Startup Weekend Boulder

Nights and Weekends for VoSnap

Posted on Jul 16, 2007 @ 01:14 am in Planning

We set off to build a web application in a weekend.  It was the first Startup Weekend and we learned numerous lessons on what to do and what to avoid.   At the end of the weekend there were four choices relating to the question ‘what to do next’ the group chose from:
1) Everyone keep working on the app when they could
2) Elect a core team to run the company
3) Elect a CEO to run the company
4) Not finish the app

The VoSnap founders chose a modification of 1 and 2.  A core was elected to run the company (basically one person from each major team).  This core group would also act as project managers for whoever wants to stay involved.

After a week, the core team has met as a whole twice.  The biggest challenge VoSnap faces now is in the developments (Devs) hands. Once the Devs have something up and running, the rest of the team will kick back into gear and work on a successful launch of VoSnap.  The milestones have been set for a July 23rd launch of VoSnap.

What is very interesting to me is the core meetings carry the same energy as the weekend did.  Even though the company is now a ‘nights and weekends’ operation, there still is a strong passion to work on and finish this application.

I was sitting at Trident today enjoying my first day without a todo list longer than my inseam, and was able to explain what VoSnap is to the manager in 30 seconds.  He had some great ideas on how he could use it for the shop, and for his life in general.  It is fun to work on an app that gets this type of reaction out of almost total strangers.

One of the founders emailed me today explaining how urgent he felt in releasing the application.  He is a developer working at a large company that releases a product about once every three years.   At first I didn’t get why he was in such a hurry.  After some thinking, I figured out that he wants to finish something, he wants to be able to explain what  he does in an interesting way at a dinner table, and almost most importantly, he wants to continue the energy and community that this weekend instilled in so many of us.

We now have 4 Startup Weekends planned around the nation and even one in Canada, which I will be publicly announcing later today.

Posted by andrew hyde

One Response to “Nights and Weekends for VoSnap”

1. Michael Sitarzewski Says:
   July 16th, 2007 at 7:12 am

   If you need any help with Startup Weekend planning Andrew, I’m here for you.

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