Re:Startup Weekend failed, but lessons learned
by pg on Monday July 09, 2007 @05:42PM
(#33341)
I think they were trying to combine two ideas, "startups are cool" and "bring a bunch of people together." But not all combinations of good ideas are themselves good ideas. This was a particularly bad combination, because one of the defining qualities of startups is that they're small.
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If they had split the 70 into 30 teams of 2 to 3 people, and each team tried to build their own prototype over the weekend, some interesting results would have been produced. Put the prototypes online, and have the participants select the best one through a vote.
That would bring a bunch of people together without violating the "small startup" principle. Also, completion between the teams would help with motivation.
Re:Startup Weekend failed, but lessons learned
by willarson on Monday July 09, 2007 @08:37PM
(#33374)
The way they did it I think 2-3 is too low. They have too many support types: lawyers, designers, business, public relations, etc. I think they'd have needed to have teams be 7-10 to fit that many types into a startup. Which is too many for a startup... so I think that retrying without the deadweight of support roles might help (not that lawyers/designers/business/public relations people arn't great, but its hard to perform their roles before there is a product in existance).