On January 20th, I participated in the first Startup Weekend held here in Jacksonville, FL. A friend of mine and I decided we’d go, with his brother pitching. I reserved the right to bail on my buddy if I heard of a better idea than the one his brother was planning on pitching.
Friday began with a mediocre dinner and some networking, followed by a series of speakers including a former Mayor of Jacksonville. After what seemed like an eternity of various speakers telling us all the same thing, a guy by the name of Joey Aquino was introduced. Joey was the liaison from Startup Weekend’s HQ in Seattle. The night began to get interesting…
Joey broke the ice with a series of ice breakers for the 150+ attendees, including the most epic game of rock, paper, scissors I’ve ever heard of (150+ paired down to the final 2). After the ice breakers, it was finally time to start hearing pitches. Over 60 people took to the stage to pitch what they thought was the best idea ever. After hearing all the pitches, I looked down at my notes and I had only written down 3 of the 60 pitches. Disappointing in my opinion but then again, all it takes is one good one to help me retire early!
We were given about 15 minutes to talk to the pitchers and hear more about their idea. I first spoke to my #2 choice, an alternative energy solution. It was based on windmills and after spending 3 years in IL, I was pretty familiar with the technology and what he was proposing just didn’t seem quite up to par. Then again, it could have been just me. I don’t claim to be the smartest guy out there.
I then managed to find my #1 choice and after listening to her speak to several other people, I was sold on her idea. Now it was time to convince her she needed me on her team! Selfish, maybe, but this was a dang competition!
We were given 3 sticky notes to vote with. I voted for what I thought were my top 3 choices, including my friend’s brother’s idea (after all, he was legitimately my #3). They tallied the votes and chose the top 15 ideas. I slowly made my way across the auditorium towards my #1 and once they said “go”, I was only feet away from her. I convinced her that Java was the right way to go and that I had all the resources she needed. We picked up three other business minded people, a graphics guy and another developer.
We made our way up to our designated room where we began flushing out the concept, business plan, and what we were going to build over the course of the weekend. Right about the time we got everything figured out, it was 1:30am and the organizers kicked us out. I told the team I’d see them at 8am the next morning.
My alarm went off at 7:30 and I instantly realized that I was going to be later than promised. I decided to try and make it up to them by stopping and getting Chik-fil-a breakfast sandwiches for the team. When I arrived, our leader had the same idea and we now had 16 Chik-fil-a chicken biscuits. I couldn’t help but laugh. We managed to pawn the remainder off on the judges in hopes it might sway their opinion.
The other developer and I began cranking out HTML mockups of the site we were developing while the graphics designer worked on the site design. Just after lunch, the designer handed over the site graphics and we began integrating them into our pages. We realized early on that making the site completely database driven was not going to happen within the time frame so we focused on making the HTML functional, including jQuery sliders, dojo injected elements, google maps APIs and even managed to get the Facebook authentication and registration functioning! Then, before we knew it, was almost mid-night and we decided we’d leave early and hit it back hard on Sunday morning.
Since Chik-fil-a is closed on Sundays, I drove through Burger King to grab the team bacon, egg and cheese biscuits. Fortunately, our team leader didn’t have the same idea and we didn’t have an abundance of leftovers. The business end of our team spent the majority of the day finalizing the business plan, creating the presentation and finalizing the numbers. We techies spent the day adding in extra functionality where we could without introducing too much server side code.
Before we knew it, it was 4pm and it was time for the tech check for our presentation. Everything checked out and our leader began practicing. She only had 4 minutes to make the complete pitch to the judges with another 4 minutes of Q&A if they had any questions. Her first practice run she nailed it right on 4:01. Sweet. However, I knew that come presentation time, she would be talking slower and might not quite make it in time. More later on that…
Starting at around 5pm, dinner was served and shortly there after the speakers and organizers started in on their talks to us. Afterwards, we decided that the new rule at these type of events is that you can’t thank someone more than 5 times! It was getting ridiculous and boring, but as these things tend to go. The current Jacksonville Mayor showed up, spoke for a few minutes, then bailed. Typical stupid politician. Claim to support all that we’re about and then bail before we can show him. /rant…
Finally it was time to start hearing the pitches to the judges! We were slotted as #12 out of the 15 so we had a lot to hear before ours. Some people did wonderful jobs presenting with mediocre ideas and others had mediocre presentations with really good ideas. We had a break after 7 of them pitched. After the break, we had a few others to listen and then it was time for us.
Our leader took total control and owned the presentation. She got time called with only 1 more sentence to say, so in our opinions, she nailed it! Then it was time for the judges’ responses…
“That is such a great idea! You should not leave this room unless you have already taken your site down or have it launched to completion. If word gets out about your idea, you’re likely to have competitors before you know it. Great job, great idea and the best I’ve seen so far!”
WHAT!?!? YES!! And that was only the first judge! The others had only good things to say and one of them asked a question which was related to our required starting funds. The same judge asked us why we were a .net and not a .com. The answer is that the domain was already owned but was for sale to the tune of $3,200+ and she wasn’t willing to invest that kind of money without reassurance that she would get a return on her investment.
We were all very giddy and excited after hearing all the great things the judges had to say about the idea and presentation. After the next pitch I decided to step outside and try to calm down some. When I returned, everyone was sitting with their heads in their hands. I asked what was wrong and the answer I received was, “Someone just bought the .com domain.” SON OF A B**CH!! We panicked and purchased the .com, .net, and .org of the domain with the word “the” in front of our original domain.
After the last pitch, there was a short break while the judges conspired and collaborated on who the winners would be. They returned and announced the top 6, of which was US AT NUMBER 1!! We were extremely excited but I don’t think anyone in the room was truly surprised since we all saw the same presentations that everyone else saw too. During our leader’s “acceptance speech”, she told the crowd, “To whomever purchased the domain name after our presentation: tisk, tisk!” Choice words since mine would not have been so “PG”.
We claimed our prizes (which ended up being over-hyped and ultimately kind of lame from my perspective) and then spent the next hour posing for pictures and giving media interviews (I’m camera shy though). We finally got out and made our way to the local Mellow Mushroom pizza to celebrate with some much needed beer. We didn’t arrive until about 11:30pm and most of the team left around 12:30. I managed to leave around 1:15am to make it back home before 1:30am. Needless to say, work at 7:00am on Monday morning was a little rough, but it was all totally worth it!
We have already had several meetings and there are more scheduled. One of our team members stepped up and purchased the .com that we thought was previously purchased (turns out someone just put in a bid and it was rejected). I’ve purposely left out the concept and name of our little startup based on the judges’ comments. However, we’re working hard to get it up and completely functional as fast as our spare time will allow.
I had such an amazing time at the first Startup Weekend Jacksonville! I think it proved to both myself and my beautiful fiancé that I really am a huge nerd at heart. I proved to myself that I obviously work extremely well under very short deadlines and enormous pressure, both of which I thought but know I know. I can’t wait to participate in next year’s startup weekend and do it all over again!!
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