Condensing several weeks worth of entrepreneurial experience and work into a single weekend might sound like a crazy undertaking on the surface, however after experiencing it firsthand, I can happily vouch for its efficacy in producing viable, innovative and downright fun ventures.
While distilling everything learnt into a single blog post is going to be next to impossible, I did have some takeaways that stood out for me:
Ideas are like diamonds
Contrary to popular belief, diamonds are one of the most commonly occurring gemstones on the planet. Their rarity, and resultant massive over inflation of value, are for the most part dictated by the monopolistic practices of certain key distributors.
Ideas seem to be victim to similar misconceptions. Most people I speak to think a good idea is hard to come by and extremely valuable. Those that have ideas use that argument as an excuse to guard them jealously, those that don't, use it as a crutch to explain away their laziness or lack of imagination. Now I'm not insinuating that ideas are worthless hunks of rock, but there's nothing like seeing 20 ideas generated in 10 minutes to really make you reconsider their scarcity and value.
Keep an eye on overlap
People, in my opinion, are the key differentiators between the success and failure of pretty much any startup. It's true that lady luck can make several cameos during the course of an act, but really it's the cast that will makes or breaks the show. Having said that, It's possible to have situations where great people just aren't great together, luckily those problems are easy to avoid if you're keeping a close eye on overlap.
Overlap of team member personalities and skill sets is a crucial factor in having a successful team, the trick is not having too much or too little. It's important for a startup that no single member of the team is out of touch with what the other members are doing, equally it's vital that no two members of the team are butting heads due to personality clashes or introducing inefficiencies by doubling up on work.
For those of you who, as I do, like to think in pictures here's a simplified model:
10% Inspiration, 20% Perspiration, 70% Administration
In this case, administration is a catchall for the cornucopia of business functions associated with running a startup. These include, in no particular order, marketing, market research, drafting business plans, building case studies, writing pitches, created financial projections, budgeting, managing staff, I could go on.
A little over a month ago now I resigned from my regular 9-5 in order to pursue startup dreams, and in my mind the story always seemed to go a little something like: "guy has an idea, puts in blood, sweat and tears to build it, ..., profit". This perception is rapidly changing for me and Startup Camp has helped really drive that message home. While it's true that the barriers to entry for building applications have been virtually demolished, the basic principles of running a functioning business have remained very much the same. You simply can't expect to make do with dreams and elbow grease alone, and I for one intend on starting to take the business side of things a little more seriously.
Job well done to all the people that participated, not only did we make some interesting apps, but some good friends as well. I hope that the startup community in Melbourne only continues to grow, with events like this it's certain that it will.
Thanks goes out to Bart Jellema and Kim Chen of Tjoos for setting up the first of what I hope will be many Statup Camp Melbourne events, Maxim Shklyar of Kisla Interactive for hosting the event in his swank studio and Michael Specht of Inspecht for helping with organising the event and spreading the word to pretty much everyone.
