Ann Arbor Startup Weekend

That was fantastic. Out of this world. I will make a more formal summary post in the morning, but for the moment let me sum up: 34 pitches morphed into 11 companies. Eleven! Some are more fully formed than others (for example, one is still doing research, another is signing S-corp papers this week, etc.), [...]

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It’s Sunday, we’re down to the last 5 hours and everyone here is super-serious. We are so close to launch for several teams, including this one. They’ve pulled together an app that touches on a couple of the latest hot tech memes, and they’re doing it with a great sense of style and humor.
It’s interesting [...]

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I’m sitting here with one of the bigger teams - 13 in this super dynamic group. We’re down to the wire here Sunday morning, and they are looking like they will be ready to launch today. (Woo!) I’ve got coders to the left of me, marketers to the right and I’m watching some content creators [...]

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They’ve just taken a break - the chocolate fountain (!) is calling. But before that, I’ve been listening in and they are moving forward with strategies. The current topic of conversation is user experience. They’re realizing that they can only do so much in that regard over the weekend, given that there are only so [...]

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I’m talking to the personal branding site team. They have got a great plan pulled together with a lot of detail on the pieces they need, but they’re in need of developers. If you’re interested in helping out, leave a comment here.

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I’m in with the the MacGyver team now. They have the best toys in here - they’ve got an old Apple external cd drive, shavers, antennas, solar lights and are taking them apart. They’re working through the process of creating how to’s, and discussing what the scope of their new site should be. I’m not [...]

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I’m sitting at the table with the Team #4 - which has collected up a few of the smaller groups. We’ve got one person working hard with a drawing tablet, creating a prototype of a three-dimensional portrait. It is very cool. But there’s also random talk of sci-fi and characters - we’re all having a [...]

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We’re on the 8th pot of coffee and everyone is running with all burners firing. I’ve been around and talked to some of the groups:
Team #3 is putting together a personal branding site. They’ve got outlines of information and are in wire-framing and mind-mapping stage.
Team #8 is at the mall. No no, it’s not [...]

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Wow. We have got a terrific group here. There were lots and lots of pitches - 34 in an hour - and we’ve clustered into groups to begin the work of building startups. The groups range in size from just 2 people up through groups of about 12. Here are the ideas, in no particular [...]

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