10 ways to fail a Startup Weekend
1 min readNov 5, 2013
After cofounding Human Coders and HashtagBattle, I’m now a Lean Startup and Business Model advisor. I’m also facilitator and mentor for Startup Weekend.
I have not found the recipe to win a Startup Weekend. However, I think I found 10 rules to lose every time!
Here are the 10 tips:
- Do not go into a project if there are competitors, even distant
- Do not change your friday idea during the weekend even if a mentor tells you to do it
- Have several products, services, offers …
- Do a classical keynote like everyone else
- Put as many slides as possible in your keynote
- Do not listen your early adopters, predict everything yourself
- Do not waste time to simplify your business model
- Come up with a project you are working on for several years and say that you are there just to use some developers over the weekend
- Validate your business with phrases like “This is a X people market, if Y% use our service then we are rich!”. Of course, do not explain where does the Y come from!
- Define your business plan over the next 50 years and put all the details in your presentation
I’m sure there are plenty of others. I count on you to provide additional tips in the comments!