How to Start Up a Business Over the Weekend

If you have the right team and put your mind to it, you can create a start up business over the weekend. That's one of the things I learned at StartUp Weekend Detroit this last weekend. It was a great weekend of hard work, team building and fun. I learned a few other things you need to get a business off the ground, too.

What is Startup Weekend? To quote their website, "Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, businesss managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects." It mirrors the country's move to a more entrepreneurial society, bringing together people who have a desire to either start their own business or help someone start theirs. The weekend starts with pitches to the whole group from anyone with an idea for a business. Then, people choose which ideas have the most merit, break into teams and start to build their businesses. It culminates with each team making a live pitch. You can see all the pitches from StartUp Weekend Detroit here.

I had a wonderful, exhausting, intense and educational experience. Along the way, I learned some important traits you need to have, if you're going to get your idea off the ground. To help illustrate this, I've linked to some of the new business sites built over the weekend below, most are prototypes for you to see the idea and not actual working sites (yet). Here, in no particular order, are some of the traits you must have:

Passion. With all the obstacles you need to overcome to launch a business, sometimes it's hard to keep going . But, if it's an idea you are passionate about, you won't quit. And that's half the battle, keeping at it no matter what. The team I was on worked well together, worked hard and had great ideas. But, it was obvious from the start that our leader had no passion for it. He made it clear from the beginning that he wasn't going to take it any farther than the weekend, no one on the team was even willing to pony up the $10.49 to buy the url for the site. He's a great guy and worked as hard as anyone, but his heart wasn't in it. And so no one went at it with great gusto.

Contrast that with the ReFrame Detroit group. Their leader lived and breathed the idea with tremendous passion. They found a conference room and almost never came out of there, working tirelessly through meals, presentations and after half the other teams had gone away. And even though they didn't present the winning idea on Sunday, it was fully developed and you could see the sheer amount of "above and beyond" effort they put into it. The presenter didn't read from a script or stumble through his presentation like many of us, he prowled the stage speaking from the heart without checking the screen or notes. I'm sure they will continue to go forward after all is said and done.

Innovation. When all is said and done, it comes down to this: is your idea a new one we've never seen before? Do you have a new way of looking at the world? A new way of doing something? A completely new product or service? If you do, you greatly enhance your chances to succeed. You can't be afraid to go big and present something unknown to your investors. Site Fog, the team that won the jury vote, started with the bold premise "we're going to reinvent the Internet model." What they presented was indeed a new way of looking at doing business on the net. It was so technical, that a non-data-head like myself had no clue what they were talking about half the time. But, even I knew they were on to something exciting. The tech people in the room who did know what they were presenting were going crazy and it was infectious.

Connect. Whether it's your intended audience or the investors you need to woo, you need to make a strong connection. You can do it by tapping into emotional needs, as the Naked Detroit team did with their pitch to create a more positive image of Detroit. But, if you can combine emotional needs, with other factors, like peer pressure, social morays, pyschographic and demographic targeting, you really have something. That's what the Cause Crazy team did with their start up aimed at getting a younger generation to be involved and give to various charities. They connected well with the audience in the room as well, winning both the Startup Weekend audience vote and the jury's "most fun" award.

If you want to take part of the entrepreneurial spirit gaining traction across the world, take some of these lessons to heart. Better yet, find a Startup Weekend event near you. They take place all across the globe. Rumor has it another one will be in Detroit at the end of the summer.

Mike McClure, Exec Creative Director & Business Fan