Andrew Hyde was sitting in my office at Techstars the other night and just threw it out there. What if we got a bunch of crazy hackers, marketing types, user experience people, and business geniuses in one room for an entire weekend? Could we start work on Friday, and launch a “real” live startup by Sunday night with no budget beyond good will and human capital?
Well, we’re going to find out.
A while back at a BarCamp, one team of about 8 hackers planned and launched a spoof called KnifeRobot in about 4 hours, complete with user accounts, e-commerce, marketing, and a blog. So the thought popped into Andrew’s head – why couldn’t we do something real nearly that fast?
StartupWeekend is July 6-8 in Boulder. Go sign up if you can plan to spend the whole weekend working on a startup. We’re taking suggestions for “ideas” (at StartupWeekend.com, not here) and we’ll bring the top 3 to the kickoff on Friday night, and pick one as a group. Everyone who participates “fully” will earn an equal share of founders stock in this new venture. The whole process will be zero-friction, with quick democratic votes deciding on any decisions as necessary.
And the startup will go live on that Sunday night by 11:59pm.
The thought is that perhaps it will be interesting enough that somebody will want to run it as an ongoing concern, and the founders can vote to give a (presumably big) chunk of equity to whoever that will be.
Please only sign up for StartupWeekend if you plan to come for the entire weekend and add real value by planning, coding, thinking, designing, blogging, living, and breathing this thing for about 55 straight hours.
Abso-freakin’-lutely cool!
Now this idea, I do like.
But a logistical question — wouldn’t it be wise to at least pick a technology platform ahead of time? Otherwise, I foresee a Java guy, a LAMP guy, a Rails guy, a .NET guy, etc, all working together, with one expert doing 80% of the work while the other 20% try to scour through reference manuals, madly trying to keep up.
Likewise, if the idea needs some specialized infrastructure, has anyone donated a host that can be customized as required?
But aside from that, I see no reason this would not work. Getting something running in a weekend isn’t the real challenge here — it is making that something continue to run after the weekend, and have staying power longer than what the blogs will provide.
Was working on a very similar project called Camp Bootstap – but it was to be a summer camp in a very large house filled with the same type of crew. I’m in for sure, this would be an excellent sample to see if the idea can scale.
If only I could convince people to reschedule their wedding for the following weekend…
@Dave – well, yes, and no. it’s hard to pick a platform without an idea. but yes, it would be more “efficient”. i think part of the fun is we’ll just vote and maybe people will have to learn some stuff or help with other pieces using what they know.
@Dan. I agree with you. Too many weddings on 07-07-07. Maybe we can get David to reschedule 🙂
Man, this is the coolest idea ever. Unfortunately I am totally banned from Colorado for a while. If you start this in NY I am in.