Startup Weekend E-Book

Marc Nager

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 210

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Tested principles for transforming an idea into a fully operational company Startup Weekend--the organization behind 54-hour events where developers, designers, marketers, and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams, build products, and create startups--has spawned both a global initiative in entrepreneurship as well as numerous successful startups. Startup Weekend, the book, contains best practices, lessons learned, and empowering examples derived from the organization's experiences for individuals and small organizations to follow as they launch businesses. Each of the key beliefs outlined has been tested by Startup Weekend and has yielded powerful results. The principles described in each chapter will give any business idea a greater chance for success. * Chapter topics include trust and empowerment, flexible organizational structures, the power of experiential education, action-based networking, and much more * Describes consequences for startup development as entrepreneurs and founders begin doing much more, even faster * Profiles successful Startup Weekend companies, including two powerful examples: Memolane, an application that captures a user's online life in one timeline making it easy for users to travel back in time and relive memories; and Foodspotting, a mobile and desktop app that allows users to find and share the foods they love Apply these simple actionable principles to launch your own startup revolution.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword: Carl Schramm and Steve Blank

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Why Starting Up Is All about Trust and Empowerment

Marc Nager and Clint Nelsen

How Trust Led Us to the Greatest Adventure of Our Lives

Franck Nouyrigat

How We Empower People to Get the Most Out of Startup Weekend

Why You Have to Have Trust to Be a Successful Entrepreneur

Chapter 1: No Talk, All Action: Action-Based Networking

You Must Join a Team

Breaking Down Barriers

Taking Advantage of High-Energy, Low-Risk Settings

Get Out of Your Bubble

If Not an Actual Startup, at Least Always Build Relationships

Diversity of Backgrounds Is Key

How Do You Keep the Momentum Going?

Chapter 2: Good Ideas Need Great Teams: Pitch for Talent Not for Funding

The Magic of 60 Seconds

Deliver a Solution with One Sentence

Build a Team

What You Need—Talent and Energy

Chapter 3: Experiential Education: Step Outside Your Comfort Zone While Working Together as a Team

The Importance of Context, Deadlines, and Instant Feedback

Braindump

So You Have a Viable Idea—Now What?

Learning by Doing

Risk Mitigation

Allocating Tasks

Recognizing Failure

The Three Main Criteria

Chapter 4: The Startup Business Model: Adapt, Stay Lean, and Reiterate

The Customer Development Revolution

Getting Lean, Staying Agile, Preparing to Pivot

Communication Is Key

Stick with the Basics

The Missing Pieces of the Entrepreneur's Curriculum

Chapter 5: Mapping the Startup Ecosystem and Subversive Reconstruction

The Entrepreneurship Leap

The Cofounder Leap

The Startup Leap

The Funded Leap

The Scaling Leap

External Growth Leap

Leaping More Often

The Future of Startup Weekend

The Startup Foundation

Conclusion

Viva la Revolution

The Entrepreneur Culture

Your Next Iteration

Further Readings

Index

Copyright©2012 by Startup Weekend. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Nager, Marc, 1985-

Startup Weekend: how to take a company from concept to creation in 54 hours / Marc Nager, Clint Nelsen & Franck Nouyrigat.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-118-10509-2 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-1-118-15963-7 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-118-16023-7 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-118-16024-4 (ebk)

1. New business enterprises. I. Nelsen, Clint. II. Nouyrigat, Franck. III. Title.

HD62.5. N335

658.1 '1-dc23

2011024064

This book is dedicated to entrepreneurs.

Because of you, the world is a better place.

Foreword

Carl Schramm and Steve Blank

The Art and Science of Startups in Revolutionary Times

In the future, we will look back at this decade (2010 to 2020) as the beginning of an economic revolution as significant and world-changing as the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth century and the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century. We are currently standing at the beginning of the entrepreneurial revolution. This doesn't mean just more technology-based products (though we'll certainly get our share of those). Rather, this is a revolution that will permanently reshape business as we know it, and more importantly, change the quality of life across the entire planet for all who come after us. And organizations like Startup Weekend are at the very forefront of this groundbreaking development.

The Barriers to Entrepreneurship

Over the past 40 years, startups continued to innovate as each new wave of technology took hold. However, the rate of innovation was constrained by limitations we are just beginning to understand. Only in the past few years have we come to appreciate the fact that startups in the past were constrained by factors like:

1. Long technology development cycles (how long it takes to get from idea to product).

2. The high cost of getting to first customers (the cost to build the product).

3. The structure of the venture capital industry (that there were a limited number of venture capital firms, each of which needed to invest millions per startup).

4. The expertise about how to build startups (which was clustered in specific regions like Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York).

5. The failure rate of new ventures (startups had no formal rules, and were frequently hit or miss propositions).

6. The slow adoption rate of new technologies by governments and large companies.

Fortunately for us, many of these elements have changed drastically in recent years. Not only are technology cycles speeding up and the cost of getting products to customers decreasing, but organizations like Startup Weekend are pushing knowledge and networks to greater numbers of entrepreneurs.

The Democratization of Entrepreneurship

What's happening is something more profound than a change in technology; the change is in the fact that the many inhibitors and limitations to startups and innovation are being removed. All at once, starting now.

Compressing the Product Development Cycle: In the past, the time to build a first product release was measured in months or even years, as startups took time to execute the founder's vision of what customers wanted. This meant that they built virtually every possible feature the founding team envisioned into a monolithic release of the product. Yet time after time, startups would find that customers didn't use or want most of the features after the product shipped. The founders were simply wrong in their assumptions about customer needs, and they wasted considerable effort developing all those unused features.

Fortunately, today's startups have begun to create products differently. Instead of building the maximum number of features they can imagine, they look to deliver a minimum feature set in the shortest period. This lets them launch a first version of the product to customers in a fraction on the time. In fact, for products that are simply bits delivered over the web, a first product can be shipped in weeks rather than years.

Startups Built for Thousands Rather than Millions of Dollars: Startups traditionally required millions of dollars of funding just to get their first product to customers. For instance, a company that developed software would have to buy computers and license software from other companies and hire the staff to run and maintain it. A hardware startup had to spend money building prototypes and equipping a factory to manufacture the product.

Today, open source software has slashed the cost of software development from millions of dollars to thousands. No consumer hardware startup has to build their own factory, as the costs are absorbed by offshore manufacturers. And the cost of getting the first product out the door for an Internet commerce startup has dropped by a factor of 10 or more in the last decade.

The New Structure of the Venture Capital Industry: The plummeting cost of getting a first product to market, particularly for Internet startups, has shaken up the venture capital industry. Venture capital used to be a tight club clustered around formal firms located in areas like Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York. While those firms are still there and growing, the pool of money that invests risk capital in startups has expanded, and a new class of investors has emerged. New groups of VCs called super angels, which are generally smaller than the traditional multihundred-million-dollar VC fund, can make the small investments necessary to help launch a consumer Internet startup. These angels make lots of early bets and double-down when early results appear. And the results do appear years earlier than they would in a traditional startup.

In addition to super angels, incubators like Y Combinator, TechStars, and the 100-plus others like them worldwide have begun to formalize seed-investing. They pay expenses in a formal three-month program, while a startup builds something impressive enough to raise money on a larger scale.

However, the penultimate events in this area are Startup Weekends: 54-hour conferences that allow developers, designers, marketers, product managers, and startup enthusiasts to come together to share ideas, form teams, build products, and launch startups.

Startup Weekends have also emphasized the fact that venture capital and angel investing is no longer a U.S. or Euro-centric phenomenon. Risk capital has emerged in China, India, and other countries where risk taking, innovation, and liquidity are encouraged on a scale previously only seen in the United States.

The emergence of these incubators and super angels have dramatically expanded the sources of seed capital. And this globalization of entrepreneurship means the worldwide pool of potential startups has increased at least tenfold since the turn of this century.

Entrepreneurship as Its Own Management Science: Over the past 10 years, entrepreneurs began to understand a critical fact: Startups are not simply smaller versions of large companies. While companies execute business models, startups search for a business model. Or perhaps more accurately, startups are a temporary organization designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.

Therefore, instead of adopting the management techniques of large companies, which too often stifle innovation in a young startup, entrepreneurs began to develop their own management tools. Using the business model/customer development/agile development solution stack, these individuals first map their assumptions (in other words, their business model) and then test these hypotheses with customers in the field (customer development) and use an iterative and incremental development methodology (agile development) to build the product. When founders discover the assumptions that are wrong, as they inevitably will, the result isn't a crisis; it's a learning event called a pivot—and an opportunity to change the business model.

As a result, startups now have tools that speed up the search for customers, reduce time to market, and slash the cost of development.

Consumer Internet Driving Innovation: In the 1950s and 1960s, U.S. Defense and Intelligence organizations drove the pace of innovation in Silicon Valley by providing research and development dollars to universities, and purchased weapons systems that used the valley's first microwave and semiconductor components. In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, momentum shifted to the enterprise as large businesses supported innovation in PCs, communications hardware, and enterprise software. Nowadays, however, government and the enterprise are followers rather than leaders. Today, it's the consumer—specifically, consumer Internet companies—that drive innovation. When the product and channel are bits, adoption by 10s and 100s of millions of users can happen in years versus decades.

The Entrepreneurial Singularity: The barriers to entrepreneurship are not just being removed. In almost every case, they're also being replaced by innovations that are speeding up each step, some by a factor of 10. For example, the time required to get the first product to market at Internet commerce startups has been cut by a factor of 10, as have the dollars needed to get the first product to market. Additionally, the number of sources of initial capital for entrepreneurs has increased by a factor of 10, and so forth. And while innovation is moving at Internet speed, this won't be limited to just Internet commerce startups. It will spread to the enterprise, and ultimately, to every other business segment.

When It's Darkest, We See the Stars

What does it mean that we are at the cusp of a revolution as important as the scientific and industrial ones? Revolutions are not obvious when they are happening. When James Watt launched the Industrial Revolution with the invention of the steam engine in 1775, no one said, “This is the day everything changes.” When Karl Benz drove around Mannheim in 1885, no one said, “There will be 500 million of these driving around in a century.” And certainly in 1958, when Noyce and Kilby invented the integrated circuit, the notion of a quintillion (10 to the 18th power) transistors being produced each year seemed ludicrous.

Yet, it's possible that we'll look back at this decade as the beginning of our own revolution. We may remember this as the time when scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs were integrated into the fabric of society faster than they had ever been before, or when the speed of how companies operated changed forever. We may recall it as the time when we reinvented the U.S. economy and our gross domestic product began to take off, and the United States and the world reached a level of wealth never seen before. It may be the dawn of a new era for a new U.S. economy built on entrepreneurship and innovation. Startup Weekend is at the forefront of this revolution: a grassroots movement that brings technology, tools, and networks to the people who are most committed to creating positive change in the world. In short, this era may be the one upon which our children will look back and marvel that when it was the darkest, we saw the stars.

Preface

What Makes a successful startup? Blood, sweat, and tears (and fun) may help, but they alone can't do it all. Entrepreneurs need to put together the right team, with members who have complementary skills. They need to receive constant feedback from customers. They need to trust their partners and empower the people who work with them. They need to learn on the job, and consistently work to understand the marketplace.

Over the past three years, we at Startup Weekend have seen these things happen over and over again. We have been amazed at how much people can accomplish in the course of 54 hours at Startup Weekends across the world. Some people walk out of their first weekend session with a cofounder, seed money for the next several months, and hundreds of customers already signed up for their product or service. For most of our attendees, though, Startup Weekend is only the beginning. It is just the start of an exciting and demanding learning process that they will continue to experience in the years to come.

In the pages that follow, our goal is to take readers through the actual experience of Startup Weekend—what it's like to pitch your business idea to 200 strangers in 60 seconds; how teams struggle when they discover that other people have had similar ideas; what it's like to see how well someone works and how much they know within hours of meeting him or her; and what it's like to meet some of the most experienced and successful mentors in the startup world.

As much as we want anyone with a desire to explore entrepreneurship to attend Startup Weekend, we recognize that not everyone will. Therefore, this book will try to take the lessons of Startup Weekend and distill them for a larger audience. In the subsequent chapters, you will learn valuable information about pitching your ideas for businesses with others, finding the right team to make your enterprise a success, the value of experiential learning, taking your customers' and the market's pulse (even before your product is ready for launch), using different startup models for project management, and making the best use of your startup time—whether you are ready to become an entrepreneur for the weekend, or for the rest of your life.

Acknowledgments

Writing a book is a big endeavor and we would not have been able to accomplish it without the support of the Startup Weekend community. From the written and oral stories alumni and participants shared with us to the feedback we've received at every stage along our journey, this book is the result of hundreds—if not thousands—of individual contributions. Although there are too many people to thank individually, in a very real sense, every Startup Weekend participant has made their mark on our organization; therefore, although anonymous, they are essential pieces of the story.

The entrepreneurs who shared their stories with us are listed by name below. We cannot express how grateful we are to those alumni, friends, and supporters who shared their Startup Weekend experiences. We have tried to include everyone and we apologize if we've forgotten to name anyone.

We would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to the supportive and resourceful team at John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Particular recognition goes to our editor, Dan Ambrosio, and our development editor, Christine Moore. We would also like to recognize Naomi Riley for her assistance with the manuscript.

To the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, we cannot express how grateful we are for what you've done to support and promote Startup Weekend and thousands of other passionate entrepreneurs throughout the United States.

We would particularly like to thank Carl Schramm and Steve Blank for all they have done and continue to do to support entrepreneurs. We are honored to work with you.

We would like to thank our Board of Advisors: David Cohen, Bo Fishback, Eric Koester, Dan Martell, Danielle Morrill, John Sechrest, and Nick Seguin; and the Startup Lawyer, Ryan Roberts. Your guidance, constructive criticism, and unstinting support have helped grow this organization in ways we never thought possible.

Startup Weekend would be nothing without our rock-star team of global organizers. Every day, you guys remind us why we're here and what a small group of dedicated and engaged people can accomplish. Each one of you is an integral part of our community—long live the Startup Weekend Mafia!

Similarly, we would like to thank our amazing network of Community Advisors: Adam Philipp, Bob Crimmins, Bruce D'Ambrosio, Buzz Bruggerman, Charlie O'Donnell, Ed Kimm, Greg Gottesman, John Cook, Jonathan Berger, Kal Vepuri, Marcelo Calbucci, Mark Merich, Matt Shobe, Meng Wong, Mike Koss, Nate Wetheimer, Neil Patel, Rebecca Lovell, Roy Leban, Shaherose Charania, Sherry Reynolds, and Tony Bacigalupo.

To all the mentors who have shared their advice and best practices with us over the years, thank you so much. The following list is by no means complete: Andy Sack, Bill Warner, Brad Feld, Dave McClure, Denis Browne, Eric Ries, Jessica Livingston, John Lewis, Jonathan Ortmans, Kathleen Kennedy, Mark Suster, Robert Scoble, and Yosi Vardi.

We'd be remiss if we didn't acknowledge the huge impact our global sponsors have had not only on the organization but on the thousands of Startup Weekend alumni, too. Thank you to Amazon Web Services (Rodica Buzescu), oDesk, O'Reilly, Microsoft BizSpark (particularly Juliano Tubino, Julien Codiniou, Ludo Ulrich, and the rest of the global team), Sun Microsystems (particularly Jeremiah Shackelford), TokBox, and Twilio. Another round of thanks is also in order for the regional and local sponsors who help us bring our events to cities around the world.

A huge thank you goes out to the Startup Weekend Core Team: Keith Armstrong, Jennifer Cabala, Anca Foster, Ashley Hodgson, Maris McEdward, Joey Pomerenke, Tawnee Rebhuhn, Shane Reiser, and Adam Stelle for their belief in and commitment to our vision. You guys are awesome! We would especially like to thank Maris McEdward for her dedication and hard work throughout the book writing process. We mean it when we say that we couldn't have done it without you.

Finally, we'd like to thank our family, friends, and girlfriends. It's been a long and sometimes unexpectedly bumpy road but that's never stopped you from supporting us and believing in what we were creating. And, of course, we'd like to thank Andrew Hyde, who made all this possible to begin with.

Contributors

Adam DeLong

Alex Farcet

Alexa Andrzejewski

Alexis Ringwald

Amir Harel

Anders Hedberg

André Reuba

Andy Dragt

Angie Chang

Antonios Manessis

Anuranjita Tewary

Arantza Uriante

Arthur Nisnevich

Bastien Serafin

Bedy Yang

Bert-Jan Woertman

Beth Altringer

Brian Labarre

Brian Zeuercher

Cameron Kashani

Charlie O'Donnell

Chris Eben

Christian Blavier

Clara Martin

Clement Cazalot

Colleen Brady

Dan Rockwell

Dan Schamir

Daniel Knoodle

Danielle Siauw

Dash Dhakshinamoorthy

Dave Angulo

David Smallbone

Don Caruso

Don Ritzen

Donald DeSantis

Eli Hayes

Elizabeth Grigg

Elyssa Ludher

Eric Jorgensen

Eric Lagier

Evan Buxbaum

Evgeny Pogorelov

Francesco Mancusi

Frank Denbow

Friederike Welter

Gabe Pelegrin

Hélène Durand Couppel de Saint Front

Humberto Lee

Ian Hunter

Imo Udom

James Briant

James Digby

James Hobbis

Jason Armishaw

Jason Reynolds

Jean-François Vermont

Jeff Martens

Jeffrey Paine

Jeremy Haberman

Jeremy Lightsmith

Jeremy Monat

Jerry Suhrstedt

Jesse Maddox

Jim Benson

Jim England

John Britton

Jon Rossi

Jonathan Berger

Jonny Lee

Kenny Nguyen

Kevin Leneway

Kevin Owocki

Kris Fuehr

Kyle Ellicott

Kyle Kesterson

Lesa Mitchell

Leslie Mack

Liang Shi

Liesbeth Vriens

Lorraine Ball

Ludmilla Figueiredo

Maria Encinar

Marshall Hayes

Matt Talbot

Matthew Titsworth

Matylda Czarnecka

Maya Bisineer

Megan Molino

MeLinda McCall

Melody Biringer

Michael Coates

Michael Irizarry

Michael Leow

Michael Maddox

Michael Marasco

Michael Pastko

Mike van Hoenselaar

Mike Vandenbos

Mikey Tom

Nathan Bashaw

Naz Rin

Nicholas Gavronsky

Nick Burke

Nick Martin

Nick Seguin

Nico Habraken

Norris Krueger

Oksana Yaremchuk

Olivier Desmoulin

Pankaj Jain

Particia Araque

Philippe Gelis

Randy Hook

Rebecca Lovell

Richard Grote

Roland Gröpmair

Roy Leban

Sasha Pasulka

Scott Weiss

Sean Kean

Seth Samuels

Shane Mac

Sherwood Neiss

Stefano Orowitsch

Steven Thrasher

Therese Hansen

Thibaut Labarre

Thubten Comerford

Tim Gasper

Toke Kruse

Tyler Koblasa

Vivian Tian Na

Wendy Overton

Willy Braun

Yaniv Feldman

Introduction

Why Starting Up Is All about Trust and Empowerment

Marc Nager, Clint Nelsen, and Franck Nouyrigat

Marc Nager and Clint Nelsen

Imagine you had a great idea for a new business. Maybe it's the next Facebook, the next Twitter, or perhaps something more mundane—the next grocery delivery service or no-mess toothpaste tube. You think about it when you wake up in the morning and when you go to bed at night. You jot down notes about it periodically throughout the day while at your regular job. Maybe you tell your husband or your roommate a little nugget of the idea here, or you read something in a magazine that gets you excited about it all over again. When the weekends come, you daydream a little, maybe even tinker with a business model or search online to make sure that no one else has come up with this scenario already. To be honest, you're a little nervous that by the time you come up with the hours and the money to make a go of your idea, someone else will already have made it a reality.

Now, imagine you walk into a room of perfect strangers and have to pitch your idea to the crowd in 60 seconds. The people who like it might decide to work on it with you and the ones who don't, well, they'll just go off in their own direction. Would you do it?

Most people would think twice before taking this plunge. After all, you've been working on this idea for such a long time—and it is such a good idea. What would happen if the people who walked away decided to steal the idea and use it to start their own company? Or what if the people who wanted to work with you really wanted to take the idea in a new direction and it didn't end up looking the way you had imagined?

At Startup Weekend, we have two words of advice for you: Let Go.

Every weekend at events around the country (and around the world), budding entrepreneurs come together to share their ideas—their babies—with people they have never met before in the hopes of making these fuzzy plans a reality. Trusting others completely—for their feedback, their advice, and their help—is the only way to accomplish this.