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I'll be honest. I find these things retarded. It'd be like sailing across the Bering Strait and announcing that'd you'd crossed the Pacific. Something thrown

by wheels 17y ago

I'll be honest. I find these things retarded. It'd be like sailing across the Bering Strait and announcing that'd you'd crossed the Pacific. Something thrown together in 48 hours is not a startup; it's a website. It might be able to turn into a startup over time, and I think that would be a far more interesting statistic: how many of these "startups" are doing anything after 3 months?

ohashi 17y ago
I will tell you in 3 months. I was actually one of the organizers for this group of events (startup weekend and associated events were done all over the nordics last weekend and the weekend before) and I honestly don't think it's really about actually getting a startup going so much as the experience and meeting people. I do know from talking with the Startup Weekend guys in the states (Clint) that some of these actually do turn into real startups and get funded and launch but many don't. I don't think that's a problem at all, I know from my personal experience (Lund, Sweden) that is was very heavy with university students who probably weren't considering or thinking about startups at all. The event helps people become aware of the opportunities, network and meet a lot of people who might be interested in doing something. One of the things that makes it easiest (my opinion) is other people interested in starting up and knowing the right people in your region to actually get help (legal, business, investors, feedback, everything else). These types of events give that opportunity to people who might have never even thought about it otherwise. If a startup is born from the event, AWESOME. If not, what else was gained? I think quite a bit.
- jkaljundi 17y ago
  In Tallinn we also had a great mix of people, from high school and university students to experienced professional people. Even 2 of the Skype founders, who have written core part of that product and made hundreds of millions in exits, were in the teams, developing Garage48 software products. Not so much to create new fantastic businesses, but to hack, have fun and meet people. Interesting fact: On quick count 14 present and former Skype staff contributed to 6 of total 16 Garage48 teams. Skype has had a great effect on Estonian startup and development culture.
  - ohashi 17y ago
    That's pretty awesome, glad to hear such a great group of people got together. We had Peter Sunde the first day give a talk and he stayed for the pitches asking questions and giving feedback which was pretty fun to listen to.
- wheels 17y ago
  See, back in the day, we just called these hackathons. I don't have any objections to what happens at these sorts of events (no doubt it's a good experience for those involved), but there's some general annoyance at them being labeled "startups" because it misrepresents the actual challenges of starting a startup, which are wholly different than what you'd encounter in such a brief timeframe. Usually the technical / design facet is the easiest component of starting a startup.
  - jkaljundi 17y ago
    Quite often 50% of the team members is design/development, another half is marketing/biz dev. For Garage48 we had people who were doing a huge amount of stuff in those non technical areas: making real business partnerships with restaurants/bars/cafe's, handing out flyers on the streets, actually ordering manufactured soft pet toys, making deals with other non-profits or organisations, hiring external team members or roles, making sales etc. All of this during a weekend, where they basically had to use all of their contacts and networks to get external people into work mode - and succeeded in that. So in addition to more technical software hackathons, events like Garage48 give also a lot of experience in other areas. It's correct to not call them startups, but startup seeds (startup idea is not correct either, as the events are more about execution than pure talk). May be some of those seeds will blossom or mutate into new lifeforms.
daniel-cussen 17y ago
Seriously. By these standards I made a startup in three hours (three minutes on a speedrun) by buying qwertqwert.com and redirecting it to a dvorak translator. Is it useful? It is more useful to me than most little websites, but by no stretch of imagination is it a startup. A very minimum viable product at best.

by wheels 17y ago

ohashi 17y ago

I will tell you in 3 months. I was actually one of the organizers for this group of events (startup weekend and associated events were done all over the nordics last weekend and the weekend before) and I honestly don't think it's really about actually getting a startup going so much as the experience and meeting people. I do know from talking with the Startup Weekend guys in the states (Clint) that some of these actually do turn into real startups and get funded and launch but many don't. I don't think that's a problem at all, I know from my personal experience (Lund, Sweden) that is was very heavy with university students who probably weren't considering or thinking about startups at all. The event helps people become aware of the opportunities, network and meet a lot of people who might be interested in doing something. One of the things that makes it easiest (my opinion) is other people interested in starting up and knowing the right people in your region to actually get help (legal, business, investors, feedback, everything else). These types of events give that opportunity to people who might have never even thought about it otherwise. If a startup is born from the event, AWESOME. If not, what else was gained? I think quite a bit.

jkaljundi 17y ago
In Tallinn we also had a great mix of people, from high school and university students to experienced professional people. Even 2 of the Skype founders, who have written core part of that product and made hundreds of millions in exits, were in the teams, developing Garage48 software products. Not so much to create new fantastic businesses, but to hack, have fun and meet people. Interesting fact: On quick count 14 present and former Skype staff contributed to 6 of total 16 Garage48 teams. Skype has had a great effect on Estonian startup and development culture.
- ohashi 17y ago
  That's pretty awesome, glad to hear such a great group of people got together. We had Peter Sunde the first day give a talk and he stayed for the pitches asking questions and giving feedback which was pretty fun to listen to.
wheels 17y ago
See, back in the day, we just called these hackathons. I don't have any objections to what happens at these sorts of events (no doubt it's a good experience for those involved), but there's some general annoyance at them being labeled "startups" because it misrepresents the actual challenges of starting a startup, which are wholly different than what you'd encounter in such a brief timeframe. Usually the technical / design facet is the easiest component of starting a startup.
- jkaljundi 17y ago
  Quite often 50% of the team members is design/development, another half is marketing/biz dev. For Garage48 we had people who were doing a huge amount of stuff in those non technical areas: making real business partnerships with restaurants/bars/cafe's, handing out flyers on the streets, actually ordering manufactured soft pet toys, making deals with other non-profits or organisations, hiring external team members or roles, making sales etc. All of this during a weekend, where they basically had to use all of their contacts and networks to get external people into work mode - and succeeded in that. So in addition to more technical software hackathons, events like Garage48 give also a lot of experience in other areas. It's correct to not call them startups, but startup seeds (startup idea is not correct either, as the events are more about execution than pure talk). May be some of those seeds will blossom or mutate into new lifeforms.

daniel-cussen 17y ago

Seriously. By these standards I made a startup in three hours (three minutes on a speedrun) by buying qwertqwert.com and redirecting it to a dvorak translator. Is it useful? It is more useful to me than most little websites, but by no stretch of imagination is it a startup. A very minimum viable product at best.