Wellington
What was the fifth Startup Weekend in NewZealand, and the second in Wellington, continued to raise the bar.
Co-organiser, and WebFund chairman Dave Moskovitz says the 54hour event that aims to take pitched (to all participants’) ideas into businesses with a futurekeep getting better.
“After six events, we’re starting to know the rhythm and the skills required in managingteams and their crises really well,” he says.
The mentoring aspect is one of the key components of the value Startup Weekend delivers toparticipants, where (as well as the global mission of Startup Weekend) the idea is to inspireentrepreneurs.
“But we have to implement that in the New Zealand context,” Moskovitz says.
“What we’re really trying to provide is experiential learning to help people acquire skillsthat they may not have.”
As well as honing talents that people may have, it is also a high pressure situation in which totest them.
Among the attributes that participants learn are:
The trouble with writing say a 100 page business plan is even before it is finished it is out ofdate.
In particular the teams used a Lean Startup Canvas , a sheetof A2 paper that provides an outline assumption of a business around factors such as the uniquevalue proposition, the solution that’s being provided and revenue (among others).
“As you learn things, the learnings are incorporated into the business model,” saysMoskovitz. “As you write down your assumptions, you have things you can test. It’s a scientificmethod to making a business, with tests and experiments to validate it.”
Such methodology is much cleaner than “just being driven by a passion and the she’ll be rightapproach to building a business,” he says.
Wellington’s Startup Weekend (27 – 29 July) saw attendees carrying out much more validationand incorporating this learning in their businesses. The learning also meant much more pivoting aspeople truly listened to what the market wants.
When the market (i.e. interviewed people) don’t agree with assumptions, it can lead to acrisis.
For one particular team it initially meant a disbanded team with only one member left. But, thatperson thought about their findings, that there might be something else there, and rang up the teammembers. The rest of the team all returned that night.
One extremely pleasing aspect for Moskovitz was the new people he discovered in theentrepreneurial and innovation space.
“I like to think I’m really well connected in this ecosystem,” he says.
“But I didn’t know two thirds of the people in the room.”
He says that everyone knows that it is very difficult to produce something realizable in 54hours.
“But more importantly, people are going to meet 30 or so people that they know and may be ableto team up with in the future,” he says. “They may not carry on with a real thing now, butthey’re much more likely and able to do so in the future.”
For the record, the weekend winner was Questo – a website and app to make homework fun and linkteachers, parents and children more closely in its sphere.
Questo won because it best satisfied the judging criteria:
“It’s not necessarily the best idea that wins, but the one that is best executed. Questo wasstrong across all three areas.”