| | | If you can dedicate the time, I highly recommend participating in a Startup Weekend. The concept is simple... people gather from all disciplines of business to create a company and product within 56 hours. No one knows at 0 hour Friday what the idea is, yet everyone that participates gets equal ownership in the result. There is a palpable energy in the room when deadlines are tight and there is no room for posturing or lobbying, and the social aspect of the event can't be beat. I expect Andrew and team to kick lots of butt - there are tons of people that have the startup bug and this is a great way to play in the space. Sixty-eight people generating a company over the course of a weekend.
So why should "user generated" be limited to content? What else are users willing to generate? Prosper.com allows people to generate loans (or buy debt) for people that think they need more debt to clear up other debt (yes, this is a crappy concept in my eyes, but that isn't the subject of this post). Users generate answers for people with burning questions at Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Comments on blogs across the globe contribute to the quality of the original blog entry. There is a great company helping to aggregate that process too, have a look at Intense Debate
Imagine a blog post where the author seeks opinions on ideas for photos in a brochure. Users might generate some very useful ideas for the author to use, as well as post links directly to photos at iStockPhoto. I'm sure this happens all of the time... the readers help define the product.
Companies could use this system to solicit input from users of their products to perfect advertising materials. Users could be intimately involved in creating the feature set for the next version of that product. But companies still rely on R&D teams and hired guns rather than soliciting such input.
Imagine what would happen if Real hosted a weekend event where any user could come by and offer their opinion on what the next version of the platform should provide? Or maybe if Gap, Inc. took clothing designs from the public and allowed visitors to vote on which designs should be made. They could offer the designer a cash reward (I.E, purchase the design outright).
The possibilities are endless. If you have examples of user generated anything, let me know. I'd love to have a look.
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| | | | I've been giving a lot of thought to the StartupWeekend phenomena. As I and others have mentioned, it was amazing to see such remarkable talent show up, ready to play. There were no rules, and no expectations other than to see a startup launched by Sunday. People got together to do something cool with the chance of reward... no guarantees, just a chance.
With the success of StartupWeekend, Andrew Hyde will be traveling to different cities around the country helping other like minded individuals get the same thing going in their neighborhood. Unfortunately I can't make those, but I'm every bit as excited to see the turnout and resulting products as I was to see ours. It is exciting to watch it evolve and improve. Andrew will have a blast with it and with the team he's surrounded himself with, I see good things for him.
StartupWeekend in Boulder had 58 participants that dedicated roughly 54 hours in a row to the project. The premise was to show up at 6PM on friday, and leave at midnight Monday morning. Of course it didn't work out that way, but that was the idea. I know several fantastic people that didn't participate because of time constraints. They dropped by to see how it was going, but didn't stay. I am fortunate enough to have a wife that understands me... so much so that she gave me a pass for the entire weekend.
My participation in StartupWeekend was inevitable. I'm a serial entrepreneur and can't stop thinking about ways to improve the world in some way or another. Just look at my Ideas section for a sampling of what I mean. As a matter of fact, while on a recent trip with a good friend of mine through the Tetons and Yellowstone, we came up with no less than 10 solid ideas in the course of normal conversation. We weren't brainstorming ideas, just talking. That is who I am, who we are.
StartupWeekend has been on my mind since it happened. There are people around the world that just want to contribute to something. They want to see an idea through from start to finish because that is their nature. They have spare cycles here and there, but can't or don't want to commit to anything long term or even for more than a few hours per week. Retirees, stay at home parents with successful careers, busy serial entrepreneurs, students... you get the idea.
These people need something to work on, something to contribute to, with the very real possibility of financial reward. I've been talking with friends about a project called "Social Ingenuity," and while it isn't ready for general feedback, it is close enough to bring it to light. It is a combination of two concepts: idealRealm (an idea Bracken, Rich, and I had in 2003), and the reality that the world is indeed flat... there are people all over the world that want to do stuff, just to do it. This project is significant, so significant that I'm going to focus all of my energy on HyperSites and "Social Ingenuity."
Here's a teaser: Good ideas are a dime a dozen. We don't have the time/resources/specialized knowledge to move most of our ideas beyond the napkin phase. We're busy... we have other demands of our time. Jobs, kids, family, hobbies, exercise... we just don't have time. But what if that wasn't the case? What if you could test your idea's viability, have it implemented, and possibly funded?
Stay tuned. | | |
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| | | | Well under way, Startup Weekend is absolutely one of the coolest things I've been involved in. The company we've created is a web/sms service for making quick decisions.
If you want to ask a few friends about a decision you want to make, come to the site, enter their email addresses, or mobile phone numbers, and we'll send the questions and options to them. They reply within a given time period and you're notified of the results. There is way more to it than that, especially if you ask the developers, but that is the general idea. Think pro features, white labeling, etc.
Everyone broke in to groups of specialty after the idea was chosen. For example: marketing/pr, front end development, creative, back end development, business development, legal, and user experience. These teams formed magically. How cool.
Normally I'd stick myself into one of the dev teams, but as I grow I want to offer my experience to as many people as will listen. So with this project, I signed up in the "I get things done" role. I floated from group to group, and if I say so myself, that worked well. I spent most of yesterday with the user experience team.
Keep an eye on the site... it will launch today (it may be tonight!) but it will go. Absolutely the best way to get a quick vote is with VoSnap. ;-)
Let me know what you think. Oh, we were TechCrunched (thanks Mike!) We were the featured show last night for quite a while on ustream.tv, and will be streaming the event live today too. Check it out at at ustream.tv | | |
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| | | | Some of Boulder's best and brightest startup talent is gathering tonight at 6. What exactly we'll be doing is still totally unclear, but the result will be a complete startup/product on Monday morning. If the idea is solid, there is plenty of opportunity for going big. Frankly, with the people involved, I expect just that.
There are 70 people signed up. Think about that for a second. An entire company's worth of high level talent, coming together to build something cool over the course of a weekend.
For updates on the project, keep an eye on http://startupweekend.com
I have to thank my wife Heather for her support on this. She'll be responsible fully for Z and will have little time to herself while I'm off creating something cool with my friends. She has plans to take our 3 year old son Z to the Colorado Renaissance festival on Sunday. She'll have fun! Thanks Heather! Don't forget about daycare! :) | | |
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| | | | My friend Ari Newman of tru.vu and Newman Venture Advisors has an interesting observation about Web developers in the Boulder area. It seems as thought all of the funded startups are sucking the market dry.
I know a some of these guys and they're pretty much booked as he says. If you're a good web developer and you have rails experience, give these guys a glance. They're in need of help.
Ari says you don't have to be local, but you do have to kick ass and already have remote relationships worked out. Read the post yourself here Web developer drought in Boulder?
Good luck Ari and team! | | |
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| | | | If you want to see the path to a cool company that could provide valuable services to prosumers and executives around the globe, follow this puzzle.
Read this then watch this. If you take this combine it with this and this you too can have your knowledge navigator service provider. Today. Anyone interested?
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| | | | Can a team of people create an entire company in a weekend, from scratch? From concept to launch during a Friday night to Sunday night timeframe. Can it be done? Yes it can, and I'll be a part of it.
Chris and I were banging out grillm when I read about this event for the first time. We looked at each other and said, "Wow, what a great idea!"
Unlike our two man show, this a is a group of world class people teaming up from all areas of business. Management, funding, marketing, bizdev, application development... everything you really need to create a viable business.
I can't wait for the result, there are some phenomenal people involved. I'll be just back from the Butte, ready and refreshed. Who's catering coffee and pizza? Brad? ;-)
StartupWeekend: "July 6-8 in Boulder, Colorado. Let's create a startup." | | |
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| | | | Caron Schwartz Ellis wrote a nice piece for the Boulder County Business Review on the resurgence of web companies in the Boulder/Denver area.
The companies she mentions are a hop or two away from me. While I don't know them all personally, I think that they're all doing great work. Being involved in the startup scene has been a wonderful experience, and this article reminds me of that.
Sure, at one point we would have been in the list, but times change, as do priorities. How about you save some space for me in the followup article next year Caron? Deal?
BCBR ARTICLE: The return of the dot-com | | |
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| | | | Chris and I came up with a really cool idea for distraction project. We decided to try and build it within 24 man hours... and we did it.
http://grillm.com is a simple social networking site... with a twist. You don't know anyone and the way you get friends is to earn their friendship by asking questions. You click their picture and ask a question. They answer the question and if you like the answer, you ask another and so on.
Eventually you'll decide to add them as a friend, and when you do they'll have access to your full profile. That access grants them the ability to see your myspace, facebook, vox, etc. accounts and to see your grillm.com friends as well. If they like you, then they'll probably like your friends, too.
Remember, you know nothing about these people before you ask them a question... you've only see their icon.
This thing is cool, and if the first private beta day was any indication, we're going to be busy guys keeping up with the requests... and traffic. It is a good thing we have H5's app servers to power it ;-)
Thanks to everyone that signed up, you guys ROCK! See it for yourself here: http://grillm.com | | |
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| | | | As my friend David says, good ideas are a dime a dozen. Well David, here's another one I had, then found. I hate when that happens.
"Data de-duplication, also called data de-dupe, removes duplicate information as data is backed up or archived. It can be done on the file level, where duplicate files are replaced with a marker pointing to one copy of the file, or at the sub-file level, or byte level, where duplicate bytes of data are removed, resulting in a decrease in storage capacity requirements of several magnitudes."
OK, so the idea isn't unique, but if someone wants to bring that tech the desktop and you're interested in my UI ideas for it, I've got plenty. | | |
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