We began with a small group, a half-dozen founders breaking from their work, and steadily grew to more than two dozen. Originally, the purpose of the gathering was to arrive at a plan to do this again, but so many people participated in the discussion, we barely had time to make one trip around the room.

In two earlier posts, I have attempted to summarize this feedback about the strengths and weaknesses of our experience together. We do this not only to allow the people who participated in our event to discuss the process, but also so future Startup Weekends can use this information to iterate the framework.

Founders past and present are encouraged to comment on these lists so the lessons learned from our experiences can benefit future founders.

Weaknesses:

• Lack of structure—This was a blessing and a curse. It took too long to get into a comfort zone about what we should do and who should do what, not really gelling until the project managers assigned themselves to a specific group and Pat took charge of the 7-minute meetings. People were empowered to make decisions, but collaboration with 100 people in 3-4 rooms isn’t that simple.
• We didn’t know the project managers—There was some ambiguity about the role of project managers, both from within that group and in the perception of everyone else. How do they differ from group chairs? Do they have the authority to make decisions? Are they facilitators? Color coding of nametags and formal introductions would have helped, as would having the PMs be the representative voice for each group.
• Legal issues—We are still trying to understand our options in structuring this company. Every state and every group (due to the variance in sizes) may face different challenges that contradict or stretch the default Startup Weekend model about forming a business. The consensus by the end of our weekend was that it would have been helpful to understand these things well in advance of that first pitch session on Friday. Lawyers are best used before they are needed, rather than after. Our group decided to by hyper-cautious because we value what we might have a month from now. The ambiguities and uncertainty were the only big downer during the experience. NOTE: This is about all we can say on the matter at this point. Transparency for our final day will be delayed until we meet again to resolve a few key decisions.
• Founder attrition—Andrew told us last November that 10-15% attrition each day is expected. A few registered people never showed (most sent regrets), and a number of people were only intending to participate the first day. The feedback being posted here reflects only the founders who will eventually be earning the maximum shares. We need to outreach to those who didn’t make it to Sunday to understand why people left.
• Large group dynamics—Discussions often broke down in larger groups. The size of the business development and user experience groups were too big at the start, when we were still trying to figure out how to go about making decisions. Forcing smaller, better defined groups earlier might have avoided a few of the heated discussions, some of which alienated people into finding other things to do or even leaving.
• Technology should be known at the start—The group needs to decide, based on their expertise and the needs of the project, what kinds of platforms are going to be needed. However, a lot of the setup could be avoided by pre-installing a few basic options so time isn’t wasted getting to a place where building occurs.
• Too many communication channels—It was unclear almost to the end how we were supposed to communicate with each other internally. The most effective means was a human protocol, where project managers and designated contacts were identified. As with the tech, it might be helpful to have a pre-determined list of options and vote on a communications method in the same way we did finding an idea for our company. There needs to be order and time-limited restrictions on how much someone can talk or how long a debate can continue. Everyone needs to respect everyone else’s time.
• Lack of professional networking materials—Not everyone brought contact/business cards, and we have yet to assemble a definitive list of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook links to allow us to keep in touch. We also didn’t get a chance to have a mini-career fair to try and promote job searches.
• Who owns an idea?—A few people came with ideas, read the simple founders agreement, and didn’t present their idea due to uncertainty about who owned the pitch. The transparency probably gave the world some ideas, as well, offering another disincentive. More clarity and protections are needed so it is clear that presenting an idea isn’t tantamount to giving it to Startup Weekend.
• Where was the extended community?—Despite Andrew’s presence and some well-wishing on the blogs, there was no formal support from the larger Startup Weekend community. We want to change this (a motivation for our reflection posts) by making sure there are accessible resources in the form of veteran Startup Weekend founders who have gone through this process already, faced different challenges, and come away with their own insights. Pouring through previous blogs in an attempt to glean that kind of information is not sufficient and eventually intractable.
• Inaccessible people—Some late arrivals were expected, but on both Saturday and Sunday it seemed like it was 1-2p before things really got rolling. If the weekend is a compressed year, that’s about two months lost. We also had a problem on Saturday with an entire department going offsite for conversation. That made it impossible to have input and make decisions in our three-hour cycles.
• How do international students fit in?—Diversity was a big goal and a plus of this weekend. But it was/is unclear about the implications of an international student working on a project where equity becomes a share in a company. As with the other legal questions, this is resolvable by getting the answers before the event.
• Friday pitch session—The ideas that were best supported were clear, concise, funny and prepared. Many of our ideas from the Ning site were not pitched, which was a surprise to some. A better prep on the parameters prior to the event could help Friday night be better organized. There was also an issue of clarity, as a few ideas were combined, with different people pitching completely different ideas under the same name. Much of our Saturday morning confusion came during our attempts to reconcile what the product would do.
• Organize earlier—It proved to be a tough sell for many local business to contribute food and swag when they set their budgets a month in advance. We didn’t get official approval from Startup Weekend until we were within that window, having already started prepping our contingency plans. The recruiting should start one month prior, but the organization of sponsors and facilities should all be taken care of before the recruiting begins.
• Establish a not-for-profit first—Along the same lines, everything gets easier if the organizing entity is a non-profit. Donations are easier to get and might bypass problematic legal situtaitons by giving everyone a formal starting organization to which they can belong, before beginning any work.
• Include more kinds of ideas—Tech people like tech solutions, but this is potentially an equally great vehicle for not-for-profits, existing businesses needing a boost, physical widgets, and service-based companies. These should be considered even if they can’t be completed in a weekend or end in a web site launch.
• Exit and continuation strategies—There should be a more formalized way to leave the project, as well as how to continue it past Sunday. Much of Sunday was spent scrambling around getting signatures and contact information, none of which was possible if a potential founder had already left the building. The burden for getting shares might be tied to both the sign-in and sign-out, asking the person to commit to the company or sign over proxy rights in lieu of attending meetings. For core members, there isn’t much to help the process that begins on Monday. Lining up those resources ahead of time is important.
• Schedule on a three-day weekend —Starting after work on a Friday and finishing late evening before a day of work on Monday makes things more difficult for people participating in the event, especially for out-of-town travelers. Perhaps a three day weekend would allow four days of work that can start on a Saturday morning and end by 5p Monday. User Experience would be improved if there were daytime hours to conduct inquiries.
• Confusion over terminology and disciplines —Andrew opened up the introduction of groups with, “User experience and usability, same thing.” Um, no. Not the way we are taught at the School of Informatics, at any rate. Terms like design and development and even marketing are bantered about in different circles meaning different things. By taking time to clearly define the expectations of each role, and by structuring the weekend so each role has a chance of contributing their expertise, it becomes easier to find a proper home.

I invite all of our participants, including those who couldn’t stay for all three days, to comment on this list and any other criticisms about your experience.

Strengths:

• Intellectual horsepower—There was universal amazement over how much could be accomplished by putting a bunch of people in a great space with a common task. Visitors were astounded with how much was accomplished in a short time. Bloomington is a great place for this kind of collaboration, and we want to know how often we can do this and keep up the energy.
• Open structure—The lack of a prescribed system was both blessing and a curse. Many loved the ability to choose our own teams and float from group to group, as desired or needed. The managed chaos enabled us to be creative and learn by failing.
• A great learning experience—This weekend was a wonderful opportunity to try new things, learn new skills, and understand how all of the pistons in a startup engine fire to make a new company go.
• Surprisingly little conflict—Potentially big egos were held in check, and the different skill sets communicated well enough to accomplish something. While there were heated debates that led to frustration, the self-organization worked itself out either through exits (a few chose to leave) or re-configuration (some chose to focus on other things).
• The “Accelerator”—Juan Carlos coined a great term for this framework: accelerator. It isn’t an incubator, because the speed is so much faster. The power of the group could work equally well for both brand new businesses and existing ones, willing to spend some equity for a boost.
• City Hall—More than one City employee commented about how alive the City Hall facility was with 100 people roaming the first floor in constant collaboration. The chamber space was wonderful for this event, as was being able to give development a separate room with higher bandwidth. It will be difficult to picture another Bloomington Startup Weekend happening anywhere else but the Showers complex.
• Networking—It was great to hang out with like-minded people who either already get what you are talking about or are motivated to understand.
• Diversity—Many different skills, locations and experiences were represented, including a noticeable number of women and a few international students. The slower pace to fill the available founder spots probably helped include more kinds of people.
• Success can be repeated—The things that worked well are probably repeatable. Find out what made the development group so good, for example, and do it again.
• The vision was realized—Organizers had plenty of nightmares about how wrong this event could go (lack of attendance, lots of fighting, boring project), but in the end everything came out better than expected. In some areas, our group knocked the ball out of the park.
• We found the Midwest Tech Community—The only people who thought of Indiana as a place for frontline technology are the locals working in technology. Even those folks could only see the part of that larger community that was working in their respective offices. The number of people interested as early as the second day in doing this again is proof the startup weekend framework is a great tool for building awareness.
• Exchange of ideas—There were many great company pitches (albeit, a bit unpolished) on Friday night, and a tremendous amount of knowledge shared between founders throughout the weekend. We probably went from about 30 Twitter users to 60 just by exposing people to that new social network. There are at least two spin-off projects in the works that have nothing to do with the company we are creating.
• Leaders emerge—People were willing to take on responsibility and do the things that needed to be done, even if it meant sacrificing some of their personal goals headed into Friday.

I invite all of our participants, including those who couldn’t stay for all three days, to comment on this list and any other positives you drew from your experience.

We just a did a private demo of the code. I think I speak for everyone that we are anxious to get to the next step in this process. We are still mulling some of the structural options, which prevented a live launch, but the energy is pretty high.

We’ve got to clean up and clear out of the building. Expect some wrap-ups and updates within the next 24 hours. Sleep is calling …..

Before signing off, I want to express my thanks to Andrew Hyde for both being there and not being there. It would have been a very difficult start on Friday without experience to get us started, and if he had been around Saturday morning, he probably would have been babysitting us all weekend. The talent of Bloomington got a chance to find our footing and shine. The overwhelming opinion is that this is a great framework for energizing the local tech community, and that we WILL do this again.

UX - done, can help others

Bus Dev - have a VC pitch done, looking for advisory

Design - basically have a few things, waiting for marketing copy

HR - had a reflection conversation, will write a blog summary (ask everyone to comment and pass our knowledge on to future weekends)

dev - internal launch party

Networking group meets 1st Monday of each month at IU research park.

In two short days we have moved from Storming to Performing as we have discovered everyone’s core strengths.

I am convinced we will have a working product by 9:00, but as the technical issues wind down, the business issues are gearing up. 

The business model took an interesting turn today as we met with a local service provider who has a service that does what we want to do… but not as well. 

 The conversation raised interesting questions, how we collaborate with him, and people like him in markets all accross the country.  Is there a franchise or market by market liscence agreement we can offer?

We probably won’t have all the questions answered, I am not even sure we will have all the questions.

I can’t even imagine what it would have been like to be in this room the whole weekend.  I spend a lot time looking at computers during an average day, and even so, my eyes are starting to forget how to focus on things that are further away than a computer screen.

Here is the summary of the lat 7-minute meeting:

Marketing/Copy - working in the Kelly Room, link to copy in campfire, target 1HR for final copy

Dev - CODING … still

Bus. Dev - business plan & presentation, we need ideas for an advisory board, still working on pricing

Design - working on pages, working with marketing, UX, business development …

Legal - this is not legal counsel (we aren’t representing anyone), recommendation from our working group are to seek legal counsel to get official opinions (these decisions cannot be made this weekend), want to get people together to in about 30 minutes (1:45) to talk about who is interested in taking this to the next step

HR - tv in atrium, met w/ Bloomington Online (good info from Dale), money may pay for our dinner tonight (still working on details)

They’re a simple people.  All they want is the information to do their jobs.  (Hint hint.)  In all seriousness, the mood in here seems pretty calm, considering the amount of work to be done.  I’d be freaking out, but my remedial skills (by comparison) would NEVER get the job done.

“There’s no room for kittens anymore.”  “There’s always room for kittens!”

I will continue to live amongst these people in their cave for the time being.

8:43 and counting to go…