Alltopstartups » Startup Weekend

The 54-Hour Startup

Thomas Oppong — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:26:47 +0000

Creating a business or startup in 54 hours is an ambitious step but not impossible. I must confess it was an awesome experience when I witnessed passionate developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing leaders, graphic artists and entrepreneurs in training create and develop innovative new products at the just ended Accra Startup Weekend. I watched 8 teams develop ideas into real-world, viable models in just 54 hours.

Startup Weekends are 54-hour events where developers, designers, marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams, build products, and launch startups!

Judges at Startup Weekends do not really care that you created your prototype, business concept or model and even created a wonderful presentation all in 54 hours. They want to see what problems you are solving, how you intend to solve that, how different your product will be from the many out there, how you intend to make money and even a working prototype. Is that too much to ask in 54 hours? If you happen not to have answers for their questions, they think you have not thought through your idea and probably don’t know what you are doing. But they forget you did all that in 54 hours or less. But you signed up for it and knew the process before hand. The process is worth it, it makes you strong and prepared for the real pitch to the investor who will finally invest in your idea or concept.

Zaarly, FoodSpotting, Memolane, inDinero, CloudBot, ReportGrid, Cloudmine, Saygent, PocketTales, Giant Think Well, Jimmy Fairly, KeepStream, Volly, LaunchRock were all started at startup weekends. But of course a lot has changed over the years in these startups. Some of them have raised millions of dollars after the 54 hours. I believe in the model. Its a stepping stone to what can be achieved when the right resources, people and management are put together.

Zaarly Raises $14 Million two months ago and they even brought on board former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. Foodspotting raised $3 Million Series A earlier this year.

What happens after the weekend is the most important part of the process. Over 36% of Startup Weekend startups are still going strong after 3 months. Roughly 80% of participants plan on continuing working with their team or startup after the weekend.

Accra Startup Weekend was awesome and I am happy to have contributed to its organization.

Put Up A Website For Your Stealth Startup With LaunchRock

Thomas Oppong — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 21:46:41 +0000

LaunchRock intends to builds viral launch pages for your startup. The service was launched out of Philadelphia’s Startup Weekend.

LaunchRock makes it simple to get interested users signed up for your startup service or product, pre-launch. LaunchRock;s features includes an embeddable widget and an API so that you can integrate the service into your current sign-up process.

The App makes it easy for users to share the link to your launch page to friends.It also rewards those users who are most eager – based on the number of friends they invite – by bumping them up the list of those slated to get access to your site.

How it works
It’s actually fairly simple: after you sign up, you are provided a custom, unique short URL that you are encouraged to share out via email, social networks, etc. When somebody visits that URL and signs up, they can track it back to you and give you credit for it. After 3 people sign up with your link, you make the “priority access list” and you are alerted via email.

Kickio Wins Startup Weekend Copenhagen

Thomas Oppong — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 17:25:17 +0000

Startup Weekend is a 54-hour events where developers, coders, designers, marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams, build products, and create startups!

Startup Weekends are weekend-long, hands-on experiments where entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs can find out if startup ideas are viable.

Startup Weekend Copenhagen took place at the Copenhagen School of Entrepreneurship on February 25-27, 2011.This year the event attracted over 100 participants who formed 13 start-up altogether.

Kickio was voted the winner of Copenhagen Startup Weekend. The team aims to revolutionize radio. The service promises to bring personalized, vocalized online news content distributed through IP digital radio, accessible as a HTML5 browser-based app for your smartphone.

Startup Weekend Philadelphia 2011: Top 3 Startups

Thomas Oppong — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 22:42:27 +0000

Startup Weekend Philadelphia was the first ever startup weekend in the year. It was a local edition of a national program in which hackers, geeks, and other wired individuals spend 54 hours tweaking ideas, building demos, and even launching businesses.

16 teams presented demonstrations of their weekend of work on stage. The following teams left a memorable mark at the event. The judges picked 3 of the top startups based on execution.

# GitHacking – an extra social layer on top of GitHub that helps connect developers to open source projects.

# LaunchRock – a service to build hype around your startup…virally.

3.) Artwork Evolution – an application that enables the creation of digital artwork.

Mimix Wins Global Startup Battle Week 1

Thomas Oppong — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 19:43:37 +0000

MIMIX has been declared winner of Global Startup Battle: Week 1!. After winning Beirut Startup Weekend, it competed against 33 other teams, MIMIX then emerged victorious in the first ever Global Startup Battle. The MIMIX video had over 1,500 unique views on YouTube and received 47.7% more votes than the runner up.

MIMIX is a web and mobile app which builds on speech recognition and 3D modeling technologies to translate speech into sign language in real-time. Still under development, MIMIX is currently focused on English-based communication, but in the future will be capable of transcribing multiple languages.

Visit globalstartupbattle.com for more information about the Global Startup Battle, including the videos of all the participating teams, rules for voting, a list of prizes, and rules for entering GSB: Week 2.

Startup Weekend Portland Launches 8 Startups

Thomas Oppong — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 13:15:38 +0000

Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects.

Startupweekend Portland was held at Portland from November 12-14. 8 projects were given the opportunity to present their ideas for the ultimate prize. The following were selected by the judges to pitch at the grand finale.

taggr a company that helps bands, concert venues and event promoters generate QR codes that are then embedded into advertisements where viewers can scan with their cell phone camera to learn more about the event, listen to music and eventually buy tickets or other products.

Clean or No Clean- a game for parents to play with their kids when assigning household chores

Farmsation- a service to connect small local farmers with customers

CubesCubes- a mobile social network where users express their personality via media

Seats in Seats- a carpool matching service

Gameday Parking- a mobile platform to match parking spaces with sports fans

Dwell Match- a home buying/selling service

Geek Share- a computer support service for older Americans.

Top 7 Startups At Fall 2010 Indy Startup Weekend

Thomas Oppong — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 10:27:59 +0000

Startup Weekend Indianapolis event took place from Nov. 12th – 14th 2010 at the Purdue Technology Center.

The top startups at Indy Startup Weekend that presented includes :

EatDrinkIt a mobile application that rates restaurant dishes

Scygle - a new academic cross-referencing database

WaitMait- an application to make taking orders in restaurant faster and easier for waiters, cooks, and customers

StatsSquared- a Twitter analytics tool

Likedity- a social network to help you find people with similar interests.

NoteSee- a system for aggregating conference notes

GnomadDesk- the only physical product of the group, a portable laptop desk that attaches to roller bags.

Boston Startup Weekend Witnessed 15 Teams 15 Ideas

Thomas Oppong — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 14:18:49 +0000

Startup Weekend Boston took place between 4th and 6th June. The program witnessed 15 teams who presented startup ideas. The following teams took turns to present their ideas, progress made so far and lessons learned over the weekend. Startup weekend presents its attendees with networking, team building and learning opportunities. The weekend was fully packed with coding, more coding, business planning, prototype building all in 54 hours.

The final presentation teams for the weekend in Boston Included:

# Stuffpass.com – @stuffpass – “Bunk savings without the bunk”
# Bandock.com – @bandocksus – “Helping local musicians find more gigs”
# Hocopost.com – @hocopost – “Take Control of your online reputation”
# Referralbon.us – @referralbonus – “Watch for Jobs, Refer a friend, you get paid”
# Cogentmobile.com – @cogentmobile -
# Factolo.com – @factolo – “Making things better”
# Workwithme.org – @workwithmeorg – “Social Co-Working”
# Poundvs.com – @poundvs – “Pound your friends”
# Chirashigeo.com – @chirashigeo – “Create fun, useful, or cool experiences around places”
# GrindeStone.com – @grindstone – “Cooperative Venture Capital. Help people build & own businesses together.”
# NPITS.com – “No Pie In The Sky. For Entrepreneurs. By Entrepreneurs.”
# NaughtyNutritionist.com
# Convertible-Heels.com – @day2niteheels – “Convertible heels for work or play”
# Vidicul.us – @VidiculusVideo – “Snark & Heckle”
# NodeRabbit.com – @noderabbit – “Go-Live In Five”
# MeetImpact.com – “New England Innovator’s Revolution”

London Startup Weekend:12 Teams 12 Pitches On Day 2

Thomas Oppong — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 18:50:40 +0000

The London startup weekend started on Friday June 4th and it will end on June 6th. Day 2 has seen 22 ideas already. This was further merged, filtered and reduced to 12 team who made presentations in preparation for sunday.

The 12 ‘teams’ that started from Friday night include:

1. Pedro Santos – Real world monopoly
2. Ben Johnson – Facebook trailer application
3. Chris Pope – Browser based mobile games
4. Zoe Peden how to speak British proper
5. James Nixon- Find me a business partner!
6. Jemima Garthwaite- Charity Maps Mashup
7. Giulia Piu + Emma Obanye – Buddy Bounce
8. Sanjay Choudhary – Grouping Small Business
9. Corentin Cremet – Interactive map culture event mobile web
10. Arianna O’Dell – Travel budgeter
11. Guillaume de malzac – Use Twitter for scheduling into calendars
12. Jimmy Blake – eyeCompli

The program is still ongoing and a lot of other ideas will come up before tommorow.

The Rise And Fall of Startup Ideas And Companies

Thomas Oppong — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 13:26:32 +0000

Most Entrepreneurs have gone through this phase of building a company

You conceives an idea, get excited about it or
Identify a problem and believe it can be developed into a company.
If your idea is organic, read this
You write it in your journal or idea bank , tell a friend about it,
You receive either a negative or positive feedback
You either drop the idea or get a little motivated to further expand it
Makes a research about the viability of the idea
You begin to add flesh to bones in writing
If your research proved otherwise you drop it here and pick another idea or
You found out that its really a problem and a solution can be carved out of it
You write your Elevator Pitch and being to tell others, possibly somebody who can connect you to an investor
If you intend to do an elevator pitch read this
You can make it happen yourself so you bootstrap and pitch it after a year or two at techCrunch 70 or
You put together an executive summary and possibly a full 30 page business plan or
If you are a geek or a nerd you avoid the business plan and put together a prototype or demo and apply to Y Combinator
If you cannot build it yourself, your leverage is a well documented plan and a paper prototype
You begin to search for Angel investors through your network on twitter, LinkedIn or facebook
To increase your chances of getting funded you apply to Techstars, F8, startup weekend or Startup Demo
As of now you are still alone, either you will rise alone or fall alone.
If you made a good pitch to your network of friends , you have one or two follow you as co -founders
You go through the selection process at Techcrunch 70, Y combinator, Techstars, Startup Weekend
You pitch your idea to a section of angel investors and venture capitalists
Fortunately the judges were merciful
You have qualified for funds
If you have been lucky to this extent, you must listen to this from venture hacks
Angel investors send their scouts after you if you are lucky
Fortunately you now have the luxury of choice.
As of now you may still b in the idea phase of your startup, let me take a coffee break and get back to you in my next post cheers.

Related posts:
1. The Rise And Fall of Startup Ideas And Companies 2
2. You Don’t Need A Million Dollar Idea To Start A Startup
3. Startup Ideas worth Pursuing