Startup Weekend is an awesome pressure-cooker for starting tech companies. Over the course of one weekend, companies are built – from idea to launch. And it works. About 230 companies have been started, and they’ve gotten almost $800,000 in funding.
We got a chance to interview Clint when he was out here prepping for the upcoming New York weekend. Want to try your hand at it? The NYC Startup Weekend will be November 20-22, and tickets are on sale now.
You’ve watched tons of teams go through this, at this point. What are the secrets to making a startup work?
It’s all about the team. The idea is definitely secondary. Definitely. That’s my main take-away. A group of five really smart people that are the best at their individual skill set, can make the worst idea wildly successful.
Are there any common stumbling blocks that teams run into?
I think some teams try to undertake more than they can in the weekend, so I think keeping it simple is really important. And to just stay focused. A lot of people find themselves panicking and wasting time over stuff that doesn’t really matter. It’s really just smart people, time management, and prioritizing.
Lately we’ve been throwing in, or getting sponsors to throw in, incentives. 3 weeks ago we did an event at Microsoft, and Microsoft put up $5,000 to the best team. That’s proved to be a good motivator! Definitely keeps people on task. It creates a frenzy, which is pretty fun.
Startup Weekend Nashville
Can you walk us through the weekend? People come in – they’re 200 strangers.
Right. So Friday night, 200 strangers show up. We introduce a couple kegs of beer to those 200 strangers. And, if this is a recipe, they mix for about an hour. That’s the hardest part, is getting people comfortable. By the end of the first night, you want people to be drinking-out-of-the-other-person’s-cup kind of comfortable, like they’ve known each other all their life.
Who are the people that come out to Startup Weekend?
We market to the local tech entrepreneurs in each city. We basically fill the room with entrepreneurs, lawyers, marketing people, graphic designers, coders… All of the elements that you would need for like a Web 2.0 startup. Hopefully they’re kind of the best at what they do, which has historically been the case. That’s our secret sauce, is the caliber of people that the event pulls from the community.
So everyone’s showed up, had some beer – then what?
Then we open up the mic. “Alright, thank you everybody for coming. Now, if you’ve got an idea, get up on stage and pitch it.” And that’s just kind of how it happens. Someone gets up there, three beers deep, and they’re like, “I want to be able to pay someone with Twitter!” And then they sit down. 50 or 60 people do that, and I keep a running tally of all these ideas. At the end, we vote on them, narrowing it down to the top 15 or so ideas.
Then you tell people, “If you want to be in Group 1, go over there.” You would think that 100 people would all want to work on the best idea, but it’s never been a problem. It’s always just worked out, and people break off into 15 or so teams.
Startup Weekend Houston
And each team starts a company by Sunday? The problem you create at the beginning of the weekend, it’s solved and ready to launch?
That’s the idea. Or it’s really far along. At the Microsoft event, we had people pitching ideas on Friday, and then by Sunday we had literally changed the search functionality on Microsoft Bing – added a new search feature that didn’t exist before.
Have you found that people keep doing the company they started?
Yeah. There’s something like 230 startups out there, historically, that we’ve started. 30% of them are still going. And we’ve raised close to $800,000 that has directly been invested in startups.
Do people keep in touch with you?
Yeah. They’ll say, “Hey, we need an IP attorney, can you help us out?” Which is great. It’s pretty fun.
That has to be so cool, to be the enabler of all these startups.
It makes you really aware of what you can do, even as an individual. It was really cool for me to come into this organization, because it’s really showed me what’s possible as one grain of sand on this huge earth. It makes me want to make everything I do into a global initiative.
And it’s possible.
Yes, it’s possible. We’re in 52 cities and 12 countries, right now, and growing. Just out of our last event, I was reading articles in like Chinese, Japanese, German, articles coming out of Pakistan… It was just insane. I get Google Alerts and so I’m like, “Oh, want’s this?” And it’s all Chinese characters, and then it’ll say Startup Weekend, then a million more Chinese characters. I’m thinking, “Oh my god, this is awesome!” Put it on my Facebook – everyone look at this! I have no idea what it says.
Startup Weekend Germany
So how did Startup Weekend start?
Startup Weekend’s been around for a little over 2 years. Andrew Hyde started it, a friend of mine. And now he works for TechStars, in Boulder. He’s the definition of the super-passionate entrepreneur. He loves starting things – as soon as he kind of loses that spark, he moves on to something else
I approached him at just the right time. I was really passionate about Startup Weekend and wanted to take it to the next level. I just had some ideas – I was asking him if he would work with me on implementing those ideas, and he basically came at me with, “How about you take it over?” And I was like, “Rock on.” So I did. That was six months ago, and we’ve been doing it full time since.
Who’s your partner that you’re running it with?
His name’s Marc Nager. I actually met him on Craigslist! My girlfriend at the time was looking for a roommate, and Marc was the guy that answered the Craigslist ad.
What makes you so passionate about Startup Weekend?
I love having a mechanism to introduce people to other really smart people. Maybe the company that they pitched that weekend continues in perpetuity, or maybe they meet other people who stay in the rolodex, and are the first people they call when they have that next, “Oh my god, I have this great idea, I really want to do this.”
Without that network, you’re left feeling kind of helpless as an individual. You think, “Well I don’t have all the skill sets to move that idea forwards,” and then your brilliant idea dies. So I want to build that network for other people and communities, and make this a nexus for all things startup. We’re building a social community in every city.