I want to touch on the future direction of Startup Weekend but first here is a little background on it’s evolution.  Andrew Hyde launched Startup Weekend in June of 2007 and held the first event in Boulder, CO.  At that point in time Startup Weekend was structured as a Colorado LLC where attendees would gather to pitch ideas for a new startup.  Of the ideas pitched, one was chosen and all of the attendees in the room would roll up their sleeves and get to work building it.  My first experience with this model was at the first event that came to Seattle which was held at Adobe’s office in Fremont.  At that particular event an idea for skillbit was pitched, the premise was to help companies mine talent within their company.  Think of it as an internal LinkedIn for larger companies to search the human capital they already had on staff.  At that event around 140 people all went to work writing code, preparing business plans, designing logos, creating financial projections, filing for patents, and built a really impressive site in 54 hours.  The rules of the game at that time was Startup Weekend owned 5% of the company and attendees divided the remaining 95% among themselves.  People were graded on attendance with higher allocations made to those that stayed all weekend long.

This model had a few flaws, first off since there was mention of attendees receiving stock in exchange for coming to the event this constituted a public stock offering and ran into legal issues.  Second, with 140 people on the team dividing up responsibilities for moving forward with skillbit was a nightmare.  A second model emerged from the lessons learned at that event.  At subsequent events people were still at liberty to pitch ideas, and smaller teams formed around solid ideas.  Rather than having one idea with 140 people working on it there were often 10 teams with 4-10 people on each one working towards a prototype of their idea by Sunday night.   At that time Startup Weekend was no longer taking a piece of equity in teams that were formed during the event.

I really loved the experience I had at the first Seattle Startup Weekend event as well as all of the people I met and was hooked.  Fast forward a year and Marc and I were driving to Denver on a road trip and called Andrew while on the way to meet for dinner.  After a few conversations upon returning to Seattle, Andrew agreed to let us take over Startup Weekend.  Here’s where I’d like to touch on our vision for Startup Weekend.  Marc and I really want to see it become the place where founders meet co-founder and to be a place where good ideas turn into cool new startups.  Thats not to say that always has to be the case, the event is far more than just the projects that people are undertaking.  A recent poll of past attendees pointed out 92% of people that attended stay in contact with people they met there for the first time.  We’ve had teams come out and attract angel investment as well as VC dollars and that is terrific, but as those of you that have been know, the event is much bigger than the success or failure of individual projects.  There truly is a magic in the room at Startup Weekend events and that is the essence that we are trying to preserve and bring to other communities in a sustainable manner.  Our goals going forward are to be an early stage breeding ground for great ideas worthy of being startups as well as a connector for entrepreneurs to meet other entrepreneurs.  In the past year we have yet to take a pay check, we work all the time but never work.  It’s been an exciting journey so far and has a ways to go still.  I’d like to see this community evolve into a place where people that are excited about startups can pitch an idea and quickly gather the necessary elements of support they need to turn that idea into a prototype.  Once a group at a given event has decided on their team members and idea I want to be able to connect them with a lawyer to draft up a formal agreement among themselves.  Once they know what technology they are going to be using in their startup I want to be able to connect them to others in the community that can help them with the specific technology they have chosen.  That could mean introducing a team that is working on the PayPal API to the guys at PayPal that can field any question they can dream up.  It could mean making an introduction to a talented developer in the community that knows rails, or someone who knows their way around developing mobile apps.  Startup Weekend has come a long way in a short amount of time thanks to the community that we have.  With your continued support I believe we can create a vibrant global organization that fosters community, entrepreneurs, and innovation in local communities around the world.

We’ll be launching a new site in the near future to help facilitate many of these relationships online as well as offline at SW events.  I really appreciate all of the support we’ve received from the community over the last year.  We’ve learned a lot and believe that 2010 will be a great year for Startup Weekend!  Thank you for supporting us and please reach out with any thoughts or advice on what we can do better.  We are structured as a non-profit and really rely on sponsor support to make this possible, thank you to all of you that have supported us in that manner in the past.  Looking forward to seeing you at the next event, and look out for the new online community coming VERY soon.

We like to get involved in various startup activities from time to time, and we like to invite the Startup Weekend community to take advantage of them too.

Marc and Clint from Startup Weekend will be flying out the end of Jan. for the Azure BizSpark Camp in NYC at the MS office in Manhattan. This is a FREE event with a chance to win $5k. If you are familiar with Azure or any other MS platforms or want to learn, this is a great opportunity.

Not a member of BizSpark? Apply through Startup Weekend here.

We will be putting on a happy hour with the help of the BizSpark team one of the evenings which the entire Startup Weekend community is invited to come out and partake in. Stay tuned for details. In the meantime, check out the details of the event:

“With several successful Microsoft BizSpark Incubation Weeks under our belt (Azure Atlanta, Win7 Boston, Win7 Reston, CRM Reston, CRM Boston, Win 7 Irvine, Mobility Mountain View,), we are pleased to announce Microsoft BizSpark Camp for Windows Azure in New York, NY during January 28–29, 2010. Based upon your feedback we have made several changes including offering cash prize, compressed time commitment and much more. We hope you’re tapping into the growing BizSpark community.

• Chance to win cash prize of $5000
• Nomination for BizSpark One (an invitation only program) for high potential startups
• Learn and build new applications in the cloud or use interoperable services that run on Microsoft infrastructure to extend and enhance your existing applications with help of on-site advisors
• Get entrepreneurs coaching from a panel of industry experts
• Generate marketing buzz for your brand
• Create opportunity to be highlighted at upcoming launch

We are inviting nominations from BizSpark Startupsinterested in Windows Azure Platform that target one or more of the following:

• Windows Azure
• Microsoft .Net Services
• Microsoft SQL Azure
• Live Services
• Microsoft SharePoint Services
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Services

The Microsoft BizSparkCamp for Windows Azure will be held at Microsoft Technology Center, New York, NYfrom Thursday 1/28/2010 to Friday 1/29/2010. This event consists of ½ day of training, 1 day of active prototype/development time, and ½ day for packaging/finishing and reporting out to a panel of judges for various prizes.

This event is a no-fee event (plan your own travel expenses) and each team can bring 3 participants (1 business and 1 – 2 developer). It is required to have at least 1 developer as part of your team. To nominate your team, please submit the following details to Sanjay Jain (preferably via your BizSaprk Sponsor) no later than Monday January 18, 2010. Nominations will be judged according to the strength of the founding team, originality and creativity of the idea, and ability to leverage Windows Azure Scenarios.

• BizSpark Startup Organization Details: Name, Web Site URL, Mailing Address, Solution Overview, Key Windows Azure Scenarios, Target Industry, Company Size and Year Founded, How did you hear about this event?
• BizSpark Sponsor Details: BizSpark Network Partner or Microsoft Champion Name, Web Site URL
• Team Details: For each participant, Name, Brief BIO, Email, Phone, Twitter, Blog

All info here: http://www.microsoftstartupzone.com/Blogs/sanjay_jain/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=77465549-f53f-497c-a9e1-5b32eac479bc&ID=8

It’s our mission to keep improving… obviously the best way to do that is to respond to what the community wants to see.

Please take 1 minute to fill out our quick survey and help us make Startup Weekend better!

Come join us on January 25th at Cyclops beginning at 6pm for to talk about the upcoming Seattle Startup Weekend event.  We have our sights set on March 19-21 Seattle Startup Weekend 4.  We want to get everyone involved that is interested in being part of the event and want your feedback to keep making it better.

We’re hoping to see some familiar faces and new ones as well.  This is a great reason to mingle with the Seattle startup community.  Looking forward to seeing you there and getting your input!

Map of Cyclops

Want to see some of the most successful past companies that started at Startup Weekend events? Check out http://startupweekend.org/past-companies/

2010 is looking like its going to be a big year! We have a list of about 80 cities that what to have an event… As of now we are shooting for about 50 events this year.

If you are interested in getting Startup Weekend to a city near you and it hasn’t been announced yet, cast your vote to the left of the blog on the main site!

Thanks to everyone for making 2009 such a great year with over 37 events and almost 3,000 attendees!

Happy Holidays!

Hey everyone… every single event was a success… but now we got hacked. makes for a long day when both Marc and Clint are on the road and can’t do much about it. Everything is safe now, but we are working to get back some of the backed up data… apparently not as easy as I was hoping.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What happened? Some amazing things happened! We had 10 events in two countries as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, and EVERY single event was a huge success! We were one of 11 “Featured Events” out of the over 25,000 events last week! There were over 650 Entrepreneurs, 70+ startup projects born, and tons of media created!

Just some quick ones:

Thousands of impressions Twitter

TechCrunch Europe summary of the London event

News Coverage in Boise, Idaho & NPR

News Coverage in Cleveland

News Coverage in Dallas

Press Coverage in Tulsa

Press Coverage in Lexington

There is more coming… We just need a little more time to get everything together!

Find all the city pages here:

November 13-15:
· Atlanta · Boise · Tulsa
November 20-22:
· Bay Area · Dallas · Cleveland · Lexington · London · NYC · LA

Reposted from Dr. Wordpress’s blog

If you ever wondered where lots of cool software comes from… it comes from right around where I’m hanging out this weekend.

I’m at Startup Weekend Silicon Valley. It’s my fourth weekend startup event in 2009. I’m on a team working on a fashion application we’re callingDress Me Sue (”Closet full of clothes, nothing to wear”).

So what’s it like?

100+ people crammed into Hacker Dojo, a tilt wall warehouse in Mountain View California dedicated to fast code development in a shared space of like-minded hackers.

We’re set up with laptops around a bunch of conference tables. It’s a little too warm upstairs, a little too cold downstairs.

Pizza. Beer. Coffee at midnight.

Some very, very bright people hammering on very, very good ideas. Very loud Phutureprimitive downtempo in the headphones, using Skype to communicate with team members sitting at the same table.

I’ve been to a lot of conferences. Startup Weekend is only conference I’ve been to where everyone leaves with more than they brought. Not everyone is successful building a viable business, but the experience and the networking are incredible.

And there is a team prototyping their application in WordPress. They don’t have a single programmer on the team, but between the 6 of them, they have been able to hack through the WordPress code base to get what they want. It’s pretty crazy really. They’re using the builtin WordPress theme editor and using FTP to share files with each other.

From a software engineering point of view, that’s crazy and hideous… they’re modifying actual WordPress tables! Yikes! But really, it’s hilarious. I think they’re having at least as much fun as anyone else at Startup Weekend.

I don’t like to post on Saturday or Sunday, but I’m making an exception because I’m having so much fun, and I think most of you would have a blast at an event like this. Maybe not for cutting code, but perhaps for blogging. Wish you were here.