My experience at the Kirkland Startup Weekend

By Sreenath Pudukudi, TMMBA Alum, Class of 2012

I got my ticket and was thrilled to go to Startup Weekend. Little did I know this would be one of the great opportunities in my life. For those who don’t know about Startup Weekend, you can see the details here http://startupweekend.org/about/. The idea is to form teams at the Startup Weekend event and create a startup over the weekend. At the end of the event, the best startup would be judged and rewarded.

And then the long-awaited day arrives. Friday, as I entered the event, I could feel the positive energy in the room. There were lots of people passionately talking about their ideas. During the event, you have a minute to present the idea. There were around 40 people who pitched their ideas. Wow, that was 40 ideas in 40 minutes. Each person gets 3 voting cards and could vote for the top 3 ideas they liked. The ideas that received the most number of votes could build their teams for the weekend.

Developing the startup

I voted for the idea of building a platform for matching fashion stylist to consumers. I always wanted a personal stylist but was never ready to spend big dollars. The idea resonated with me very well and I thought people would be ready to pick a personal stylist if the cost of the stylist is reasonably low.

The team Eliza was formed and we had a nice blend of diverse skill sets. We started off by creating a work plan for the next 2 days.

It was Saturday morning. We delegated the tasks to focus on the following areas:

1. Business Model Generation
2. Customer Validation
3. Marketing Plan
4. Competitive Analysis
5. Developing the website

The team synched up every 2 hours to gauge the progress. Time was running fast. By Saturday evening, we were successful in,

1. Reaching out to 3500 customers for validating customer pain points.
2. Building the business model, identifying the customer segment.
3. Creating the Cost & Revenue Model.
4. Creating Marketing Plan and competitive analysis.
5. Signing up 2 Stylist and 4 customers.
6. Building a working website with the basic features.

I was pleasantly surprised with the progress a team can make just 1 day.

Pitching the business

It was Sunday morning. Most of us were focused on finishing the last bits and pieces of our work to get the final product in shape for the presentation. A few of us were focused on how to get our final pitch in front of close to 100 people. We practiced our final pitch over and over again.

And the time arrives. Clock ticks 5:30pm and the teams started giving their final pitches. It was our turn. We confidently presented our pitch as a story focusing on the need for the product, the value add it brings to the customers and how we build it into a great business. After our presentation there were a few questions from the judges and we were done.

All the teams presented and the wait to find the best startup begins.

The outcome

Out of the 12 teams in the competition, our team made it to the first position. We WON!!! It was indeed a great feeling and one of the most productive weekends I had. It was worth the effort.

Over the last two days, I learned a lot of new stuff, met great minds, built good networks and realized that it’s “The Team” that matters the most. I learned this again and again in my TMMBA classes. The lessons I learned during TMMBA made a difference in the way I think and I must say, I love TMMBA.

For all the entrepreneur enthusiasts out there, I would just say “attend one of the Startup Weekends and start your journey of building your own startup”. 🙂