Six Hour Startup

Posted May 3rd, 2008 by verso
05/03/2008 - 12:00
05/03/2008 - 12:45

Most likely something to do with a startup. And six hours.

John Sechvest
541.760.6135

Room: 
7_Egyptian
Tagged with:

twitter: dodeja

Submitted by akshaydodeja on Mon, 05/05/2008 - 04:28.

www.amxic.com
I was talking about friends having previous Startup Weekend experience with Skribit in atlanta.

Notes from the session

Submitted by http://selfamus... on Sat, 05/03/2008 - 19:49.

Seattle (Lion Kimbro) has Saturday House - buncha guys have a hacking place
Brian Dorsey said: why not start a sprint around starting a business...

Last 6-hour startup in Seattle built http://nwsitefinder.com
Also built:
Timealope - a co-browser, in Squeak / Seaside (er, Rails?)
Poor Mike Almanac

Typical:
- Space like this
- Noon to 6 on Saturday
- Break down project, mktg, coders, etc.

Lessons from 6HS:
- Skill-building component first is useful: (seaside, drupal module building...)
- what you get out of it is the focus: what can I do today. If not, it goes in the parking lot for later.
- Relationship-building... Gets everyone (mktg, coders, biz) in the same room.
- Has some notion about revenue sharing.. not resolved (We (John) could help here...). IP is open sourced, which is an issue.
- Expectation of a functioning company is unrealistic, though. No successful businesses came out so far, but gained experience and taught vocabulary
- 6 hours + 6 mos grooming could be worth angel funding, *if an audience has been built*.

Discussion topics:

How do ideas get generated? Someone has one, and they agree to work on them. A better vetting process would be useful, though (pitching model?); this should be before the 6-hour coding sprint, maybe online. Maybe put together biz team members first (CEO, CFO, ...)? At Atlanta SW, the idea for Skribbit was discussed & fleshed out a bit online before the idea-pitch time at SW.

How much does a startup cost nowadays? Money not interested unless you want >100000. Prosper.com, Zopa, Virgin Atlantic are sources for <25K. ought to be self-supporting for 6 mos; investment should go to moving the business forward. An unprototyped idea (or biz model) has less investment value (than something built with users, eg Jive/Strands); support for an idea is easier from friends/family. Y Combinator takes 6-15% equity; provides connections to ecosystem, incorporation, 5K + 5K per person/month for 3 months.

idea vs market - which is more important?

Is there an appetite in Portland for 6HS?
1st meeting is pitch
2nd is skill building
3rd is the 6-hr doing it
risk is losing passion over 3 mos, though

http://startupschool.org/ & http://omnisio.com/startupschool08 -- YCombinator's Startup School (See video of David Heinemeier Hansson's talk re how to make money online)

Startup Weekend here in Portland 5/23/08

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