According to various statistics I've found on the Internet, something like 70 to 78% of Gen Y would one day like to start their own business. I think this is great, and hopefully indicates that despite the general economic pessimism gripping much of the world, we are part of a generation that wants to take control of its future and sees opportunities for doing so.
One of the franchises that caters to this is Startup Weekend. The premise is that you get together with a group of enthusiasts, form teams around business ideas you pitch yourself, create a company (tech product demo, business plan, presentation) in 54 hours, and then pitch the idea to a panel of venture capitalists. It's a little like summer camp (and by the way, I think "Startup Summer Camp" is probably just a click away.)
Here's why I thought Startup Weekend was great: It really simplified the process of creating a business. I realized that a lot of the initially intimidating stuff - legalities, accounting, etc - really aren't as important as ensuring you have something that people will pay money for. At Startup Weekend, everyone is encouraged to pitch a business concept in 60 seconds to a roomful of people.
This challenge taught me something valuable: 60 seconds is nothing. It is three sentences. After the pitches were over we went down for dinner, and other attendees kept coming up to me and asking me more about my idea. By the tenth try, I'd finally reached a version of my explanation that people seemed to relate to. And that taught me something else: use keywords. A lot of people like to think that they're inventing the wheel, but if your business idea is similar to Dropbox in some way (and btw, most of them are), don't say "consumer-facing cloud computing solution." Say "it's like Dropbox but." Everyone knows what Dropbox is, whereas nobody knows what the hell your business is.
Here are some other things worth pointing out:
Figure out why you're attending Startup Weekend. If your answer is "to start my business" then Startup Weekend will likely disappoint you. Here's what I mean: despite the statistics they share, the vast majority of attendees do not start their business at Startup Weekend. Although there are teams that start businesses based on what they did at Startup Weekend, here are some ground realities: 1) the teams change and 2) the idea changes. This is a little like business in the real world, but it's worth pointing out before you go in.
I went because I wanted to a) meet developers (hi, developers!) and b) understand the process of "creating" a business - how does one go from good idea to sustainable enterprise? Here's what I learned: the process is way simpler than it sounds, and involves a lot of figuring shit out as you go along.
Startup Weekend is more like a class than an incubator. And that's awesome!
Decide how much you want to prepare. Startup Weekend is, theoretically, a competition. At the end of the weekend, the judges give out prizes to the participants. The initial 60-second pitches at my event ran the gamut from "scripted and memorized" to "made up on the spot." Decide how much you want to prepare in advance. Some people had been thinking about their ideas for months, some people for just a few days. I was definitely in the latter camp.
There are also people who have turned "attending Startup Weekend" into its own profession. Startup Weekend may be like the real world, but so is the real world. If you're doing something like this for the fifth time, there should probably be a very clear reason.
Keep working. The people who worked on their ideas more had better pitches, but they also refined their concept more over the course of the weekend. Yes, you can bullshit, but seriously: if you have free time, think up random shit to do. Go talk to strangers on the street about your business idea. Make Google logos for it. Look up all your competition on the Internet. Whatever. But don't stop working. If you can't think up something to do, go interview other teams. I promise, one of them is doing something you're not doing. For example: one of the teams at my Startup Weekend made a video of themselves going out and interviewing vendors about their product. This was really cool; and I kinda wish we had done it.
Anyway, I highly recommend Startup Weekend for people who are thinking about starting their own business but haven't done it, and who want more info about how it works. For someone like me, who prefers to learn from doing things (and messing up) - it's ideal. And it's way better - in its structure, in the mode of thinking it inspires - than any traditional classroom course I've taken.
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