in-full-swing/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/startupweekendsf07/
http://www.scrollinondubs.com/2007/11/19/startup-weekend-san-francisco/
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/312605/
http://www.lunch20.com/category/eateries/microsoft/

Here’s a video of a performance we were graced with:
http://vimeo.com/415540

I love start-ups and my involvement will be to help Tyler and Waleed promote it, sell sponsors and generate media attention.

Washington Post Press Coverage

This is my first Startup Weekend and I have read the TechCrunch, MSNBC and WashPost coverage and now wanna be a participant.

The idea is to gather up a room full of people, split up into teams and launch a company (by the end of the weekend). I have some goals which include (a) wear the same outfit until my team turns a profit, (b) sleep 7 hours/night and (c) Get my teams new company on CNN (but not be on myself).

As an assistant to the organizers (Tyler and Waleed), I want to (a) host an awareness building party in SF, (b) invite people from other cities interested in Silicon Valley’s tech scene, and (c) recruit mentors like Robert Scoble, Ron Conway and Dave McClure.

My mentor, Mark McCormack, writes about entrepreneurship in “What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School“.