Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Seattle 2.0, and imported to GeekWire as part of our acquisition of Seattle 2.0 and its archival content. For more background, see this post.
By Jennifer Cabala
This was my first Startup Weekend, and I decided to not just observe, but to get involved. In case you haven’t heard of it, Startup Weekend is an event where techies try to create a business in less than three days. Going in I didn’t know how much I could help – I can’t code – but I thought I could write some copy, or at least fetch coffee for the people who could write code. In the end, I really surprised myself. Both with what I could do, and what would help achieve Startup Weekend success.
Always be selling. Really. 
There were 40 pitches at the event. The ideas were all over the map. Butthe entrepreneurs who showed the most passion for the project and reallysold people on their idea recruited teams quickly. The 4-friendsteam leader Ayush Agarwal put hired stickers on every person who agreedto be on the team and a friends of 4-friends sticker on anyone hetalked to. It raised team visibility and brought more people over,including me. During the event we talked up the product to the otherteams. Another group even handed out business cards.
This may not be Survivor, but there are alliances.
People come with friends or have people they really want to work with. We had some developers on our team who were basically a package deal. One was only interested if the other was interested. That meant sellingeach team member that this was the hot team to be on. And let’s faceit, if you don’t have good developers, at the end you have a niftyPowerPoint presentation but no product.
Team member and Ruby on Rails guy Jeremy Lightsmith is also a master at work-flow. He knows how to make action and accountability systems that made sure we were on task. Each item moved from backlog to deployed as we went through the weekend. We also met every two to three hours to make sure everyone was moving forward.
When you’re trying to get a product done the tech stuff is crucial. But the business components are really important too and shouldn’t be left to the end. Start making your final presentation on Saturday — not Sunday afternoon. Signup for social media services, do market research, blog about the process, write web copy, make promotional hoodies, whatever. Don’t let people languish or they’ll leave, or worse, chat it up, hurting the developers mojo.
Everyone on our team played to their strengths, but just about everyone tried something they’d never done before. Sylvia Rolle, a team member who normally does marketing for a non-profit, didn’t have much experience formally presenting, but wanted to and did a great job. I had experience presenting, but hadn’t made keynote slides before. I learned. There was even a lawyer, Adam Philipp, on another team who built an iPhone app with the help of a commercial app builder. This is a great time to try something new.
Make fun and people your priority.
Putting out a great product is important, but not nearly as important everyone enjoying themselves. We spent 14 hours a day with each other in a pressure cooker situation. Team Leader Ayush, put it best when he said I would rather work with A-level people who have B-level talent, than with A-level talents who are B-level people. Fortunately, our A-level people also happened to be A-level talents.
Have experience with user interface or user experience or with mobile app development, people who had these skills were in short supply.
Bring a mifi or clearwire or some other system. The wireless was bogged down and unreliable.
Run to the store for red bull and brownies to fuel late night sessions.
Our 4-friends team ended up creating a friend finding service called digri. We won the overall competition — despite amazing competition — but that wasn’t the most rewarding part. It was creating a business and making great friends too.
