Over the years, we’ve covered a number of startups, or rather projects, that were born out of the so-called Startup Weekends. Basically, these are regional community events where developers, designers and business people come together on a given weekend, decide to pursue the creation of one or more fresh web application(s) or service(s) and subsequently cook them up in a very brief period of time (usually 54 hours).
Founded in 2007 by Andrew Hyde from TechStars, the concept quickly caught on and has since been held in many U.S. cities as well as many other countries across the globe.
But what happens to all these projects after they’ve launched? Do any of them actually take off or do most die a silent death? Are they usually left for what they were after the weekend or does development on the services and applications continue?
Those are the questions German bloggers Alexander Graf and Florian Hermsdorf set out to answer, and they’ve come up with a pretty eye-opening analysis based on their quick-and-dirty research. Alexander and Florian took a look at all the projects that were launched at startup weekends, most in the U.S., and kept track of the ones that are still active, idle, explicitly closed or downright offline. The ‘idle’ status came in three degrees, depending on if there have been no notable new developments on the project for the last 3, 6 or more months. The stats will be updated every 3 months.
The results so far: only 12 out of the 116 startups (approximately 10 percent) launched after Startup Weekends held from July 2007 to April 2009 can still be considered active, and 35 out of the bunch (approx. 30 percent) are currently offline. Most of the projects carry the ‘idle’ status, which means there have been no visible changes to the service for a certain period of time.
This does not necessarily mean that Startup Weekends as a concept fails, because I imagine some if not most of the people involved already have a regular job or their own startup and jump in it for the connections they make at the event or simply for the thrill of making something that works in a short period of time. That said, dreamers who thought this would ultimately prove one of the better ways to launch successful startups are now presented with proof that building companies generally takes much more than a fun weekend of work among peers, particularly in this economic climate.
Can you really call it an honest attempt at a start-up? They’re more coding jam sessions.
Startup Weekend is definitely more than just a coding jam session, I built an active panel of advisors and even several possible investors for 14gears just in the few short weeks since the SF one, not to mention the new friends I made as well.
I also went to Super Happy Dev House last weekend, that had more of the “coders and only coders” vibe that’s typical of jam sessions.
You are correct that mostly they are weekend long coding sessions. The great thing about it is that you meet amazing people. Many who are really passionate about the startup culture.
Anyhow. I am the founder of Mugasha and we launched in private beta In January and are planning to launch publicly in around July. http://www.muga...gnup/techcrunch
Wow, I love this – how are you getting the rights to stream? Do you find a lot of the tracks obscure and not purchasable? Would be cool to link to vinyl stores for the hard to find stuff.
We are working with independent labels/artists to acquire rights to stream their podcasts.
Dude, you should go to startupstats.org and create a profile for your business. We’re trying to collect as much startup data as possible, so we’d love to include you guys!
Go Atlanta! We’ve got Skribit and Twitpay.
Although, to be honest, I don’t think Twitpay is going to last much longer. But Skribit’s definitely going strong.
Wow, Tim, thanks for the plug. Your check’s in the mail.
Ivey, why not twitpay him the money? =)
Sorry, I hadn’t heard anything out of you guys in a while other than coming out of beta. And I also hadn’t seen much serious usage out of the service. So, my assumptions were incorrect and I apologize for that.
No problem, Tim. We’ve been focused on the technology and not so much on marketing. You’ll hear a big announcement from Twitpay on May 14, though, so stay tuned.
Something in the water in Atlanta!
Or we budget more money toward pizza and beer. : )
That can’t possibly be true. Atlanta doesn’t have any water.
So many offline and idle, these are more like coding sessions where they code once and forget it? and always go for new ones instead of working on the already started ones?
10% is a pretty decent success rate
Go Andrew!
It all depends on what you define ’success’ to be, of course
Putting aside Andrew’s stated goal to build community, would not success be defined as how Startup Weekend companies do in comparison to the broader technology startup community?
Note that the above is not actually an analysis of success vs. fail (there are other metrics for that), I just think it’s worth pointing out that most tend to be short-lived. This isn’t throwing a brick at the SW concept, quite the contrary in fact, as I think the success of these events isn’t exactly determined by the rate of how many are still alive after a certain period of time.
As I said, there are other metrics for that worth looking at later, but this is a good way to start looking at it.
Being a part of a session (Launch48) in London, the reasons you highlighted are true. other reasons i would say are
1. The participants barely know each other before they jump in . This goes against the principles of successful team building.
2. Distance plays a very important role. The participants live so far away from each other and it is difficult to meet up after the event has taken place.
3. Most importantly, it projects started are most times, no ones passion but was brought up as a second or third idea of someone (who will pitch is core idea publicly to a bunch of strangers)
Solution:
1. These events should be held at Universities where there is a higher chance of follow up as per distance and other issues
2. More effort should be put into building/selecting the team than the actual coding.
Just so you know, Two out of four developed at http://launch48.com are still moving on
they are
http://vouchacha.com and http://ilikeucoz.com
PS: I was part of the VouChaCha team
i was at the second launch48 meeting. my impression was that people were more interested in the concepts of running the business and using the weekend as a learning tool. Saying that Vouchacha deserves to go further. I don’t see ilikeucoz going very far though.
Hey if you guys want to create profiles on startupstats.org that would be sweet! We can always use more data.
That’s sad. I guess ideas die and only the strong survive. Natural selection?
well i guess you wouldnt expect a long life for something that was build in 54 hours. but anyway i like the idea of startupweekend.
oh, but that one weekend is like a year for a startup
not likely
in any case, its great to work with people you’ve never worked with before
and the current modus operandi is much better than what they started with. many teams working on the idea that appeals to them, rather than 40 developers working on one idea that somehow had to appeal to everybody
I doubt that many of the participants are actually trying to launch a successful startup at such events.
the code is not forgotten or left to die, but often implemented in other “real” applications, or shelved until the proper opportunity comes knocking.
It’s a “Throw it at the wall and see what sticks?” thing.
Does one maintain or even remember everything that sticks to your wall? I certainly don’t, but it’s a nice way of trying out new stuff.
A 10% survival rate for start-ups after two years isn’t spectacular but – given the limitations that @OoTheNigerian mentions – it’s not to be sniffed out either.
Be a bit more positive, TC
Considering the circumstances – throwing ideas against a wall and seeing which one sticks – I’d consider 10% a decent success rate.
I think another point should be made about these events: they provide a great way for teams to get to know new people and learn their way of starting.
I’d be interested in an analysis of how many people met at events like this and subsequently worked together on other projects – this is also a successful outcome. I would expect the experience of working together gives you a great idea of who is good and who isn’t, and who fits your working style.
I’ve run techdating events in London and our experience was that often people didn’t connect on the projects they talked about on the day, but often many months later started working together – it definately took time for the relationships to cemment.
In a post published in 2007 by Techcrunch, a well known venture capitalist announced that his failure rate was 20% [http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/30/vcs-whats-your-failure-rate/ ].
I suspect that VC failure rates are probably higher now with the global economic meltdown.
Based on this, I’d say these stats are not to bad for ideas whipped into shape in a weekend. I also suspect that some of the shoestring sites are probably more profitable than many of the services written about on TC, some of which have huge costs and no revenue!
tweetburner.com did
As many commenter have already said, a 10% “still operating” rate for the stage of company Startup Weekend is working with is to be expected and maybe even better then the industry average. The difference here is instead of quietly taking down the site you and a friend built in your basement that never got any traction and you lost interest in, when you participate in Startup Weekend everyone knows you moved on to other things.
A good deal of Startup Weekend participants rave about the experience and often branch off to host their own Startup Weekends.
I was at the Chicago Startup Weekend recently and people traveled in from all around the Midwest because they had a good experience at a weekend before and wanted to participate in the community formed around the event all over again.
The data is interesting, and I’m glad someone is tracking it, hopefully it will remind us all to keep “failing fast” and keep moving until we find that elusive <10% success.
Paul, do you find it odd that Indianapolis’ startup weekend isn’t reviewed here? ShoutNow is still operating quite well and Pockettales is still progressing (as you know).
Maybe I should read the report to see how they decided which startup weekends to review.
You forgot gpsAssassins which was also at the Nashville, TN Startup Weekend.
We have been in a private beta for 3 months and are working to get our iPhone version into the App Store (paperwork delays right now). Shortly after we will have the Android version ready.
Our website is http://gpsassassins.com. We expect to be around for a while longer
Hey go over to startupstats.org and create a profile so we can keep track of your business.
Thats about 10% continuing to operate. Ask a VC what their rates are, 1 in 5 make it? 1 in 10? And they investigate the companies first before deciding to invest, how many companies do they actually see and invest in, 1 in 100, in a 1000? This rate does not actually seem that bad to me.
These guys passed up the Indianapolis Startup Weekend where ShoutNow was born, which has been very active and will see more action this summer.
What’s really awesome is that all these dead/idle companies can still make money… sell it on Startup Junkyard. (www.startupjunkyard.com)
Another missing city that held a SW: Washington, DC (rather, Falls Church, VA).
Love “studies” like this.
If the only metrics being measured in this analysis are around the operating rate, there is a huge piece missing. The bonds and relationships formed I have formed during my 4 Startup Weekends have evolved into many real business opportunities and partnerships.
The end product is not the as much the goal as is the community around the challenge of undertaking the task of creating and developing an idea with strangers in a short period of time.
Andrew Hyde has done a phenomenal job at bringing people together in cities where they may have never interacted. The tech community is better because of him.
Agreed. Despite the fact that a few companies didn’t launch (yet), there were still some great bonds and relationships made at SW Weekend that I never would have made otherwise.
Very interesting.
As part of the Bloomington (Indiana) startup weekend, i have heard many, many of the ~100 participants say that they went into the weekend with the dual goals of a) starting a company and b) meeting other like-minded folk from the community.
The same people have said that, though the first goal has not yet been accomplished (and may never be), the second has been a huge success.
It would be interesting to see a follow-on analysis which includes the second goal as well.
Thanks for the write up Robin!
Interesting research they did.
The point I would add, as the other commenters have, is the main goal of the weekend is to build community. That has always been goal #1. In many ways we have done an amazing job doing just this (always room for improvement).
The main metrics I view the weekends as successful or not are a bit different:
*Is the tech community more collaborative?
*Are people finding new jobs (over 90 have)
*Are people learning and growing as technologists and entrepreneurs.
We have had seven startups receive seed rounds. For many, this is their first venture into raising funds, and learn quite a bit from the more experienced in the group.
Startups are hard work, and in a way I applaud the ‘fail fast’ mentality of some teams. This isn’t a get rich quick program, it is a peak into the blood sweat and tears of an early early stage startup.
As an attendee of the first Startup Weekend and a longtime observer of the concept’s progress, I’ve got to say that “building community” seems like a fall-back, non-quantitative way to explain its failure. As soon as it became apparent that no viable startups could be launched from the weekend, you switched your tune to this kumbaya community building junk.
Community can not be “built,” it grows organically and trying to facilitate it with a couple carpet-bagging, stuttering, bottom-rung Internet famous clowns who have no operating experience is laughable. It’s the type of hyped up joke only the blogosphere and its attendant rubes would waste a weekend on.
Oh, and your note on “applauding”the “fail fast” mentality of some of the teams brings up another point. You do realize you’re not an expert on startups because of VCwear right? Aping other people who speak with experience about startup success does not make you an expert, nor does it make you successful. Your entire career is a history of poorly executed work, so maybe you should be blogging on self-promotion in the face of failure instead of babbling about how “startups are hard work” and how SW gives people a true look at what its like to be in an early stage startup. Honestly you dont have the first clue.
I’m leaving this anonymously because I live and work in Boulder (in an early stage startup) where speaking against anything “community” oriented is akin to endorsing the Holocaust. What an “amazing” world.
I’m thinking you should check out another Startup Weekend; the first Startup Weekend was a long time ago.
I have attended four Startup Weekend events since December 2008 and have created amazing relationships (both personal and professional), been apart of several viable, very alive startups (ShoutNow, Rare Brew, Startup Junkyard), and feel that Startup Weekend is a very awesome entry point into this startup community.
Your issues with Andrew aside, I don’t think you can honestly say that Startup Weekend doesn’t work, or these businesses can’t/won’t make it, or that there isn’t a community that is being seeded by the efforts of this organization. You can’t, because I am experiencing this first hand.
As an attendee of the first startup weekend in Boulder you witnessed that day one, hour one, the goal was to bring friends together and work on projects.
Wait, you didn’t realize vcwear was a joke built on a plane?
Would love to chat with you on how this can be better, the model is open so if you have ideas, try them out!
I’m not sure how events like Startup Weekend are evidence of a phony “built” startup scene. There are grassroots type events in Boulder every single week.
If you don’t like them, don’t participate, or better yet: propose non-bitter suggestions for how to improve them, start your own, or find someone you deem “qualified” to organize and plan events.
In my experience, Andrew and co. have been nothing but receptive to constructive criticism.
The most fun about this is trying to figure out where the personal scorn and contempt for Andrew comes from. He totally nailed your girlfriend, didn’t he?
You crazy Boulder kids!
Agree that original poster obviously has some sort of personal problem with Andrew, but it’s probably not GF related as it’s pretty common knowledge that Andrew is gay. Maybe BF related?
I don’t see why it was necessary to say that Startup Weekends don’t build communities. Hell I’ve hired two people I’ve met at a Startup Weekend at our startup.
If you want to meet like minded people go to a Startup Weekend.
I was also there at the first SW. Had a great time, met some great people, and learned a lot. We had frustrations and successes, and I mostly looked back on it fondly after I caught up on sleep.
I don’t think 10% is too bad. What, 4 in 5 small businesses fail within 5 year? And most of those are worked on full time by people who have dedicated their whole lives to them, right? (I suppose we’ll have to wait a couple of years to see if the 10% of SW successes make it to 5 years.)
I think we need more Startup Weekends…not less. In our daily work, we’re often in silos by work product – marketing, development, legal, etc. – and SW breaks down those walls in ways that shouldn’t be underestimated.
In that short weekend, I do think the “fail fast” (and cheaply) idea got a big shot in the arm. Yes, startups are hard work and take dedication beyond the first 96 hours. I’ve done a bunch of startups before and after that July 2007 SW. The difference for me now is that SW taught me to focus only on what’s necessary to get it launched as soon as possible. I’m launching an idea right now that occurred to me just 3 weeks ago…and I’m feeling it’s going too slowly already!
Thanks for that lesson Andrew (and other friends of voSnap)!
Three points.
First, I find it interesting that the Indy Startup Weekend of December 2008—which launched ShoutNow (http://shoutnow.com/) and inspired another Startup event recently in Kansas City—wasn’t even listed.
Second, the format for SW radically changed after our Bloomington event out of necessity to avoid issues with SEC. Those legalities were thoroughly researched after the event and was perhaps the only reason Event Herder didn’t materialize as a real company (we legally couldn’t, because of our success in attracting attendees from too many states). The new format is great for putting out quantity and giving people different ways to get involved, but there is also some loss of a larger community that comes with working in smaller groups, as opposed to a large one of 100 people.
Finally, the success of startup weekends should never be tied to money made or companies launched. While that is the task that brings people together, it is the quality of the relationships that are formed that weekend that is a better indicator. I think I can speak for Bloomington that our Startup Weekend event brought a new sense of awareness in our local tech, academic and business community. Bloomington is the stronger for it.
Agreed Kevin. Fully agreed.
OurBlock is active and I would happily share our proposal, pitch and product with TechCrunch . The reason being, we will be applying to launch at TechCrunch 50 and I’m keeping things quiet until then.
Individuals can always take a peek at our progress at http://blog.adamsblock.com or http://adamsblock.com
(OurBlock.TV is still being transferred to our hosting company).
Hey Adam! Glad to hear a fellow SWSF09 alum is still going strong. I’ve had the same motivation behind keeping 14gears on the downlow
not to mention that October is the next application period for Ycombinator.
Hey Al! That’s awesome. I think snoozemail has excellent traction so I’ve been tracking your progress. It’s hard not to announce really cool stuff but patience really pays off.
Thanks man, I feel likewise! Both about trying to keep tabs on OurBlock and also about the difficulty in keeping quiet about exciting features while in stealth mode. I’m looking forward to catching up at the SW reunion meetings! (the reunions might also be a key differentiation from past weekends, I think)
If you want to keep up with developments, I’m renaming the SnoozeMail app and building it out with more robust features, sign up here to keep in touch:
http://14gears.com
Ok, last plug in the comments, I swear.
I echo Rana’s comment.
I attended my first Startup Weekend in Detroit last month and had a great time. It was a great community exercise and allowed me to make a ton of new contacts.
Even if our idea wasn’t a success, I’d still attend another one.
Hi, I’m Al Abut from SnoozeMail (sf startup weekend 2, april 2009).
I think our startup is pretty typical of the bunch that do succeed – we built a simple app that solved a real problem (help people empty their email inbox), gathered passionate users very quickly and yet the team members had to go their own ways to pursue their own projects.
Which is totally fine! Since I’m the one that brought the idea to Startup Weekend and the prototype app proved there was a need for better email management, I’m building a new team to solve that same problem and naming the company 14gears:
http://14gears.com
And I got more out SW than just a proof of concept – I built a strong panel of active advisors and even several possible investors! I’ve got my first investor pitch (ever!) tomorrow
so yeah, I’d say that weekend was a success. It all depends on what you’re hoping to get out of it and how strong (and focused) the concept is.
I think the point of the startup weekend idea is this: so much of the ’success’ of a startup is due to external factors and chance, why not just churn them out every few weekends and hope for one to take off? I would expect that a lot of them fail, that’s not the point, some of them take off and for very little effort. I would be interested in seeing a similar list of projects (along with idle/active) status for startups of any kind, there can’t be that much difference.
I’m not saying these stats have no value, but I think the question they answer is only likely to be asked by someone who has no idea about what these events are for.
More broadly interesting, I think, is to look at the people involved with the “successes” and see how many earlier startup weekend “failures” they were involved with.
Some VC made the point that society at large gained value from failed startups, even if investors lost their money, because of the learning and trust built between the people working on the project. That sort of thing would seem to be a huge part of the value of community building events like these.
I did a video on SFSW09 for my blog, and one thing both Andrew said that really stood out to me is that Startup Weekend is one of the only events where you don’t talk about what you do, you DO what you do.
You can go to networking events all you want, but SW gives folks a real opportunity to see if their neighbors, friends, people they look up to and even their competitors are worth their salt.
Outside of the “failure rate debate” I think that’s some pretty powerful stuff.
Indinero isn’t inactive — just got funding from Lightspeed Capital Partners.
As many posters have noted, there is more than the one measure of success the German researchers are using. I have attended three startup weekends and facilitated five in very different areas of the country.
It seems the word community is one that people have a hard time understanding, it’s kind of a catch all phrase for the magic – yeah, I used that word – that happens at startup weekend.
People attend the weekends many times to test drive potential business partners or to meet people. I met a very well networked attendee at Seattle SW2 that told me that 50% of the attendees were new to him. This is someone well known and well liked in the community – yet SW brought out people and brought them into the community.
To say they are a coding weekend misses the bigger point. It’s not a tech camp, per se. It really is an entrepreneur weekend. What happens is you get people from very different worlds – tech people and marketing/biz/design people – who are often pitted against each other for resources in a traditional work place. But those differences disappear during startup weekend. Reason? They all speak the common language of Entrepreneurship. (Or for the unemployed English majors – lingua franca – always wanted to use that obscure bit of knowledge in a sentence.)
Yes, part of it is about starting companies that weekend. Part of it is about creating relationships that create companies after the weekend. But one thing I have observed over and over is marketing people appreciating the ART of programming and tech people appreciating the value of telling a story, of communicating.
If there’s one thing that seems obvious to me it is that both tech and business people have to work together to create lasting companies. Try doing launch, relaunch with departments separated (metaphorically) in a big company. It won’t work very well. The evolution of business favors those who are adaptable, accepting and aggressive.
Finally, if this sounds good to you, I suggest you join the linked in group Entrepreneurs = Recovery
I was part of the handshak.es team, location based social networking on your iPhone, from the Boulder2 SW. The project failed fast as over the months after SW more information was gathered about larger and better funded competitors executing on the same idea.
I got out of it a network of folks in the startup community and some really good friends. @heyrich and I worked so well together, we created @iVolunteer from our handshak.es knowledge and our network. It was initially a location based volunteering application for the iPhone. With community involvement, its now more of a platform.
None of this would probably have happened without SW. So while our business failed, the impact and momentum from that SW is still going strong.
It is awesome to find out that their reserch found two companies in Columbus still up and going!
Nice research!
I’ve always thought that Startup Weekend was more about the experience rather than the longevity of projects.
Entertaining.
As part of the SponsorHub team, we’re going to be announcing the launch real soon (doing testing now).
Maybe we should compare these ratios to real startup ideas? Maybe the author should talk to some of the people doing the startup ideas? (Like solid journalists would).
This list seems poorly researched. How exactly did they try to contact all these teams?
Also, I think “Idle” is misleading. Some of the “idle” groups *have* seen improvements to their project in 3, 6, or more months (for instance, http://www.tweetsum.com launched an improved version of the index).
Additionally, some of the “idle” projects were designed with the fact they had one weekend to put together something in mind, and they created something they could make and get to a “done” stage without too much additional effort. It doesn’t mean this projects didn’t go anywhere – they are still out there, working. They just had correct scope. Those projects are probably the biggest successes of all, because those involved learned to master reasonable expectations of what can be done in a specific time period.
First off, I want to thank Andrew for organizing such a great event. My team Cheap Parking is still very active. Most of the team has other jobs. After the weekend progress has slowed a bit but we expect to launch our Android parking application in May. We have also added a new developer to work on our iPhone app. You can check out our website and twitter for updates on our progress.
Was at SWSF09 and I think:
a) it’s fantastic that there’s research being done to document the success rate of startup weekend companies;
b) it’s hilarious that TechCrunch is unaware that 10% is commonly cited as a healthy success rate for venture-funded startups.
#45 SputWurk is definitely active, not idle. It has been renamed and is now known as JoeMetric.
As much of a douche Andrew is :p (I was at the bloomington event) I have the say that I’ve forged some great relationships and friendships both personal and business.
In the end… it doesn’t matter if the company fails or not… its about jump starting the tech community and bringing together thought leaders.
SW weekend was one of the coolest things I’ve done while at IU, regardless of the fact that our startup was a monumental failure (too many people, SEC issues, design by committee, etc)
just a thought …
@Gary Sheynkman: Wow, it’s totally uncool to just up and call someone names on the internet, especially without even stating a reason for your strong feelings that caused such a reaction. In such cases, I think the derogatory term reflects more about the person posting it than on the original target.
My experience has been that Andrew is a nice guy with a bold vision who’s done quite a bit to be a community catalyst for startup enthusiasts in many cities. Despite problems with the SEC, two Startup Weekends in Seattle have helped get like-minded folk together and strengthened our ability to support each other.
I met Gary via Startup Weekend. I’ll even go as far as saying its one of the cooler things thats ever happened in Indiana…. period.
Hi all,
Probably the pure fact that startups coming from a startup weekend are not as high is just a single piece of the learning equation.
There is so much good out of collaborating setting up a new business on scratch.
How many interpersonal projects have been set up from participants of that startup weekend amongst them?
How much learning could evolve in everybody’s own work?
What are worth the personal connection initiated by the startup weekends?
Lots more benefits than we think and at first see.
Cheers,
Ralf