Startup Weekend: How to Take a Company From Concept to Creation in 54 Hours by Marc Nager, Clint Nelsen, Franck Nouyrigat Read Free Book Online

what we think of as one of the biggest myths about entrepreneurship—that finding capital is the biggest hurdle to putting together a successful venture. However, as Maddox found, the capital was available, but the investors cared about the people. They wanted to know who was going to be on the team. After all, how could they know that this group of people was skilled enough and could work well together if Maddox didn't even know who was going to be working with him?
    Finally, one entrepreneur-turned-angel investor suggested that he attend a Startup Weekend to find a team of people.
    Maddox managed to get into Atlanta's Startup Weekend at the last minute, only because one of the other weekend participants dropped out—something he now calls a very lucky break. He pitched his “Triplingo” idea (as he called his business) on Friday night, and it was a hit. In fact, it was chosen as one of the top 12 ideas pitched that night. Maddox easily found nine people to work on his team—including a designer, programmers who could work on both web and mobile applications, and marketing talent. As Maddox fondly recalls, “Our team composition allowed us to break our work into different modules. It meant that there was never a point where we had people sitting around with nothing to do.”
    Maddox acknowledges that his plan was very ambitious. By the end of the weekend, he wanted a functioning prototype of both the web and iPhone app. To accomplish this in one weekend, the team he attracted to his idea would not only have to be extremely talented; they would have to be highly motivated as well. The group worked through some difficult problems; for example, a bug in the server program they were using held up their progress for several hours, and they were preparing their presentation until the last possible moment. But it paid off in the end. Triplingo was voted the winner of Startup Weekend Atlanta and it had seed funding to get off the ground within two days. Both CNN and the Atlanta Journal Constitution subsequently ran pieces on the company.
    Maddox reflects that, “Without Startup Weekend, it might never have happened. Our team would have never formed; I might still be wandering the streets of Atlanta looking for cofounders, and we'd never have our chance to change the way the world travels.” The story of Triplingo illustrates how important it is to create your own team—to get out there and find the right people, and don't wait for them to find you. Otherwise, you'll be on that barstool alone all night.
    The Triplingo team's tremendous sense of motivation is not unique. People come to Startup Weekend ready to work. They have set aside this time—away from their jobs, their families, and all of the demands that usually grab our attention. Knowing that the Sunday night deadline is fast approaching turns people into real workhorses.
    Tyler Koblasa, the founder of Ming.ly , an application that helps people manage their professional networking, says that he found the perfect team at a Startup Weekend: two Google engineers, a former Hulu vice president, a Georgetown MBA, and a lawyer who also did design work. But it was not just the talent assembled at the meeting that made it such a perfect mix for Koblasa. He might have encountered them all somewhere else, “but they wouldn't have been in a room ready to work.” Tyler says that his team had “a super-charged, ‘we want to win’ attitude.”
    Breaking Down Barriers
    Action-based networking does more than provide entrepreneurs with team members quickly and efficiently. It also breaks down a lot of the artificial barriers that stand between entrepreneurs. Meeting potential business partners through the traditional routes can mean picking people who look like us, or went to the same schools, or come from the same part of the country or the world. However, we all know that these are arbitrary reasons to hire someone or work with someone.
    In a