Here at Startup Weekend, this is an amazing group of people. VoSnap is for real, alpha launching tonight!

Wow - I’ve never had the pleasure of being in one room with some many dedicated and talented folks in my life. The experience of a lifetime.

I’ve never been able to see myself wave to the camera while writing about waving to the camera. Some sort of self-referntial heaven I suppose.

This is super cool guys! Crank it out 1d 5h 18m left

No big deal. I know a guy who started a company and sold it on ebay within 24 hours.

It’s sweaty in here.

Well, the best companies are often those started because the founders have a need. With 70 founders and one weekend, they certainly need to be able to make quick group decisions

I know this guy named Pierre that started (and coded) a company over the labor day weekend in 1997 . . . . I think the company is called eJay . . . eCay . .. eKay . . . or something similar. . .

“[...] a product that facilitates quick decision making among a group.” Only guys outside the valley get to have this much fun with a product idea. That’s pure comedy gold.

@ erica, on a side note, you’re blog is cool.

interesting concept to watch, to say the least.
i’d love to see how/where this goes…

wow - 70 founders.
that’s definitly overkill - lol; one can create a multimillion-dollar web co. with a couple people only.

the bureaucracy just to order a pizza must be a real bi*ch.

@lawrence, we’ve taken any pizza that we get

wow, how many people does it take to screw in a lightbulb !

60 of these people must be sitting around with there thumbs somewhere dark.

I mean come on …

- grab an ec2 server
- write some rails code
- create some graphics
- deploy it

I’m in Westminster … knew nothing about this project … would have enjoyed streaming it live via Justin.TV

Actually, there’s 70 of us because we love to hang out with other people. We’re really growing as a team, learning how to work with strangers and (at least I’m) loving the flow of communication happening around us all the time.

I’m here because the entrepreneurial energy is palpable. Never been part of a group quite like this. It’s an honor.

I smell a digg clone with a facebook app

70 people to make a polling system. Wow. What a waste of talent.

wow, I designed a tool like this on a plane ride to Cali a few weeks ago. Same idea, but I have’nt had time to finish it up. I even picked up ‘DecideAlready.com’ to publish it to.

check out top20network.com, they have a similar tool, but gotta have a .edu email address from a top 20 school to get in, surely someone from those 70 people do, right?

I think DecideAlready should acquire vosnap for $10k and a third round draft pick.

Question for those involved: How’d you get involved?

@Brian basically, it’s pretty easy…we just signed up at startupweekend.com and we were in! now, this is kind of an extraordinary case in that the folks that are the founders are pretty freaking smart. no “dead weight” if you will…

All in all, this is freaking amazing thus far.

So one last thing that I’d like to mention about Startup Weekend is that the idea isn’t to just make a cool product and get it out there. The idea is that we build an entire, fully functional entity in less than 3 days. That means not only developers and designers, but we’ve got a legal team, business development team, marketing and PR team…I mean, this thing is a whole company.

In less than 24 hours, we had an idea, a pre-alpha, a design, advertisers, incorporation set up, trademark filed, not to mention…we got TechCrunched. I’m not bragging…I’m encouraging more people to maybe get something like this going…it’s not just about the company we create, it’s the experience…the people, etc.

This is silly, and has a whiff of San Jose, circa 1999.

Hey, I know! Why don’t we sell pets online? You can FedEx a labradoodle, right?

This is an interesting experiment, and if most of the participants are only doing it with the expectation that it will be a fun experience, that’s great.

However I do think that, on a broader level, this is a reflection of the froth that exists within Web 2.0. The notion that you can create a viable “startup” (i.e. company - not product) in a weekend, is naive. And the fact that the concept selected by a group that ostensibly contained some smart and creative people is a Web 2.0 version of a simple polling application shows what I feel is one of the biggest problems facing Web 2.0: lack of innovation. We keep seeing copycats and clones of existing services, and entrepreneurs frequently attack the same “problems,” which in reality, aren’t problems that are the source of significant pain for average consumers or businesses. Of course, the free-flowing venture capital spigot is partially to blame for this. While there are a lot of intelligent entrepreneurs out there capable of creating great things, so much money is being thrown at less-than-innovative Web 2.0 concepts that it’s difficult not to take advantage of that. Why try to solve a real challenge when you can raise $1 million for a “social ______”?

All of this said, Startup Weekend just might be Web 2.0’s version of Woodstock, and while I don’t think a viable long-term *business* will emerge, hopefully people have fun because the Web 2.0 Summer of Love won’t last forever.

http://www.drama20show.com/200.....woodstock/

hmmm…. i have a lot of respect for brad feld, and geeks in general, however i’ll be very surprised to see how 70 people can come together over a weekend and create an organized piece of software.

without prior org structure & delegation, i’d imagine productivity would max out at around 10 people who’ve never worked together before trying to do something in

I wouldn’t say “Woodstock” as much as Destination Imagination. Heck, Junior Achievement even. I think these things are great, and if they come up with anything to help the world burn out on trivial web concepts, then I’m all for it as well. Useful would be a plus.

Many seem to have the impression that we have a ton of redundancy and bureaucracy - really we don’t. I too was doubtful as to the delegation and administration of tasks, however, you put several dozen driven and dedicated people room together and everything falls into place - there has been next to no friction and we are powering along. There is no time to waste with complex administration - as cliche as it sounds, you just get things done.

Just the two cents of someone who has been immersed in this for the past 30 hours…

Choices will be sent out to the group via email… Do you mean like Relaytor?
http://www.relaytor.com/

I think it would be easier for a single person to build something like that in a day than for 70. The overhead of coordinating work of such a large team is very large, especially considering that it’s the first time these people work together. Learning to work as a group takes time, no matter how smart and dedicated you are.

Jeez, so many negative nancys around here. :/

Good luck guys, and have fun. I’m looking forward to seeing the finished product!

Damn why am I not there? Sounds like fun

Whoa, 70 people! When I first heard about the Startup Weekend I assumed they’d be breaking up into smaller teams and creating several startups, not one free-for-all.

I know Google at one time (and I’d assume this still holds) had 3-person product development teams for many of their projects. More employees is not necessarily better, nor faster, nor cheaper, was one lesson learnt from the dot-com era (been there, done that).

I bet there was some cherrypicking involved to ensure it wasn’t a weekend of Rails vs Java vs .Net

How many Coloradans does it take to create a startup?

One to choose the business plan, another one to write the code, another one to post comments at TechCrunch, and a further 67 to buy the tee-shirt.

It’s interesting to read all the comments on here. I suppose I shouldn’t be all that surprised to note the difference in comments from those who are in attendance and those who are watching from the sidelines.

Honestly, I walked in the door on Friday at 6pm with a lot of the same concerns and fears as the folks commenting here… I figured there’d be waaaay too many people and that the numbers would result in lots of duplication of effort, lots of wasted cycles from folks who were more or less observers, and a fragmented end-product. (I mean… do you ever need more than two or three core folks?)

In reality, people have been amazingly cool, pretty damn ego-less, and committed to making something that really rocks.

I get that it’d only take a few days (um… or a flight?) for a couple people to sketch out the design and flow or even basic programming for a tech play like this. I’ve even done that myself. But this isn’t just the TECH part that we’re building here. It’s a fully functioning company. In a weekend. Really. As a serial entrepreneur myself, you have no idea how cool it is to be able to walk four feet to the legal group, ask my question, and then get an answer or draft user agreement in like 20 minutes. Too cool.

Hell… maybe today I’ll start putting together an HR Department.

Sign up tonight and check out our tools!

So, one interesting side effect of this “extreme startup makeover” approach: no time to do competitive or market research. Someone tell these guys that they are already behind the competition. CircleUp http://www.circleup.com is over a year old, has funding, and looks like it does exactly the same thing.

@everyone who is attending the weekend

it would be much better if there were 7 teams of 10 people, with one team=1startup. and make it like a competition with a deadline. much more fun and much more productivity/head

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to comment. The energy here is amazing, and while the participants have tried to express it, there just really isn’t a good way to do it justice.

You would think that 70 people in a room, the majority of whom had never met, would be utter chaos. Not at all the way it is working out… this is a powerhouse of capacity that could continue to bang out ideas, even if once a quarter over a weekend, that rivals fully funded startups that take months and months to do.

As far as circleup? Six full months to beta, another 3 or 4 to private invite, and a launch in April of 2007? No SMS, and no white labeling for fun and profit. Not even close.

Seriously, 70 people, 54 hours… form zero to a product that easily rivals a funded effort is amazing. It might be the Kool-aid we had Friday night, but if you were here, you would understand.

“As far as circleup? Six full months to beta, another 3 or 4 to private invite, and a launch in April of 2007? No SMS, and no white labeling for fun and profit. Not even close.”

These points are irrelevant. The key considerations are:

1. The product you’re building has been built by others (as noted, Circleup is only one of a number of these services). You can even download free polling scripts that could be molded into what you’re creating. The differentiation between the features you mention you have and Circleup doesn’t is very minimal. I don’t think that these features will “make” or “break” either service and they could be easily replicated by any of your competitors. Most Web 2.0 startups fail to realize what tangible differentiation looks like. You need to have some sustainable advantage, whether it’s through defensible technology or a defensible business model.

2. You have competitors with a significant head start. In the case of Circleup, the company has funding, appeared at DEMO and has retained a PR firm. More importantly, the management team also looks quite experienced. So while I personally don’t think these services are compelling business opportunities, it’s clear that Circleup is making a go at trying to build a real company. If I had to pick which service (VoSnap or Circleup) has a better chance at “success,” it’s clearly Circleup because the foundations of a real company have been put in place. Quickly building a product is no substitute for establishing the framework that enables you to successfully get that product to market.

3. You mention that going from “zero to a product that easily rivals a funded effort is amazing.” Time to market is important, and I think there is a lot of validity to the concept of releasing products quickly to see if they sink or swim, but it’s also true that businesses that go through some planning cycle have a much better chance of success. Many businesses that would likely otherwise fail are never started because a simple analysis reveals them to be less-than-viable business opportunities. As I mentioned in my blog, this doesn’t mean that you need a bunch of MBAs doing market research and writing a 50 page business plan to create a successful startup, but a middle ground between these two schools of thought makes the most sense in my opinion. Going forward without much thought and paralysis by analysis are equally likely to result in failure.

I’m sure Startup Weekend has been fun and it’s an interesting experiment, but I think if anybody expects this to result in a successful business, they’re likely to be disappointed.

@ drama, agreed.

I personally think this kind of stuff is kind of cheesy, like the kind of stuff you see actors doing to try to get into the entertainment business versus their actually knowing how to get into the entertainment business.

I didn’t realize that this is what the program format was. Either way, innovation is cool and glad to hear people are having fun.

patricia - this is people creating stuff for the sole pleasure of doing so. People who don’t see what it is, don’t get what makes silicon valley beautiful.

Michael: I think you meant to say “People who don’t see what is, don’t get what makes Boulder, Colorado beautiful.”

Clever idea. Let me know if you want to borrow “The Clever Minkies” image for a little while. You know what they say about images. Worth a lottttttttt of words. And we’ve alreayd been designated as “Clever” around the world. After all, who wants their company to be considered “UnClever”.

Good Luck Guys!

“The Clever Minkies”
minkies@TheCleverMinkies.com

Drama - silicon valley is an idea, not a place.

So Silicon Valley is the new Atlantis? We need a slick marketing slogan for it like Vegas’ “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

“Silicon Valley. It’s more than a destination. It’s a way of life.”
“Silicon Valley. That somewhere over the rainbow.”
“Silicon Valley. Where dreams come true.”
“Silicon Valley. How will you spend your first billion?”
“Silicon Valley. Because you should have dated that geek in high school.”
“Live. Dream. Silicon Valley.”

Once VoSnap launches, let’s use it to find out which one should become Silicon Valley’s new official slogan.

No matter what happens, I think it’s a great example of how silly the silli-valley startup club is.

As a native of CO, this just seems to be a bunch of migrants (many from california) trying to stroke the collective ego. Give a kid a powerbook and he thinks he’s an engineer.

Not very representative of the ‘real’ CO startup scene at all, in my opinion.

But I do wish them the best, it looks like a lot of fun and a great challenge.

drama -

Silicon Valley — Get the fuck out before it’s too late.

@Drama 2.0 says:
1. The product you’re building has been built by others
2. You have competitors with a significant head start.

Ever hear of Google?

Seriously, I’m not at the event and think it probably won’t turn into a viable long-term business, but it sounds like fun and I bet a lot of people are learning a lot of lessons much more quickly than it takes some of us to learn when starting a company on their own. Perhaps 3-4 other companies will spin out as a result. Or maybe not, but at least they’re giving it a shot and doing something productive with the weekend instead of just posting snarky comments on blogs.

@Virtuous - Wow, a real, live native! Tell me, which tribe are you from?