Startup Weekend has become a real force for fostering entrepreneurship. I had the pleasure of speaking at the BostonEDU Startup Weekend kick-off yesterday. Some of the ideas were impressive and I do expect to see a couple of interesting companies come out of the event. I also met some really strong developers. If their startups don’t get off the ground, I hope they consider joining me at Swoop.
Here are my slides and the crib notes:
- Do not be cool. Entrepreneurship is about action. Most startup ideas never get acted upon. Let your emotions give you energy to overcome the inertia to act.
- Practice educated ignorance. To solve big problems in new ways you need to be reality-based but you also need distance & perspective. Find a balance and avoid what at TechStars we call mentor whiplash.
- Bring a gun to the knife fight. Startup Weekend may be about a lot of things–building community, collaborating, coming up with good ideas & starting companies to name a few–but at it’s core it is about selling. You need to sell yourself and your idea so that you can recruit a great team at the event and accomplish seemingly impossible things over a single weekend.
- Beware the Kool-Aid. Not the proverbial Kool-Aid, the banal one. Startup Weekend is an athletic event: 54 hours of excitement and stress. If you want to perform at your best, you have to take care of your body: eat well & stay hydrated.
If your startup gets off the ground, you may find the following helpful:
