Glance at the event listings in any newspaper or on any website, and you’re bound to find more than a few ways to while away the weekend. Hey, no problem. That’s what weekends are for.
But how often does one of those events give the casual (or even dedicated) malingerer a chance to really make something of him or herself?
Enter Madison Startup Weekend, a two-day-plus workshop that challenges participants – only a little cheekily – to “launch a start up in 54 hours.”
As outlandish as it may sound, the event, to be held April 27-29 at Madison College’s West Campus, is actually based on a tried-and-true formula, originated by the Kauffman Foundation, in which developers, coders, designers, and others with tech backgrounds collaborate with people with business backgrounds (marketing, finance, law, etc.) to flesh out their start-up ideas and push them quickly from the idea stage to the presentation stage.
“It’s all about coming to the event with an idea and then pitching that idea to the people in the crowd, and then people kind of vote with their feet and say, yeah, that’s a really cool idea, and I want to work with that project,” said Lorin Toepper, executive director of economic and workforce development-southeast region for Madison College, which is one of the main sponsors of the event. “So then these teams, they kind of form organically. Someone might have a really great idea but nobody can figure out how to get their hands around it, or it just doesn’t appeal to them, or whatever, and so that one kind of drops off to the side, whereas some other idea kind of gets legs, and then the teams form and they work on these projects the entire evening.”
Following the opening-night pitch sessions, teams work on their start-up ideas, focusing on customer development and striving to create a “minimal viable product.” At the end of the weekend, the teams demo their prototypes and solicit feedback from an expert panel.
Walking the walk
The Startup Weekend’s tagline, “No Talk, All Action,” pretty much says it all. This isn’t a conference where people interested in start ups simply talk about start ups. It’s an intensive, hands-on event meant to get people’s projects off the ground. Indeed, according to the Startup Weekend website, more than 36% of the start ups “launched” at the events are still going three months after the fact, and around 80% of participants say they plan to continue working with their teams.
“Yes, they’re definitely real [projects], and we actually have a lot of interest from the city of Madison,” said Toepper. “They’ve got that phone application now for the buses that allows you to see where your bus is on that route so you don’t panic. … They have a bunch of other applications that they’d like to have developed, and so they’re thinking of supporting this as a way to get those kinds of apps developed in the marketplace. And again, that leads to a start up for some bright entrepreneurs who say, ‘Hey, I can do that.’”
The key to these events, say Startup Weekend Madison’s sponsors, is the opportunity for collaboration among people of radically different backgrounds. That mix of talents helps create an environment where the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts.
“I’m hoping to see a lot of really cool companies start up and get rolling out, and just see what interesting things people come up with,” said Chris Meyer, the founder and director of Sector67, a Madison “tech shop/hacker space/maker space” and another sponsor of Madison Startup Weekend. “It’s always fun doing events like this because you get people from all sorts of backgrounds together, get them all under one roof for a whole weekend, and they come up with really amazing ideas and really cool thoughts, and you encourage people to get out there and try stuff. I think that’s one of the key takeaways from doing an event like Startup Weekend is that you’re not talking about doing it anymore, you’re really doing it.”
Seeing ideas begin to jell in such a short time – ideas that may have otherwise sat in a drawer for months or even years for lack of a marketing strategy – can be thrilling, say organizers.
“It’s really kind of neat because you’ll see someone show up to this, and they may not have an idea to pitch to anyone, but they immediately hear someone’s idea and say, ‘Hey, I know how I can develop a marketing plan for that,’ or ‘here’s how I can validate that with some sort of market research,’” said Toepper.
New territory
In addition to Madison College and Sector67, UW-Madison, Edgewood College, and Capital Entrepreneurs have signed on as sponsors of Madison Startup Weekend.
According to Toepper, Madison College is currently reinventing the way it teaches entrepreneurship, and was looking for an event that would allow the college to reach out to the start-up community. He had heard about the Kauffman Foundation’s popular Startup Weekends and decided it was about time the Madison area was represented.
“It had never been done in the state of Wisconsin at all before, and I was really surprised to learn that,” said Toepper. “These things are being held all over the world and in the states surrounding us, but no one was doing it in Wisconsin. And then I reached out to Sector67 and Capital Entrepreneurs and they said, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve been wanting to do that, we know we should do it, but we just haven’t had the time.’”
For his part, Meyer is thrilled that Toepper took the initiative, and is hoping more than a few budding entrepreneurs across the state show some initiative as well.
“It should be a lot of fun,” said Meyer. “I’d like to encourage people to sign up and show up and participate even if they’re kind of on the fence. I think it’s a good opportunity to kind of get out there, and a good first foray into entrepreneurship.”
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