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 Page B
term. A few participants build companies that succeed and grow beyond Startup Weekend, and almost every participant finds working relationships, friendships, and sometimes even a cofounder at Startup Weekend.
Taking Advantage of High-Energy, Low-Risk Settings
The low-risk nature of networking at Startup Weekend prompts many people to decide that they can safely expand their horizons in other ways as well. Kyle Kesterson was a toy developer living in Seattle, who didn't think he had anything to learn from Startup Weekend. According to Kesterson, friend and startup veteran Donald DeSantis “described it to me as working with people on building iPhone and web apps and how cool it was, which I just kind of let graze my ears but not sink in too far.” Kesterson remembers DeSantis's efforts to convince him to go to a Startup Weekend event: “I made up all sorts of excuses and ended up missing Friday night altogether, thinking I was just going to bail on the whole weekend.”
At 1 AM on Saturday, Kesterson remembers getting a call from DeSantis, “sounding like he just outran the cops or something.” DeSantis reported that the Startup Weekend experience was amazing but that there were “ no designers there and that it didn't matter what my background was; if I had any design skills or eye for aesthetic, I'd be in high demand.” DeSantis would not take no for an answer.
So, Saturday morning at 7:30 AM, Kesterson arrived at his first Startup Weekend. He acknowledges that the project he ended up working on sounds a little ridiculous: a virtual pet created to look like John Stamos. This Tamagotchi , as this type of digital creature is called, was supposed to be a kind of nostalgia item for people who remember Stamos as Uncle Jesse on the 1980s sitcom Full House .
Kesterson remembers sketching the creature and then working on its various features on his computer. Everyone else was working on coding or PowerPoint presentations, so most people would walk by his laptop and be a little surprised.
However, many people were also amused and impressed. By the end of the weekend, Kesterson had a pile of business cards, and a couple of job offers. One person even offered to give his portfolio to the director of creative development at Pixar.
Kesterson's team won the award for business idea most likely to make a million dollars—and to this day, people who attended that weekend still talk about it. More importantly, Kyle had his first taste of life in the startup world. Now, he is the cofounder of a startup called Giant Thinkwell, which builds fan engagement platforms for celebrities and influencers to grow, engage, and monetize their followings through online and mobile experiences. They've moved on from John Stamos to the likes of Lady Gaga. Kesterson is also a graduate of Seattle's TechStars program, an initiative that supports entrepreneurs who demonstrate promise.
Looking back on his experience, Kesterson says, “Starting Giant Thinkwell wasn't even a thought trying to form in my head” before Startup Weekend. He admits that “I had absolutely no network, insight, or understanding of the startup/tech world. Even if I was motivated to start a company that [went anywhere] beyond my freelance design and illustration, I wouldn't have the first clue on how to put together an investor pitch deck, who to talk to, what to take into account when forming a team. I was absolutely green, naïve, and alone.”
The action-based networking that he found at Startup Weekend provided Kesterson with not only a great list of new contacts and a lot more knowledge of the startup world; it also placed him in an energetic world of motivated people. “Startup Weekend was like a Pulp Fiction shot of adrenaline to the heart,” he says. As a character designer, he can't resist a cartoon comparison; and he says he felt the same way Little Foot did in The Land Before Time when he finally made it to
Taking Advantage of High-Energy, Low-Risk Settings
The low-risk nature of networking at Startup Weekend prompts many people to decide that they can safely expand their horizons in other ways as well. Kyle Kesterson was a toy developer living in Seattle, who didn't think he had anything to learn from Startup Weekend. According to Kesterson, friend and startup veteran Donald DeSantis “described it to me as working with people on building iPhone and web apps and how cool it was, which I just kind of let graze my ears but not sink in too far.” Kesterson remembers DeSantis's efforts to convince him to go to a Startup Weekend event: “I made up all sorts of excuses and ended up missing Friday night altogether, thinking I was just going to bail on the whole weekend.”
At 1 AM on Saturday, Kesterson remembers getting a call from DeSantis, “sounding like he just outran the cops or something.” DeSantis reported that the Startup Weekend experience was amazing but that there were “ no designers there and that it didn't matter what my background was; if I had any design skills or eye for aesthetic, I'd be in high demand.” DeSantis would not take no for an answer.
So, Saturday morning at 7:30 AM, Kesterson arrived at his first Startup Weekend. He acknowledges that the project he ended up working on sounds a little ridiculous: a virtual pet created to look like John Stamos. This Tamagotchi , as this type of digital creature is called, was supposed to be a kind of nostalgia item for people who remember Stamos as Uncle Jesse on the 1980s sitcom Full House .
Kesterson remembers sketching the creature and then working on its various features on his computer. Everyone else was working on coding or PowerPoint presentations, so most people would walk by his laptop and be a little surprised.
However, many people were also amused and impressed. By the end of the weekend, Kesterson had a pile of business cards, and a couple of job offers. One person even offered to give his portfolio to the director of creative development at Pixar.
Kesterson's team won the award for business idea most likely to make a million dollars—and to this day, people who attended that weekend still talk about it. More importantly, Kyle had his first taste of life in the startup world. Now, he is the cofounder of a startup called Giant Thinkwell, which builds fan engagement platforms for celebrities and influencers to grow, engage, and monetize their followings through online and mobile experiences. They've moved on from John Stamos to the likes of Lady Gaga. Kesterson is also a graduate of Seattle's TechStars program, an initiative that supports entrepreneurs who demonstrate promise.
Looking back on his experience, Kesterson says, “Starting Giant Thinkwell wasn't even a thought trying to form in my head” before Startup Weekend. He admits that “I had absolutely no network, insight, or understanding of the startup/tech world. Even if I was motivated to start a company that [went anywhere] beyond my freelance design and illustration, I wouldn't have the first clue on how to put together an investor pitch deck, who to talk to, what to take into account when forming a team. I was absolutely green, naïve, and alone.”
The action-based networking that he found at Startup Weekend provided Kesterson with not only a great list of new contacts and a lot more knowledge of the startup world; it also placed him in an energetic world of motivated people. “Startup Weekend was like a Pulp Fiction shot of adrenaline to the heart,” he says. As a character designer, he can't resist a cartoon comparison; and he says he felt the same way Little Foot did in The Land Before Time when he finally made it to
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