Startup Weekend is an intense 54 hour event which focuses on building a web or mobile application which could form the basis of a credible business over the course of a weekend. The weekend brings together people with different skillsets - primarily software developers, graphics designers and business people - to build applications and develop a commercial case around them.

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Startup Weekend Denver Teams Update

We are 51 hours into the Startup Weekend and it’s coming down to the last push for many teams. We have recorded everyone’s elevator pitch again to see how much has changed in these long days with intense work.

PreGame| Twitter | Facebook

Pregame takes the guesswork and awkwardness out of event networking. Arrive at events prepared with relevant information on those people you want to meet. Need a partner for your next project? Need to establish a connection? Curious what someone is really into? Spend a little time pregame’in and you’ll be good to go.

Gobee| Twitter | Facebook

Gobee makes communication between teachers and parents instant and easy. With gobee, teachers effortlessly send classroom updates to parents via email, SMS, or voice. By creating a buzz between teachers and parents, gobee improves student behavior and achievement.

Feathers Adventure | Twitter | Facebook

Feathers is going to be a simple game with a new look, but is relevant to the ideas of many other of the post popular games in the app store. In the app store simple is good when it comes to games and anything with too much complication will discourage app users.

ShipNShine | Twitter | Facebook

ShipNShine is the ultimate gift for men. Perfect, professionally shined shoes for the man who has everything. Just have the post office pick up your shoes in our box and they will be delivered like new in about a week.

PlaybyPlay | Twitter | Facebook

Play By Play is a fun and exciting way to experience sporting events with your friends. Don’t just watch the game, play the game and show your friends and random strangers in bars that your knoweldge and insight is superior to theirs.

UpShark | Twitter | Facebook

Many restaurants have websites that really suck. Many more have nowebsite at all. upShark is the WordPress for restaurants. We provide a free platform for mid-sized chain restaurants to build a friendly website and accompanying mobile version that connects customers with general information (hours, address, phone), menu, Yelp reviews, individual item reviews and nutritional information to help the restaurant patron decide whether or not they want to visit a restaurant or which entree to order.

Sushimee | Twitter | Facebook

Sushimee is fun candy for kids in the shape of sushi. The product has been successfully tested and sold at local events and is ready for prime time. We plan to create a brand, expand production and sell the product through specialty retailers, restaurants and direct to consumers through an ecommerce store. Sales are initially targeted at consumers in Colorado with future plans to expand nationally.

RentalKharma | Twitter | Facebook

Rental Kharma is an online community where good renters meet good rentals. We introduce trust, simplicity and transparency into a historically highly-contentious relationship.

Check Your Fence | Twitter | Facebook

Check Your Fence provides an automated online tool that proactively discovers and documents network security vulnerabilities. Leveraging our expertise, we deliver easy-to-understand graphical reports of our findings at a low-cost.

A Clean Way to Finish Startup Weekend

A Clean Way to Finish Startup Weekend

So, you’ve got your idea, done your elevator pitch, built your product, worked 40+ hours straight and before you know it, it’s Sunday and it’s time to present. You’re thinking, “Whoa. I don’t do presentations. I’m the idea person” or “I’m the hacker. Where do I even start?” When it comes time to present, things can sometimes come to a halting stop.

Here are the things to remember:

* Everyone has just spent their weekend building these products, likely sleep deprived, running on pure adrenaline and/or caffeine.

* No one has time to work on this elaborate presentation, nor do they have the desire to.

Let me back track for a minute and explain where this is coming from. I just recently had the opportunity to go to the Defrag Conference 2011 and was induced with multiple presentations from all sorts of different backgrounds. Now, many of these were amazing, smart people discussing all aspects of business and technology. Everyone had a powerpoint backing them up with what they were presenting. One of these really stuck out to me and actually inspired this blog post. If you are wondering, no, this didn’t involved any sort of fancy slide deck, amazing music or any other bells and whistles. What really caught my attention was the fact that there was one word per slide, paired with a photo that essentially was describing what the particular point was about. Now, this obviously took a fair amount of time to hunt down all these photos and work with photoshop and pull all together. But the take away here is the simplicity of it all. This does two key things that makes your presentation 100 times better.

1) Allows the speaker/presenter to talk to audience about their discussion points rather than having that awkward back slightly turned sideways presentation.

2) Engages the audience to watch and actually listen to your presentation as opposed to being distracted on what bullet points are on your screen.

Wendy Lea, CEO of Get Satisfaction highlighted this, from which I had the opportunity speak with one her co workers later to find out she was inspired from something called Slide:ology; the art and science of creating great presentations. This is a book and can also be offered as a course from Nancy Duarte discussing how to make your presentation more impactful and overall increase your effectiveness of the message you are attempting to portray. Now, I would strongly recommend reading this book or taking a course at some point, regardless of your background or job relevance. Simply because this is a skill set that is transferrable across anything in life, professionally or personally.

Some key things to take from this at a high level for this weekend and your presentation are the three following thoughts:

Message

What are you trying to get across, base level. Go back to your elevator pitch and pull the key elements. How did you execute these and what is the purpose of your creation?

Delivery

How are you presenting your product? Remember simplicity is key. Yes we are all smart people in this room, but drill down to the basics for most effective message.

Visual Story

Visually, what are you showing your audience? Stick with a simple visualization to match your point.

So, to wrap everything up: Be simple. Be concise. Be visual. Don’t forget above all, have fun! This is a great experience, whether it’s your first time or you are a Startup Weekend Alumni, people are here to support you and above all learn something from one another.

StartupWeekend Denver Teams

Friday night ended with 61 tickets sold for the event and 35 pitches which broke down to a total of 9 teams formed. Here are the teams in no particular order

PreGame| Twitter | Facebook

Gobee| Twitter | Facebook

Feathers Adventure | Twitter | Facebook

ShipNShine | Twitter | Facebook

PlaybyPlay | Twitter | Facebook

UpShark | Twitter | Facebook

Sushimee | Twitter | Facebook

RentalKharma | Twitter | Facebook

Rental Kharma is an online community where good renters meet good rentals. We introduce trust, simplicity and transparency into a historically highly-contentious relationship.

Check Your Fence | Twitter | Facebook

It’s the Little Things…

Startup Weekends are an amazing experience, they’re also intense. 54 hours to pitch an idea, form a team, build & launch a product… there is a lot going on and a lot to be done. Here are a few things you can start to think about or have in place before you show up on friday evening that will help keep you ahead of the game:

Domain Name
Every product needs a name… and a domain name. I recommend searching for domain names via Domai.nr or if you’re old school, then a WHOIS search via the command line.

Once you have that perfect name picked out (Oh… you’ll wind up changing it, just like I did) you should head on over to NameCheap.com and grab the name while it lasts. There are a ton of domain registers out there, however NameCheap is one of the better ones and you won’t spend a small fortune.

Google Apps
Now that you have that perfect Domain Name, you can head on over to the Free Google Apps and setup a couple email addresses and take advantage of the other services such as Docs, Presentations and Sites to help get your team up and running. Google Apps is a great way to quickly get a shared environment in place for strategy planning, product mapping and preparing your presentation.

Social Media
The best part about Startup Weekend is hyping up your company while you’re creating it. Setup that Twitter account (at the very least) and begin that Marketing journey.

Hosting
There will be plenty of hosting options available during the event… You could hop over to Justhost.com or HostGator.com and grab some cheap shared hosting (less than $5 mo) to throw up your landing page, or there is always Heroku and a ton of other services depending on your product/service.

Email
Why wouldn’t you put an email subscribe form on your landing page? That’s just plain silliness… MailChimp is great and has a killer free plan, drop one of their ready made forms onto your landing page and get ready for some killer email marketing.

These are not the only options available to you during the event, just some of the more popular and tested methods that will help you get off the starting block a bit quicker.

Good Luck!

What is Startup Weekend?

Never been to a startup weekend event? Well you’re missing the greatest 54 hours of your life!

Startup Weekends are 54-hour events where developers, designers, marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams, build products, and launch startups!

But Don’t take our word for it…