

Startup Weekend pep talk: It ain’t the code - baha_man
http://blog.asmartbear.com/startup-weekend.html

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untog
"You and I know you can code an app and produce a simple clean home page.
Everyone here can."

In my experience, that is absolutely not the case. I've only attended one
Startup Weekend, but as a developer I was outnumbered 3-1 by 'business'
people. That is not a problem in and of itself, but this article goes a little
too far for my tastes.

"The code" has to feature in there somewhere- without developers an event like
Startup Weekend would become a massive echo chamber of people throwing out and
presenting wonderful startup ideas that might not even be technically
possible. It has to have a slight 'hackathon' element to it in order to
establish what you can do, and you need to create basic prototypes to validate
whether you ideas actually work in the real world.

"If all you build this weekend is a landing page that describes what your
company will do and asks for an email address to be notified when ready, and
if you manage to get 50 emails, that is far more of a real company than a team
who builds something that works but no one asked for it."

I'm not so sure. I could create a landing page for my web site that will
interface with your toaster through a public API, and allow you to remotely
prepare a bagel whenever you want it. That doesn't make it a viable business
because what I am describing isn't possible (well, yet...)

~~~
nolite
You see alot of this at startup weekends in France.. "checkout my startup! a
Wild idea, powerpoint presentation, and my launch rock page" umm.. no

------
5hoom
Awesome, so basically if I'm already a great engineer/designer I don't have to
worry about engineering or design anymore!

But hey it is true that it can be too easy to get lost in the joy of building
and forget about the business.

There's just so much out there to explore and try when you're a creative type
that it can really help to stop and think about the 'big picture' point of
what you're doing and why on earth anyone else (customers, etc) should care ;)

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btcoal
The one exception to this, which may really not even be an exception, is if
you are your target customer. If you really need the product you're building
that is a good starting point. I think for turning a website/app into a
business the most important first customer is you.

