Looking at the clock as I write this it’s been right around 24 hours since we finished emptying trash, packing up, turning off the lights and locking the door on Startup Weekend West Michigan.
I needed that time to catch up on sleep, re-connect with my family, and just sort of let the experience sink in before I could begin to gather my thoughts for this post.
Even now I can’t quite figure out how to summarize, analyze or synthesize anything out of the weekend because all I keep doing is shaking my head and wondering - “Did that all really happen? And in roughly 48 hours?” Amazing!
Why Do This?
I read about Startup Weekend somewhere on the web and just immediately thought it sounded like something West Michigan should do. The economy here sucks and we all know it because it seems like it’s all the media wants to talk about. And if it’s not the economy then it’s the less than respectable actions by people downtrodden and run over by the economy. And look - I know it’s true. I know right now for many people living in Michigan just sucks. Jobless. In debt. Under water. Lacking skills relevant in a non-manufacturing based economy.
But while that’s true it’s not the whole truth. In the tech community I’m part of I keep hearing little stories like “we’re hiring”, “we’ve added 3 people last year”, “we had a great year”. For me 2009 topped 2008 as our biggest year ever in 8 years of being in business. But it seems like we don’t hear those stories unless we’re speaking directly to the business owners behind them. Adding 3 people just isn’t, evidently, newsworthy.
I was convinced that we had, in West Michigan, the ingredients that an event like this would need. Thanks to our office furniture industry we’ve got some great spaces with great furniture. We’ve got skilled people in all walks of life. And - maybe most important - we’re all just a bit hungry. If not in the literal sense, hungry for change. Hungry for to see the positive things already happening get some notice. Hungry to see our home state do better, and make news for something other than the nations worst unemployment.
So I contacted Marc Nager from Startup Weekend asking how to get the process of getting Startup Weekend to come to West Michigan. His answer—“You just did.”
The Planning
Emails started flowing, and somewhere along the way I mentioned the idea to Aaron Schaap of ElevatorUp. This might have been a bit of a ploy on my part as Aaron is well-known as being a startup junkie - and thankfully he was immediately behind the idea and offered The Factory as a venue. The Factory is well-outfitted for an event like this with a variety of furniture, whiteboards, electricity and and just overall a great creative vibe. It’s also nicely located in downtown Grand Rapids with plenty of bars, restaurants and parking close by.
Another benefit Aaron brought to the project was people - both Dayna Beal and Sara Hogan from his staff joined the project to help organize and promote. Amanda Chocko from Lakeshore Advantage also joined the planning crew.
Overall the needs we had were simple: people and money. We initially estimated the event would require roughly $7K - to cover our food and beverage cost and also the overhead cost of Startup Weekend. I’ll spare you the details of all of that work save for two - just in case you are reading this with the idea that you want to do one of these events in your area. We did two things right: we scheduled a weekly planning meeting and we scheduled a volunteer “town hall” meeting.
I know right now - especially fueled by the recent release of the new 37 Signals book there is a popular notion that “all meetings are evil”.
This just isn’t true.
Startup Weekend would not have happened without the regular meeting. But I did notice that the meeting worked much better when the purpose was action rather than creating a to-do list. Wonder if a particular person would like to speak? Don’t create a to-do to follow up on later. Pick up the phone and call. Now.
The Volunteer Town Hall was also crucial to the success of the event as it brought out some volunteers that just plain got some stuff done that we were having trouble finding time for - talking to restaurants about food, coordinating t-shirts, getting some press for the event etc. This group is also where we found lodging for Marc to save him the costs and indignity of a hotel room. Great bunch of folks - and it was very humbling and not just a bit amazing to have people jump behind an idea and help carry it out. Thanks to John Rumery, Stephanie Stenberg, Jonathan Ward and others for coming out and jumping right in.
Along the way we realized we had overestimated our financial needs and revised them down to around $5K which greatly eased the fund-raising stress.
The Event - Friday
I will admit - the last few days before the event I found myself wishing I had kept my mouth shut. I have two businesses going - between client work and some other opportunities cooking I was starting to wonder if I had chosen a poor use of my time and found a good way to kill a weekend.
Yea, I was wrong. Totally, completely, wrong.
Friday afternoon I made it over to the Factory, met Marc in person finally, and help with the preparations. We knew we had roughly 40 people coming and it was great to meet and talk to them as the filtered in. Lots of good networking was already starting to happen:
Food was running late - so we conferred and decided to start the pitches. Marc asked how many people had ideas to pitch and roughly 14 hands went up. We numbered them off and gave them each 2 minutes. This is where the excitement for me began to build. There were some really good ideas here. And not just good in the “West Michigan Nice” way - good in the “get that done and you can make money with it” way.
Marc kept track of the pitch people & ideas:
Somewhere during this time the food came - but during the initial pitches another 4 people had decided to pitch something to the crowd. Burritos were consumed and the pitching continued. Once done some additional networking time was allowed then came time to vote.
How? With dollars. And no - not Monopoly money but real American greenbacks. Pitchers were given envelopes, and everyone got 2 dollars to use as “votes”.
Once everyone had voted the accounting firm of Schaap and Nager tallied the results.
And winners of the vote were announced. They were:
- 24/7 Healthnet.com
An online service that efficiently brings doctors and patients together by booking open appointments with local physicians. - MichiganFilmReel.com
We’re just a couple of film and video geeks who get excited about making movies here in Michigan. We love this business and want to help you get involved and stay up to date on the latest news and industry chat. - Jaiplace.com
JaiPlace’s mission is to offer the highest quality information, products, services, media, education and experiences that lead individuals and groups towards their highest potential. - PennyPlanner.com
An amazing tool that helps people manage their expenses on a day to day basis. It is built as a platform that will allow various type of users to utilize in custom and convenient ways to help plan, project, and keep track of expenses. Will be launching April1st. - LocalGR.com
The ultimate downtown Grand Rapids Guide. Eat, Drink, Shop Grand Rapids. - EchoTask.com
Automate your life. Getting things done has never been easier.” A great application for managing tasks and coordinating them in any number of various ways with others. - LegallyBlog.net
Customize your content. Connect with your clients.” Providing custom blog content for lawfirms that can’t afford not to use this service. - hu2m
In 1962, President Kennedy challenged us to go to the moon. In 2010, we are using the Internet and social networking to crowd source going to Mars! One charismatic leader (old model) to NOW all of us together … (new model). Let’s go to Mars!!
Now the eight teams found a spot in the room and whiteboard. On the whiteboard they listed what they needed to move forward:
At this point in the night it was around 9:00 - and an amazing thing happened. The thought was that people would like to move from the space and walk to a local bar for another hour or so of networking lubricated by alcohol.
Friends - hardly anyone left.
I looked around and people were just too engaged, too animated, and too involved with already getting the work of the weekend underway to move.
Well, that, and we had beer with no walk through a wet heavy snow required.
But I was still inspired.
With a Startup Weekend there is no formal process for figuring out the team structures. People just figure it out. Some teams end up with more people, some less. Some people choose to float from team to team offering more specific and timely advice, others plunge in and do anything it takes to get one specific idea launched. It’s a bit of crazy randomness that somehow works.
Friday night ended around 11:00.
The Event - Saturday
Saturday found us back at the building at 8:30 AM, and the work began in earnest. It’s hard to describe the vibe that was going on—the room was positively buzzing with energy. I slept maybe 4 hours Friday night and fully expected to crash somewhere Saturday afternoon. It never happened. The naming of new businesses, the choosing of domain names, the flowcharting of business processes and refining of ideas - this is energizing work and Saturday was filled with it.
Saturday at lunch we had the first of 3 excellent speakers - Bill Oechsler of Xler Consulting who organized his thoughts around several “F-words” (all good!). My favorite part was in the living “fast& furious” where Bill said how fun the creative process is like the delivery room - a place where things are born but it’s loud, messy, and stressful. If you want things quiet, neat and orderly then that can be found in the graveyard.
Saturday afternoon it was back in the trenches building businesses:
At suppertime we again took a pause to hear from Rob Stam of The Big Red Group. Rob spoke of his history in the business world, hitting rock bottom of bankruptcy and court dates, and how it’s changed his outlook in life, personal finance, and his role in the workplace now.
Work continued on Saturday night - I stayed until around 10:30 when I finally had to kick out one of the teams so I could get home.
The Event - Sunday
We fired back up at 8:30 AM Sunday morning - with the teams trickling back in at a noticeably slower pace. However by 10 AM or so it seemed like like everyone was back engaged in their project. We made a concerted effort to get some media coverage for the event - putting the word out on Twitter, making phone calls, and when all else failed, talking to certain friends. We received word that the local Fox news affiliate was sending someone over - and that definitely increased the fervor in the room. I could tell teams were in the home stretch - wanting to have certain milestones in place for the presentations at 3 PM.
At this point in the weekend I was just so impressed with the people who showed up—truly creative professionals with a desire to make a difference. I switched lenses and tried catching some of the faces present:
At lunch time we had Daniel Estrada of D.C. Estrada speak.
Daniel’s topic proved controversial - as it was around why business plans are unnecessary for so many startup businesses. The controversy led to an active post-talk Q&A session. After Daniel answered several questions the teams buckled down - by now 3:00 was just a couple hours a way.
Oh yea - at this point the Fox news guy showed up. The level of excitement definitely went up a notch. Ignoring my suggestions that the teams were the real story, he first interviewed yours truly and then took some b-roll around the room:
A few others from the community were also starting to show up - interested in seeing what the results of this madness were.
But wait - an unplanned presentation! Dayna Beal (who is involved in getting Downstream advanced in it’s progress as a startup) took the opportunity to map out the overall process of starting up a business and the likely financing opportunities at different points in that process:
With that done - it was time.
Final Presentations
Teams were given an order - and the early ones wrapped things up while later ones kept one eye on the presenting teams while continuing to work.
The idea was that each team would get 5 minutes to present the problem they were trying to solve, their intended solution, and the progress made on that over this weekend.
We didn’t stick to the rules well, but no matter—as each team went through their presentation, answered questions, and reported progress it was apparent to everyone that it’s pretty amazing what you can get done over the course of 48 hours. Business plans were refined, websites were ideated, wireframed and even created with new content. Videos were shot and edited. Applications with email, text messaging, and even text to speech integration were developed. Marketing strategies were defined. Legal ramifications were analyzed and discussed. All with an energy and passion that I haven’t ever witnessed at any sort of professional event. Ever.
Oh - and our timing here? Presentations started at the same time as the “for the gold medal” hockey game between the USA and Canada that was serving as the grand finale to this year’s Olympics. While I know some folks were kind of keeping an eye on the score via the internet it was by no means a focus in the room—it was quite surprising to see ideas and business win out over sports.
When I think just about the generosity of the event it’s astounding. It cost $40 to get in - but if you took all the skillsets present, came up with an hourly rate for them acting as consultants, and multiplied it by the number of man-hour spent over the course of the 3 days, what would the value be?
Priceless.
THANKS!
This was truly an event to remember, and plans for a 6-month reunion and the date for next year were already being discussed before the pop cans and pizza boxes were cleared away. I’m a bit sad that with our intended big RV trip we won’t be around for it next year. I will be keeping an eye out for other Startup Weekends around the country that I can attend - I’d love to connect with this kind of energy again.
My humble thanks to everyone involved - sponsors, attendees, organizers, food providers, media folks, spouses, families, hosts, and the Startup Weekend folks. Best of luck to all the companies & ideas coming out of the weekend!
(Note - you can view all of the photos from the event as a Flickr Set, and follow StartupWMI on Twitter for other news/photos/videos coming out of the event).
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Paul Burdick on March 02, 2010
Marcus Neto on March 02, 2010
Boyink (Author) on March 02, 2010
John Rumery on March 02, 2010
Aaron Schaap on March 02, 2010
Jeremy Kovacs on March 02, 2010
Boyink (Author) on March 02, 2010
Jeremy Kovacs on March 03, 2010
Jeff King on March 03, 2010
Boyink (Author) on March 03, 2010