Excited about an upcoming Startup Weekend? Think you want to try and win? Well after attending all 4 Startup Weekends here in Greater Lafayette I have a few tips for you that might just help you win.
- Start Hustling Early. Get to the event early and start networking. This helps you do several things. It lets you start finding people you would like to work with. The unofficial team forming process begins as soon as you walk in the door. It also gets you comfortable talking about your ideas.
- Pitch Enthusiastically. If you are pitching make sure you pitch like you actually believe in your idea and are excited about the weekend. This sounds simple but it will go a long way in attracting talent to your team. The better your talent you can collect the better you chances will be of winning.
- Look Good. Friday night at Startup Weekend is a lot about first impressions. Teams form for a lot of the same reasons any group of people form. So make sure you present yourself favorably.
- Form a Complete Team. Startup Weekend judging is based on three areas: business, MVP, and user experience. Make sure your team can cover all three areas. Be aggressive about filling your skill set out, otherwise your presentation will suffer Sunday.
- Talk to Potential Customers. This is something a lot of groups neglect to do. The more you can gather information from potential users the better your product will be.
- Sunday Is For Presentations. Spend all day Sunday getting your presentation ready and practicing. If you have a larger team you may be able to break into teams, but most of your product should be done by the end of Saturday.
- Sleep. IF you try and be hardcore and skip sleeping, your team will suffer, this never works out well. Many Startup Weekend participants have made themselves physically ill during the weekend, don’t be that guy.
- Present a Unified Front. During presentations have a strategy for answering questions. If you disagree with your teammates during Q&A everyone ends up looking stupid standing up there. Never disagree with your teammates, the judges don’t know any better.
- Bullshit! Confidence is key, so when you are presenting, just act like you got it all figured out. No one excepts you to have it all figured out just quite yet.
- Set Time Limits. There are lots of decisions to make during a Startup Weekend. Don’t be afraid to use a stopwatch to limit time on small and medium decisions. Spending hours deciding on the company name for example, is a great way piss away your time. Often the quick decision is the right decision.
- No “Intellectual” Debates. Get enough tech folks together and debates are bound to happen. Debating programming languages, frameworks, and other tech is a waste of time. Pick something that works for the weekend and live with it. Debates on the product, features, etc are acceptable, but at the end of the day, no one cares if the application is built on PHP or Python.
- Be Flexible. The more your team escapes their comfort zone the better the chances of winning. Be ready to try new things, Startup Weekend is the perfect environment to try new things in a relatively consequence free environment.
- Judging Sheet. You should get a sheet the first night of Startup Weekend of what the judges will be looking for. Go point for point and make sure you have addressed every single thing there in your presentation, and have good answers prepared for follow up questions. Most groups don’t do this, they end up completely disregarding some aspect and set themselves very far back. You can only go so far without a revenue model or with no UX work whatsoever.
- Pursue Outside Help. Look to mentors, organizers, and people on other teams for help when you need it. There is a lot of talent in the building during a Startup Weekend and only a small part of it is on your team. Look around and ask for help and advice from others, people are usually very willing to help.
So that is pretty much how I would go about winning the judging side of Startup Weekend. You can also “win” at Startup Weekend, by taking a different approach and not worrying too much about the judging. At the end of the weekend it doesn’t matter how good your MVP is ultimately, the relationships and experience is far more valuable than the end product. So here are a few tips for winning by having fun.
- Network. Make sure you meet judges, mentors, sponsors and people on other teams. There are a lot of cool folks at Startup Weekends, meet as many of them as you can. If you stay too heads down on your team, you might miss out on meeting people that could be really good contacts in the future.
- Just Hang Out. Spend some time not working and actually getting to know your team. This is good for both during and after the weekend, knowing who you are working with is important on so many levels.
- Focus on Fun. If you want to build something fun, do it. The prizes for winning Startup Weekend are usually cool, but not so cool to give up having fun. If you hate doing something, don’t do it just to win. If your team really likes marketing, then build promo materials and forget the prototype. This won’t score points with the judges, but it might make the weekend more fun.
- Go To The After Party. Plan to stay and hangout after the event, usually there is a good crowd hanging out for a while afterwards. Sometimes there is even a formal after party. In either event spend some time unwinding with your new friends, you just accomplished something pretty awesome.
Both approaches can make for a good Startup Weekend experience. Or if you have a bit of maniac inside you, and most people that attend Startup Weekend do, DO BOTH!