5 years ago today I went to my first Startup Weekend at the York Butter Factory in Melbourne. Over the course of the weekend I went from being a solo founder with barely an idea, to building not only a product but a winning team and taking home first place and a $5000 cash prize.
More importantly I met PJ Murray who would go on to become my cofounder as we turned that idea into Elto, raised VC and were acquired by GoDaddy 2.5 years later.
This weekend we’re doing it all over again. We’ve locked ourselves into my apartment in the Tendernob for the weekend to go from 0 to a shipped product.
To be clear we’re not quite ready to start a new company yet. We’re both pretty happy with the work we’re doing at GoDaddy and e’re not done yet. But the previous Startup Weekend didn’t immediately produce a company either, it produced a side project with a little bit of traction and a community of supporters to push us forward. It wasn’t until 9 months later — after many late nights and weekends — that we decided to turn it into a formal company.
So if we’re not wanting to start a new startup why are we doing this?
1. Get back in the saddle
The kind of work we’re doing at GoDaddy is rewarding but it’s also complicated. There are a lot of stakeholders involved in major decisions and there are a lot of legacy systems to integrate with. It’s far from greenfield.
Everything comes with it’s tradeoffs and at GD we have access to 14m customers, whereas here we’ll be starting from scratch.
2. Keep sharpening our tools
It’s easy to get comfortable working at a big company. When I was running my own business I would be handling everything from design to copy to business development, marketing, sales, recruiting, etc. Basically everything that wasn’t writing actual code; that’s PJ’s domain.
So it’s been a while since I’ve actually had to test my ability to build a product from scratch, produce all the copy and designs, and go from zero customers to 1. I worry sometimes that I’m getting out of touch with what’s needed, this is one way to prevent that.
3. Scratch an itch we’ve got
I keep a list of problems that I come across in everyday life. Sometimes big things, like hiring remote talent, and sometimes smaller things like collating user feedback from multiple channels. But I haven’t done a lot solve these problems.
Even picking one idea to solve will be rewarding in it’s own right, no matter how significant.
4. Celebration of our 5 year relationship
Finally I wanted to find a way that we could recognize and appreciate the fact that we’ve been a solid working team for 5 years now. Few could expect that a bond formed over a weekend of intense work would last through the ups and downs of running a business to its conclusion, and live on to want to continue working together.
I plan to write a couple more pieces on Medium tracking our progress over the weekend, leading to a grand reveal of the product on Sunday afternoon.
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Ned
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