Over the past year, it has been quite an experience to see the entrepreneurial community in Atlanta band together and do great things like ASW2, Startup Riot, Startup Gauntlet and ATL Show and Tell just to name a few.

ATL is no Bay Area but it isn't "hosed" either, pg's opinions not withstanding :) [See Atlanta can compete: http://blog.weatherby.net/2007/10/atlanta-can-com.html]

In addition to the 100+ people who participated in ASW2, a lot of credit goes to the guys who helped organize it, sponsored it and worked to make sure it got attention in the media. Lance Weatherby (news.yc user lanceweatherby) and Georgia Tech / ATDC where it was hosted deserve a special mention.

What about investors? Getting tech people to meetup and collaborate seems much easier than convincing people that are unaccustomed to purchase certain asset categories to do so.

I wish not to disrupt the mood of the population on HN, but a question.

When will the majority of tech entrepreneurs begin to build products and services targeted at more than, say, a few hundred people?

It seems most of the tech startups are heralded by tech websites, and the only people using the services, are... you guessed it: other tech people. Such a limited base of customers!

Lastly, why are there so many derivative based startups, who piggy back and rely on another service? Are the dollars going to be realized when you cash out by being acquired by a company that wants to add you as a feature?

I just want to know.

I think the problem with startups isn't that they target a few hundred people. They probably target a couple hundred thousand people. The problem is that it is invariably THE SAME people... and that the people they target do not pay money for the things that startups sell. To the extent that startups sell anything. Because they realize they can't. Because their target does not pay money for software or services. (They'll pay for some technology -- iPods, for example. But they won't buy what startups are selling. Sorry. They also won't buy anything from anyone who runs ads on the Internet, which is why "We get a billion eyeballs and then we MONETIZE!" is going to be a tough row to hoe the next few years.)

I have a teeny tiny software business. 95% of my customers are female. The average age is, making an estimate, north of 35. I deal with a lot of @aol and @roadrunner email addresses. Despite the abject disbelief I get when I tell my software writing buddies the story, it really is possible to sell software to folks who do not know what RSS is and do not care that their websites validate.

So why do I feel like I'm one of the only guys trying to do it?

Thanks for your response.

I think most startups are not really startups. They are more like elementary school science projects, where all the kids show off to other kids what they are doing.

actually the last startup weekend in Sydney by Silicon Beach, had 3 startups:

utag - http://www.ut.ag/ TrafficHawk - http://www.traffichawk.com.au/ and LinkViz - http://www.linkviz.com/

showed nice rankings on alexis (cant recall the numbers).

That was a similar event, but was not Startup Weekend.

Grats on the companies mentioned:

http://twitpay.me (OP's project) and http://skribit.com (my project)

Congrats Paul. It'd be interested to see if/when your user count spikes due to this article.

For the few Startup Weekend projects that have been successful, how has equity been divided?

A company called Atlanta Startup Weekend LLC owns 50% of Skribit at the moment. The LLC is comprised of all the people that contributed at Atlanta Startup Weekend last year. I am the President of the board of managers of the LLC and vote on behalf of the LLC when the need to do so arises. The rest of Skribit is owned by the active cofounders. This method of distribution is in the public domain.

Twitpay's equity distribution is not in the public domain. I will say that the cofounders who worked on the project over the weekend each received a small share.

I can only speak for Twitpay, and have no knowledge of what other companies have done. We decided to set aside 10% of the company for ASW2 participants. We had 9 team members, plus some people who helped ahead of time, and so we divided it up so everyone on the team got 1%, plus another 1% to split up among those others.

The remaining 90% we structured in a typical startup fashion, after people had a chance to decide if they wanted to continue, and what they brought to the new company. Many of the original team decided to continue, which is pretty cool.

Equity is divided by the people involved in creating it, no requirements or rules.

Which have been successful?

How do you define success?

I was referencing the OP's comment noting the few Startup Weekend projects that have been successful. Which projects are among these few?

In general, though, I would go with a lower bar than fallentimes's suggestion. How about any company that is now incorporated and could be seen on a path to being something that someone would want to acquire, i.e. has any of these properties: is actively hiring, has raised money, is generating profits, and/or has a significant (>20K?) and growing user base?

I can only speak for those I know.

Both Skribit and Twitpay are incorporated.

Skribit will hire its first full time person in January upon closing a small round. The company has significant user traction: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/skribit.com/?metric=uv

For the purpose of this conversation, let's define it as one or more of the following:

Recurring profits/issue dividends/get acquired

Unless someone has better metrics; success is hard to define.

I think for a startup weekend type event you have to define success as any company that follows through after the weekend and gets a non trivial amount of users.

Profits, in general, take years and may not be the best way to define success for startups (at least young ones). Profits should be the goal however.

Getting acquired is a good measure but this too, typically, takes years.

Issuing dividends...is just too far into the future for most startups.

Oh ok - I didn't really know how long startup weekends have been going for. So now we have to define what a non-trivial amount of users/traffic is :).

Probably the most important thing is growth.

If those are the metrics the answer is zero Startup Weekend companies are successful. I would say it is too soon to tell for many. Somewhat like a YC company at the end of a session.

Another thing to think about is the main goal of Startup Weekend is not to create companies, but to build community.

Good point. And it seems like it's been very successful at doing that. It'd just be awesome if one (or more) of the startups made it big.

As anyone that has ever started a company can tell you the hard part is not spending a weekend building a cool prototype - anyone can do that. There's a long way to a sustainable company.

"How to build a basic product in one weekend" would probably be more appropriate.

And test out potential cofounders. That is the real value.

Congrats twitpay!!

Can you really call this a company just yet?

Yes.

I would argue no, without any revenue. But then that opens up a large can of fail for a lot of popular web services.