

Ask HN: Startup Weekend - How can I add value? - helen842000

I'll be attending my first startup weekend in London this Fri. I'm going on a non-technical ticket despite my tech background, I don't feel I'm proficient enough to be slinging code under pressure just yet as much as I would love to. That is the plan in the future.<p>I hope to get a lot out of it, I'm super excited. Yet I want to add value and pull my weight in a team. I have a strong sense of my own skills and I think I can offer a lot but I would appreciate some feedback from experienced devs or startup weekend attendees about things I might not consider.<p>Other than bringing coffee :) what obstacles can I remove out of the way for my team mates to help us ship a product on time.
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mrkmcknz
I took part in Startup Weekend Newcastle earlier this year in the first one
outside of London or Cambridge in the UK.

While I loved the event it frustrated me how the focus of the weekend seemed
to be as far away from technical as possible.

My team involved 4 developers so we wanted to make sure we could build
something in the weekend. We built instaquote.co and didn't place in the final
results, what annoyed us the most was the fact we were the ONLY team with a
MVP/prototype. We 'hacked' our website up and there were times when we found
ourselves employed as official VPN guy and official LastFM DJ!!

The winning team had the idea of a online video CV, they won on the premise
that they had a BBC interview lined up(didn't happen) and a big customer from
the city(didn't happen/they had connections there {family}). Needless to say
we were pretty annoyed at the non technical attitude, probably due to the fact
Newcastle has about 20 developers who don't call themselves a web guru while
only knowing HTML.

BUT by far the best thing to come out of the weekend was the guys I met, I'm
still friends and keep in touch to this day and have even started a project
with one of my team members! It's about the people you meet IMHO.

Have a great time and I'm sure you will find your role!

~~~
helen842000
Thanks, so do some teams not even build anything at all??! I thought the whole
point was to get beyond the idea.

I remember reading about instaquote and thinking it was a useful idea. You
guys had to pitch first, right?

I'm just looking forward to meeting new folks and hopefully will make some
good friends like you have.

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jefflinwood
I've done one Startup Weekend, and it was a little different than I expected -
the emphasis wasn't necessarily on technology, so don't worry about not being
able to contribute on a technical level.

Instead, what Startup Weekend is about is really more about trying to get out
some kind of MVP that you can take to potential customers to have them
validate your business idea - can you get customers or suppliers to actually
sign up to whatever you build? Easiest way to do this is to call potential
customers - unfortunately, most businesses are closed on the weekends, so that
takes some of the fun out.

Another thing I noticed is that the teams were extremely fluid - so if you
feel left out or marginalized on your current team, it seemed to be more than
ok to join another group - the whole idea is probably more to meet people and
play startup than to actually come out with a fundable team, tech demo, and
business model in 48 hours.

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JayNeely
I've been in your shoes. If you have any tech skills at all, they will be
valuable. At the beginning of Startup Weekend Boston I was doing product
management and front-end dev, but by the end of it I was writing code for a
language I'd never used before just to bring us a little closer to "finished".
Understanding code structures and being able to google for specific syntax
takes you a long way.

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acoyfellow
I hope someone with some experience can help you answer this question.. I am
curious about this as well

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helen842000
Are there any useful things that I should take with me besides the obvious?

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bmelton
Depends on the audience more than anything, but there are a ton of 'semi-
technical' tasks that you could contribute to:

\- Setting up Twitter / Facebook / Google Plus accounts for the project and
team.

\- Posting regular Twitter / Facebook / Google Plus updates to generate buzz.
Make sure that your StartupWeekend event is using a Hashtag (like SWLondon)
and use it -- people following that will see your tweets and give you a better
chance for exposure.

\- Develop plain old 'Patio11' style HTML pages for split-testing copyrights.

\- Integrate Google Analytics / MixPanel / Googlel Webmaster Tools to be able
to track activity (and include stats in your last-day demo).

\- If you've got more than one developer using Git, you can help manage code
merges (if you're conformatable with that.)

\- Set up the domain name and hosting if it's needed.

\- If you're familiar with Rails or Django templates (you could brush up on
both before you go, they're pretty basic) -- you could work on converting a
ThemeForest theme into ERB/HTML while the backend developers work on making
the application 'go'.

\- Helping to isolate down site copy, slogans, signup jargon.

In short, just volunteer whenever there's something you feel like you can do.
If all that is done, nobody's going to hate if you step outside your comfort
zone and have trouble -- just preface beforehand "Hey, I've never done that
before, but I'll give it a shot."

There are a million things to do at StartupWeekend (including fetching coffee,
donuts, caffeine,water) and none of it goes unappreciated. Even if you aren't
a technical rockstar, you can be the guy that removes obstacles and hustles
his ass off to make sure that _the team_ can get things done. Everybody loves
that guy.

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badabadam
(as a tech person and I've been to two startup weekends + numerous hackathons)
Whatever idea you come up with the team, I think the way to "motivate" the
tech people is to validate that the idea is viable one - that means, do all
that is necessary - make calls, go out and talk to people, SELL IT! - to let
the tech people know that whatever they are building is worth it.

For example, if you spent 5 hours during your startup weekend outside talking
to potential customers and actually lock in a potential buyer AND even invite
that person to the demo - heck invite 2 or 3 potential customers - then I
think you are doing an awesome job as a non-tech person.

