Charlotte Start Up Weekend 6: Return of the Jedi

Just a quick reflection about my experience in my second Charlotte Start Up Weekend (CSW6). You can find my last's year thoughts here:
http://amadhammer.blogspot.com/2013/01/startup-weekend-clt.html 

I highly recommend all event participants to take the time to look back and reflect on what they learned, What worked and what they can improve on. It is very helpful.

What is this?

This is the 6th Charlotte Start up weekend. It is an event where participants work over the weekend to create a business. The winner gets a prize package that helps them going further with the business.

But at it's core, it is a networking and hands-on learning event.



How did you prepare and what did you want out of the event?

I had a different strategy this year. Last year, I wanted to put my technical skills on the table. I built a web site and got it going.

This year, I had a different goal: Win the contest... cold truth. Everyone wanted the same thing.. yet it is somewhat selfish when I put it that way. But I want to build a start up and see what lessons I can learn. Winning the contest would give me the chance to do that.

My Pitch:

.. no pitch. A wasted opportunity? I spent my time scribbling down all of the pitched ideas. I wrote "red shirt" next to some pitches and had no idea who was who when they came back they day after wearing different colors.

What went well?

-Decision making. When the teams were announced, I had a "gut" feeling on who can win and who can not. There were a lot of good ideas this year and I wanted to work with three teams (two fitness and one about education). Two of the teams got first and second. 

-Focus. I observed what happened last year and knew what it takes to win. last year, We built a great product  and did not have any potential business. It was clear that we were not accomplishing anything and decided to talk about patents and ideas that could not be done in a weekend. 

What did not go well? (sorry if I offend anyone)

-I did not get to ask people about their pitches before the voting ended.

-My technical skill set was not used (three developers with three different technology stack on the same team).The guilt was very painful to me and I kept going around trying to find things to help out with.

-Did not force myself to meet as many people as I wanted. I need to print out some business cards with personal contact information (Twitter/FB/linkedin) on them.

-I was sick. I had a long work week and I did not eat as well as I should have.

For the future, What would do?

This answer really depends on what I can get out of YouCompleteMe and how it goes. Generally, I am going to stay around the team, learn the ins and out of a startup, and take what I learnt to whatever I am building next.

Who won? How did they win? Do you think X deserved to win instead?

YouCompleteMe,

Yeah I act like a cartoon charachter..but it is worth to quickly highlighting why I think YouCompleteMe Won:

-Working MVP (Minimal Viable product) up and running to handle the business concept.

-Experienced team (5 out of 9 members were at the last start up weekend).A strong diverse team that works together.

-Presentation that explained how our product is a business. Explain the revenue plan

-Explain why we need to win and how we would continue the business beyond the weekend.

-Great video that explained who would use the app.

Basically, We stuck to the formula. We (or I) read the blog by a CSW6 organizer and tried to hit all the points (seriously.. he knows what he is talking about)
http://charlotte.startupweekend.org/2014/01/26/the-final-pitch/

Other teams are solving real problems and they all have potential to grow great business. The biggest reward here is the feedback and network you got. Please prove to everyone that you should have won. Your success will benefit everyone.

Finally

It is a great feeling to win. It validated our work and effort. Our team worked well together and we had a lot of fun. Time flew by very fast that we had to remind each other when lunch and dinners were served. I am really happy that this event exists and I really appreciate the work that the organizers put into this event.

Random points (future blogs maybe?):

-Many people are still leaving after an unsuccessful pitch. You are missing the point of the event and .. it is probably good that your idea was not selected. YES I SAID IT.
-You don't need a website if your business is not technical. Just set up a Google dorm doc and collect emails. 

-Being a developer in a start up weekend kinda sucks. Many of my friends from last year expressed the same opinion and decided that it is not worth coming back. It might be worth it for me to sign up as a "non-technical" to have a chance of pitching and contributing. because .. planning is fun.
-Do some research before you pitch your idea. Talk to others about it and see what they think. Also, does you idea exist already? (so you don't solve a solved problem).


ok enough writing. I need to work on other ideas. Go try out our app
youcompeteme.co


--credit
*photo was taken from detailedblock.com.
*Twitter person who took the second picture I am so sorry I can't find your name

Startup Weekend CLT

I decided to try a new thing on the weekend. I went to Startup Weekend. An event where anyone can pitch an idea and work on for the chance of winning funding and other perks and fun. The event took place in Packard Place in downtown Charlotte. I did not have any ambitions of starting my own business (yet!) but I wanted to get exposed to the process in case I want to. I also wanted to improve my programming skills. The weekend was quite an adventure that I learned a lot from so I am going to talk about what happened and follow up with what I learned.

Day one -  The Pitch:
Everyone with an idea were given a minute to pitch. I decided to go for it as I don't get a chance to practice my public speaking skills every day so I went for it. After an adrenaline rush that lasted for over 30 minutes, I pitched my idea and I did not know how to explain it and it got lost in the sea of pitches. It was really bad.

Pitch 27: App that allows a group of friends to divide the planning for the evening.#csw5
— Startup Weekend CLT (@StartupWkndCLT) January 26, 2013

After voting for the top pitches, We had to join a team that we are interested in working with. It was tricky given that I had no interest in any of the ideas so I chose a team that needed a web developer and had other developers that I could learn from. We did not win and I really don't regret not choosing another team. I came to the event to sharpen my skills and I think I worked on a really challenging product.

Day 2: The head down coding phase:
Now that the plan is set, we divided our team to handle the development, marketing, bushiness planning and research. I decided to handle the web development given that we already had 3 developers in the team who handled the Android app and the back end of the server.. ... I was able to pull a quick web layout thanks to bootstrap and Google maps. I used Google charts for the first time and it was really easy to use.

Day 3: The catching up:
The last day. We did not code freeze and it felt as if we were moving the last pieces of a jinga game. I finished up my web development and we were really impressed by how fast we finished the product.

The presentation went better than what I expected. The marketing and project management guys were able to research the product and pulled a really nice presentation.

We did not win the contest ...  But I learned a lot and met amazing people.




Lessons learned:

• I am not the only one with a "great" idea. Over half of the crowed came up to pitch and I actually liked a lot of the ideas that were not selected.
• I should practice my pitch. I failed at communicating my idea to the public and this is what they thought it was (reminder: it was about creating a bucket list for friends)
• I should be passionate about my pitch and I should show it.
• Focus on solving problems
• Prove a track record of what I done before to support my pitch.
• Think about which team to join and what project I could add the most value to.
• Bring in my business cards. I regret not marketing myself. Especially given the melting pot nature of talented people that I could network with.
• Bring in more of my friends. Knowing people makes it easier to jump into conversations and meet others.
• Take breaks and stay healthy. I think I might bring some board games to play with the team while taking breaks.
• Know my technologies and have suggestions for common solutions (web hosting, layouts, social marketing).
• Learn about technologies that are common among other start ups (Javascript, Ruby, mobile development, facebook Graph API). 
• Read the rules... yeah.

Great quotes I heard (paraphrasing for some of them):

"Your customers will not move away from the bad process they are following because it works. You have to make your product a 100 times better before they will adopt it."  - Tim Cheadle

"The biggest mistake you could make in start up weekend is to actually work on implementing your product" 

Some media coverage.

List of skills and technologies I got exposed to:

Bootstrap: I used it before but I never created a full project with it. It is a great way to prototype websites. There are a lot of great templates and themes ready to use.

Google Charts: a great way to charts. We used it to plot a pie graph of the categories and a Bar graph for the spending. We ran into an API key issue but we fixed it.

Google Maps API: Used to show multiple transaction locations. 

Android Geolocation: I had to get the coordination to plot them on the map. Google resources were really helpful. 

prezi: A great presentation tool.

Sublime text 2: A great text editor (Thanks +Dimitrios Arethas)

A Web Afternoon - Notes

I went to a (surprisingly) fun event last weekend. The best way to describe it is it is a series of TED videos all talking about the web (with great cake and coffee in the back of the room).  Hopefully, you can follow these amazing speakers and get caught up on what you missed. I highly recommend going to the future A Web Afternoon events.


below are some of the quotes that I was able to doodle down (I really have no idea how to summarize this). I am sorry if I am misrepresenting any of the sessions or misquoting anyone.

===
Speaker: Jensen Inman
Contact: @edae
Topic:Be Awesome
"if you find yourself smiling and excited about what you are talking about then that is the thing you should do"
"Compare shoes.. if you are all wearing the same shoes then you are hanging out with the same people"
===
Speaker: Igor
Contact:
Topic: Yap Story - story of a start up
David vs gollaiath.
"to keep up, you will find yourself spending 8 hours to keep up, and 8 hours to surpress"
Koala bottle (using a cute descriptive name can help)
yoko onno apple in the art exhibit
===

Speaker: Todd Moy
Contact: @toddmoy
Topic: ..magic
"I can't do magic, I can help you see it"
user experience is the intercention between the user's mental model and interaction and the Designer's system.
-A  Beautiful Lie:
"fiiction can be more compelling than truth"
examples:
Turbo tax and the "analysing your taxis status loading bar"
Gmail "recall" feature delaying the email for a couple of seconds.
- Slight of hand
"work while they are distracted"
red paper heart (I don't remember why I wrote that)
===

Speaker: Doc Waller
Contact: :@docWaller
Topic: The power of words
I am having a hard time writing about this session. It was mind blowing and made me think about a lot of stuff. I found myself day dreaming and relating to every word.
"Transparency is sexy"
"Less ____ More Layman"

"Pinocchio had a rock bottom"
"Power words vs word with power"
"The Champ is here"
http://www.shopliftwindchimes.com/compliment.html
===

Speaker: Josh yolkert
Contact: @Skookum
Topic: Destruction
build -> fix -> integrate
"We are ____ shop" will die
===



I think I will stop here for now. I have 4 more pages of notes and it is getting really late
More info could be found here.
http://webafternoon.com