Try Before You Buy: Triangle Startup Weekend

June 3rd, 2011

By Joe Procopio

Joe Procopio

Starting a startup is easy.

In fact, it’s so easy you could do it in a weekend. And I’m not talking about some sort of fly-by-night or franchise opportunity — I’m talking actual technology-oriented product company, off the ground and running, from incorporation paperwork to website to actual idea with enough game-changing potential to get you at least a dozen meetings.

It’s actually gotten much easier lately, what with the ubiquity of the web and mobile and the ability to swap technology between the two. Don’t have the right idea? Social is a veritable bottle full of bubbles waiting for you to latch on to some new trend before it becomes Rickrolling.

By the way, you can monetize Rickrolling, and without having to resort to ads… but I’ve said too much already.

So Why Isn’t Everyone Doing It?

Because it’s damn hard, that’s why.

Starting a startup is cake. The hard part is keeping the startup above water through the proof of concept, getting the right people in place, making sure they stay motivated through the dark early hours, and working your ass off all while risking what little capital you have and at the same time not amassing any additional funds for things like food and shelter.

Wow, that’s fun.

And that will only get you about 10% of the way there. Then comes the inevitable rejection. A big fat stinking ton of rejection, from potential customers, potential investors, not to mention friends, family, and advisors – all of whom really have your best interests at heart, but let’s face it — if they had your vision they’d have stolen your idea and started their own company.

You struggle through criticism after constant “no” after unfortunate company-sinking circumstance just to get to those all-too-rare highs.

But let me tell you something. Those highs will keep you in the game.

Startup Addiction

This is what Mital Patel must have felt when, during his last year of law school in 2009 and being curious but not being able to attend that year’s Triangle Startup Weekend, he wound up watching the Sunday presentations online. Curiosity turned into passion which became an addiction, and he’s been working with startups ever since.

This past winter, he jumped at the chance to be an organizer for Triangle Startup Weekend, which kicks off today at 6:00 p.m. in Bay 7, and he took the job coordinating the mentors, volunteers, and judges. He’s also done quite a bit of work socializing the event and building interest.

From our conversation, I got the impression that Triangle Startup Weekend is just like starting a startup, only in an insanely short amount of time with no real risk.

The First One is Free

There’s something deceptively cool about the concept of Triangle Startup Weekend in the sense that it’s a total try-before-you-buy approach to creating entrepreneurs.

Everyone gets a chance to pitch, and most will feel that real sting of rejection when a handful of the best ideas are voted on and chosen, with the attendees divided up among the winners. The process is pretty organic from there.

The teams form and are allowed to survive or fail on their own. Hopefully they get the right mix of technology, business, marketing, and leadership. They can work up to 24 hours both days, thus providing the opportunity to test-drive the startup work ethic.

There’s also beer there, which will test the threshold of each team’s “corporate culture.”

The crowd tends to thin out by Sunday, at which point many will have gotten that firsthand taste of startup abandonment.

Judging takes place on Sunday, and those judges will include names like Jason Caplain, Joe Colopy, Brian Handly, David Spitz, and Joe Velk.

Then What?

That’s the beauty of it. Who knows? Just like with a real startup, creating a viable product and a business model and a marketing plan is Step 1. Where it goes from there is anybody’s guess.

But I’ll tell you one thing. It’s going to take more people and more time. Decisions will need to be made, the decisions that have killed off so many startup companies before they see the light of day.

And that’s the point where it all comes together. Do you have a folly on your hands? A giant timesuck? Or do you have something like Zaarly, which came out of Startup Weekend LA and three weeks later landed $1 million in funding.

See What I Mean About Those Highs?

That’s the draw. Once you get a whiff, a taste, a glimpse of what the possibilities might be – and it’s not relegated to money, it’s that feeling of changing the game, of working on something meaningful, of creating a company from nothing with your own two hands – it’s hard not to try to do it again.

One of the myths about working at a startup, of which there are, I don’t know, three, is that it takes some kind of computer-hugging genius to get in on the ground floor and become employee number X, and even then success is pretty much a crap shoot and even then you need to be in the Valley anyhow.

This is patently untrue.

But the only way to find out if you can get from point A to point B is to give it a shot, and Triangle Startup Weekend is a risk-free way to do just that. If you’re not already involved, drop by the presentations on Sunday, if just to get that first taste.

Triangle Startup Weekend

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Joe Procopio heads up product engineering for sports media startup StatSheet. He also owns consulting firm Intrepid Company and creative network Intrepid Media and runs the startup social ExitEvent. Joe can be reached via Twitter @jproco or via joeprocopio.com.

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One Response to “Try Before You Buy: Triangle Startup Weekend”

Mital Patel says:

June 3, 2011 at 10.13.am.

Just wanted to add that CED and TIMA were co-organizers as well. They did a lot more heavy lifting than I did.

-Mital

Try Before You Buy: Triangle Startup Weekend

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One Response to “Try Before You Buy: Triangle Startup Weekend”