Organizing a Startup Weekend
20 May 2012We just finished a wildly successful Startup Weekend Cebu, I am honored to have worked with some of the best organizers in the world!
Startup Weekend is a great organization and they have a wealth of information on how to succeed as you prepare for the event. The team is incredibly helpful and will assist you in anyway possible. I want to share a few notes from my experience:
It Is More Than A Weekend
The event takes place over a weekend, but the only reason that happens is because organizers have been working for months to set things up. Our team did an amazing job at this, be sure to surround yourself with a team that can get everything done.
The event is over on Monday, but technically it is not. Monday morning and the weeks following a Startup Weekend are some of the most critical moments for these startups and entrepreneurs. Whether youwonthe weekend or not, you have decisions to make on your future career path.
After our event, we had a great followup opportunity with VCs (a not so common occurrence in Cebu, Philippines) - in which 4 teams from Startup Weekend had a chance to pitch for 20 minutes. Since the Startups were still veryrawand only found out about this pitch the night before, it was basically a once in a lifetime practice pitch before VCs. I know many startups never have a chance to pitch VCs at all, so it was amazing to see 4 teams from Cebu have this kind of opportunity.
Myself and other organizers are passionate about the ecosystem of startups here and are working on many other facets to fully develop a startup community in Cebu.
It Is About Community
Some of my favorite parts of the weekend and what has happened since then, have little to do with the Ideas that were pitched. The excitement and true potential of any idea is limited by the capacity of a team to turn that idea into a reality.
In one of our follow up meetings, Mark Buenconsejo mentioned the theory of community and how apart from anything else, he feels it is one of the most important aspects of startup culture. I could not agree more.
Community doesn’t always come naturally to geeks (I use the term for any who consider themselves a fanatic about their skill set). Social Networks and the Internet are great ways to form community, but in and of themselves they are not community. Community is something much deeper and it does involve all the messiness of human interactions. Community also requires action from many members, from different areas of expertise to thrive. Community is an Ecosystem.
For the would be organizers out there, connect with and cultivate relationships with entrepreneurs and business people outside of your own community or skill set. This builds sustainability and will vastly improve the teams!
It Is Hard Work
Just like a startup, startup weekend is hard work. It will undoubtedly take more time than you think, so be sure to fill your organization team with people who are driven and have time to execute.
It is so worth it.
Seeing the outcome of startup weekend, both the successes and the process, is absolutely the most amazing feeling in the world. To see and empower individuals to realize, many for the first time in their life, that a startup (being an entrepreneur) is possible is exhilarating.
Prepare yourself to not get all the glory, in fact as an organizer, you should prepare to do anything it takes to help the teams. I actually spent all of Saturday morning re-configuring wireless routers to try and improve our Internet connectivity, a skill set that I haven’t used in a long time, but just one of the many things you’ll need to prepare for.
Startup Weekend is a great venue to kickstart startups and entrepreneurship in your community. I highly recommend joining an event near you, or organizing one if it doesn’t exist. If you are in the Philippines (or elsewhere), I am happy to help, just drop me a note.
We are committed to continuing to host Startup Weekends in Cebu as well as working on identifying key elements needed in our ecosystem (top of mind: co-working space, incubators, accelerators, mentors, angels, VCs and more) and taking actions to getting them in motion.