Ann Arbor Startup Weekend

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 what you think - they’re doing onsite research for a retail site.

Team #10 is one of the bigger teams. They have a web startup plan and seem to be moving along smoothly.

Team #2 has enlisted the help of MacGyver and Sanford. They’re working on a project involving taking things (real, physical things) apart and putting them back together in new configurations.

Team #1 are working on a location tagging site for iPhones - they’re kind of off in a corner, but we hear good things coming out of there.

There are more, but it’s about time for us to break for a formal report. More later!

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 order and using the names they’ve chosen:

Location Based Tagging for iPhone

Deconstruct/Reconstruct

Branding Website

Tactile Portraits

Research Developers

4Performance

Car PC

‘Threadless’ Handbags

Texting for Small Business

Intermz

Medical Devices

SEO Tool

SciFi Fiction

I am so excited to see this all coming together. It’s all going really well, teams are off and running and getting their initial planning done. It’s totally awesome to see.

We have 83 93 people signed up to attend this exciting weekend. If you’re not one of them, sign up now!

I’ll be sending out an email to attendees with specific instructions on where to go, how to find us, what to bring, etc. later today. You can also find lots of great info on the private wiki. If you’re looking for carpools or ride shares - that’s the place to go.

We’re going to have a great weekend. We’ve got some great food coming in from local sponsors Eastern Flame, Afternoon Delight, Mighty Good Coffee, Big City Small World Bakery, Cafe Marie and Schakolad. And of course, a whole mess of interesting, interested, intelligent people to mix, mingle and work with. Join us!

We’re getting down to the wire - only 4 more days til Startup Weekend!

Sign up today and you’ll get access to the private wiki. Discussions of ideas are in full swing over there - it’s exciting stuff you don’t want to miss.

Sign up today and be assured of getting a super-exclusive SWA2 t-shirt. I’ll be ordering a few extra for the last-minute holdouts, but if you register today, you’re guaranteed to have one.

Sign up today and claim your place at this company-building, community-building, you-building event.

Mark Smithvas has set up a private wiki for us to discuss business ideas for the weekend, and also for attendees to introduce themselves to each other. You need to be signed up as an attendee to access the wiki - so if you need a reason to get that signup done, this is a great one. You can talk about any ideas you want to pitch, or what skills you have, or even hook up with carpools if you’re coming into Ann Arbor from elsewhere. Thanks for pitching in, Mark!

If you’ve been reading along here, you already know what to expect at Startup Weekend. We’ll be building and launching companies in one exciting marathon weekend, and learning a lot while we do it.

But what happens to the new companies on June 23? Largely, that will be up to the teams to decide. It could be that they continue working on the company in their free time, or they might consider hiring staff. It will depend on how each team wants to proceed.

Luckily, there is a multitude of local support for fledgling startups. Our local economic development group, Ann Arbor SPARK, has a ton of resources, including the Business Accelerator. This program can provide new startups with up to $50K of seed and development money, in addition to ongoing business development support and coaching. Scott Olson is eagerly anticipating talking to the Startup Weekend companies we form, and will be ready to help those who want to pursue that avenue. It’s not at all a requirement that our SW teams work with SPARK, but it is a terrific local resource for those who are interested.

In addition, there is SPARK’s Starting Your Own Business program, which is a periodic one-day workshop for new entrepreneurs which includes group training and one-on-one coaching. The fee for the workshop is normally $25; Startup Weekend attendees can attend SYOB for free!

And of course, by the time we’re done on Sunday night, we will have built a community of startup-friendly, energetic pros, and stuffed our address books with terrific contacts we can carry on with long after the weekend.

Hey everyone, at the request of your local organizer (Laura) I’ve come out of hiding to do a hello post and get this event moving. I should be attending your weekend as the “facilitator” through Saturday. As a bit of background, I am fresh out of the MBA school at Purdue and for the past year have been dabbling in venture capital, some other startups and am currently helping out with Startup Weekend.

In the past, I’ve attended some other Midwest weekends and have seen the great communities that are built.  It seems fair to say that people often underestimate the tech “savvy” of the midwest but the weekends I have seen have been absolutely great.  Even more, the new format (version 2) is giving attendees the opportunities to do what they want and not worry about launching or forming a mandatory business.  These weekends create great networks of people that are all interested in the same thing and Ann Arbor will surely be able to add to this midwest talent pool.  I encourage you to dig deep and recruit all of your contacts (local and out of town) to come to this event even if it is to simply get together, have a great weekend, create a community, and enjoy some free stuff.

With that out of the way, here are some things to keep in mind. You’ve got 18 registered now and should be able to start drawing a much bigger crowd. For those reading this, get the word out with press releases, blogs, local contacts, local sponsors, handouts, interviews or anything you can!!

I’ve had a few people ask about agendas and schedules and what to expect and whether they need to attend for the entire weekend, etc., so here goes:

The dates are June 20 - 22 and the official start time is 6:00pm on Friday. We’ll go until 11:00pm, or later if we’re up to it. Saturday, we’ll reconvene at 9:00am and again, go as long into the evening as we want to. Sunday, we’ll go 9am til about 9pm or so.

There is no agenda, per se. This isn’t a series of classes or speakers, it’s a bunch of people rolling up their sleeves and creating companies with the help of a facilitator. We’ll be pooling our talents, using our expertise and making the most of working as teams. Friday night will be ‘pitch night’ where we talk about ideas and vote on which ones to move forward with. Saturday and Sunday are work days, and in the evening on Sunday, teams will report on their projects to the group at large.

We’d love to have you there for the whole weekend, but we understand that your kid has a soccer game or you need to host your mother-in-law for dinner or whatever other commitments you might have. You’re not required to be there every minute. Come for as much as you can! Friday night will likely be important for choosing a team to be on, and if at all possible, please be on hand, but the rest of the weekend is free-form. Do what you need to do.

What you can expect to get from the weekend is not just ownership in a company you help found (which is pretty cool in its own right), but you will come away with new relationships with interesting, energetic, talented people and a new set of skills - both of which you will be able to use in the future. This event is as much about building a startup-friendly community as it is about building companies.

And if you have any questions, please comment here or contact me directly. I look forward to seeing you all June 20!

Event registration is open at startupweekendannarbor.eventbrite.com

The registration page will ask you to choose a general area of skill that you’re interested in. You are free to choose whatever you’d like to work on, and during the weekend, you’ll be free to explore different roles on the team(s) you’re working on. Think of the choice as an indication of general direction, not a declaration that locks you into a certain role. Pick what you would like to spend your weekend doing, not necessarily what you do for your day job.