presentation to bizcamp dublin, may 29 2010
TRANSCRIPT
Startup Weekend
DublinLessons Learned
www.slideshare.net/seanrmurphy@seanrmurphy
Overview
• What is Startup Weekend?– So what?
• Getting Startup Weekend to your city• Dublin Startup Weekend
– People– Preparation– The event itself
• Outputs– Current status of projects
• Final thoughts
What is Startup Weekend?
• Weekend focused on building stuff…– …which could form genesis of a startup
• Typically web or mobile applications– Relatively easy to pull together in short space of time
• Mix of skillsets present– Business people, graphics people, software
developers• Outputs should be working app with story
around how it could form a startup
History of Startup Weekend
• Founded by Andrew Hyde in 2007– Andrew works with Techstars
• More recently owned by Clint Nelsen & Marc Nager– Seattle based not for profit
• Has been held in many cities throughout the world– 52 cities, 12 countries
• Aggressive development in 2010
So what?
• Wanted to host event in Dublin– Political line…
• Silicon Valley of Europe– Blah, blah, blah
– Realistically…• Rapid web development tools make amazing
things possible in short time• Dublin has quite strong community of developers
• Thought it would be a fun experiment
Getting Startup Weekend to your city
• Startup Weekend crew facilitate– Bring a wealth of experience
• Need to establish interest– Voting mechanism on startupweekend.org
• Startup Weekend will engage once sufficient interest established
• Need venue, local sponsors, speakers, etc
Dublin Startup Weekend
• Nov 2009– Set up poll on Startup Weekend’s website
• Dec 2009– Had enough interest to run event – 232 votes– Approached NDRC to see if they were
interested in being involved• Jan 2010
– Decided to run the event with NDRC
Organizing team
Preparation work
• Venue• Sponsorship• Speakers• Publicity
– Attract participants• Logistics
– Network access– Catering
Format of the event
• Fri evening– 7pm: welcome, intro talks– 8pm: participants pitch ideas– 9pm: networking/discussion– 10pm: team formation
• Ideas selected– Filters out unpopular ideas
• Sat– Development of functionality and business case
Format of the event
• Sun– 9am-7pm: Further development of
concept– 7pm: pitches start– 8pm: pitches end– 9pm: winners announced
Participants
• Just over 50 participants• Mix of developers, business folk, graphics
folk– Good contingent of developers
• Abt 2/3 either developers or student developers– Graphics folk a little shy
• Excellent bunch of people– Keen to roll up their sleeves and do something
Team formation
• 17 ideas presented– Varying quality
• Presenter had to pitch idea in 2 mins• Participants discussed ideas with promoters
– Attached name to idea• Teams (somehow!) formed • Many good ideas not progressed
– Not enough folk to tackle them all
The teamsGeoDealio iPhone application which finds nearby
deals for bars, restaurants based on twitter
Classometer Web based class management system for yoga, dance, karate, etc teachers
Hit The Road Website for finding routes on Dublin transport system – integrates Luas, Dart, Dublin Bus
CauseHere Web based system for managing local causes – soliciting interest, volunteers, donations, etc
BragBet Combining social networking with group betting
LendUrStuff Enabling lending of items between members of the system
The dynamic
• Excellent work ethos– People paid to work!
• Excellent atmosphere– Everyone in good form
• Teams had ‘soft’ leaders– No tension in teams
• Some knowledge sharing between teams– Not so much
The dynamic (in pictures)
Evaluation
• All teams had 10 mins to present their work– Describe working functionality– Give some thoughts on business perspective
• Evaluation criteria a little vague– Best output over the weekend– Best commercial potential
• Three judges– Glen Poor, Noel Ruane, Mark Kearns
The Results
• Winner:– GeoDealio
• Mentions:– Classometer– Bragbet
• Also noteworthy– Hit the Road– CauseHere
GeoDealio
• Two components to system– Web and mobile component
• Mobile component used by people to find nearby deals– Iphone app, location based
• Web component for merchants to create account– Control publication of offers
• Business based on charging merchants to publish offers
GeoDealio
GeoDealio
Hit the Road
• Developed simple UI to determine routing on Dublin public transport– Bus, Dart, Luas
• Enter origin, destination– Site will advise route
• Dart from A to B, walk, Bus 46A from C to D
• Working on timetable stuff
Classometer
• Web based tool to ease management of classes– Yoga, dance, karate, language, etc
• Track schedule, attendees, payments• SMS members of class via website
Moving forward?• GeoDealio have progressed further
– Further developed technology• Working up to launch
– Looking to talk to people• Classometer
– Live website• Looking for friendly users
– Part time activity• Hit the Road
– Launched website• Adding more bus routes
– Adding timetable information
Moving forward – ownership
• Team needs to work this out• No substantive discussion over
weekend– Focus is on doing something
• Dependent on who has time/energy/interest in moving forward
• Clearly a key issue
Value of this event
• Networking– Brings people together to work on something
• Not just to talk
• Ideas touted are interesting• Teams and outputs
– Outputs definitely impressive– Unclear if they will go anywhere
• Good way of finding people for incubators
Can do better…
• Not enough graphics folks• Not enough work on pushing bizfolk
and techies together• Tighter evaluation criteria• Encourage prep work
– People give 3 slides on idea and how to make it
Future developments
• Keep watching teams that produced working code
• Planning on running another event– Probably Sept timeframe
A word from our sponsors…
Links
• http://www.web2ireland.org/2010/05/12/first-dublin-startup-weekend-a-great-success/
• http://flinter.com/2010/05/11/at-dublin-startup-weekend/
• http://eoinbailey.com/blog/dublin-startup-weekend-analysis-and-our-prototype-hit-road
• http://www.techme2.eu/now/2010/05/startup-weekend-dublin-and-paris/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/benarent/sets/72157624017775318/
• http://www.jimscollins.com/startup-weekend-dublin-2010/
Links
• GeoDealio– www.geodealio.com
• Classometer– www.classometer.com
• Hit the Road– http://hunter.ucd.ie/commutable/
• CauseHere– www.causehere.org
That’s all folks!
Questions?
www.slideshare.net/seanrmurphy@seanrmuphy