ReadyTalk goes to Startup Weekend
Last weekend, ReadyTalk sent three employees to Denver Startup Weekend. The theme of the weekend was The Internet of Things — that ethereal term that masks the reality of our soon-to-be Smart House future.
The team making it out from ReadyTalk included Stephen Deckrow, Product Manager to the Stars; Jeff Stephens, Foxden engineer extraordinaire and literally The Man; and yours truly.
While Jeff has some experience working in startups, this was all new territory for Steve and I. Of the three of us, none of us had ever attended an event like this one before, so we all showed up Friday evening just hoping to learn some cool stuff. After hearing some great speakers, working hard on our idea, drinking a lot of coffee, working with some top-notch coaches, and generally having fun, I think it’s safe to say we all learned something neat.
So, wait. What’s a Startup Weekend?
This is a fair question because before Friday, I couldn’t tell you. The way I see it, the tl;dr version of Startup Weekend is, “it’s a lasertag overnight lock-in party for adults.”
The basic idea behind the weekend is this: ideas come in Friday night, the seeds of companies leave on Sunday night. In between, there were some incredible speakers on both Friday and Saturday night. Friday, we got to hear from a pioneer in the Internet of Things space, Matthew Bailey.
Matthew Bailey is currently an expert IoT advisor to impact investors at Future matters Venture Capital, but he has over 25 years of experience in technology. He spoke to us about his vision of the emergent Internet of Things. The biggest takeaway I had from his talk was that the future is going to be one with a conscious internet that will “digitise the real world [He was from the UK…].” In this future, the physical world has billions of small devices spread out among it to measure everything from sea level to forest growth to air quality. Admittedly, this conception of IoT is much more interesting to me than one with tablets baked into every refrigerator.
Saturday evening, the entire group was challenged by Tom Higley to make sure we were pursuing “Wicked Problems.”
Tom asked us all a simple question with deeper implications — So What? He wanted to be sure we were all daring ourselves to solve big enough problems with our ideas over the weekend. Tom is a well known serial entrepreneur in Colorado, though most recently he founded 10.10.10. A neat thing about Tom’s company, is that they’re organizing an event this summer where ten entrepreneurs are going to take on ten wicked problems related to health in ten days. They’re going to run 10 Google Ventures style design sprints at once and we’re all about Sprint! here at ReadyTalk.
Sunday evening was when all of the final pitches were presented in front of a panel of judges. Everything between Matthew Bailey’s speech on Friday and the judging was working on our ideas and meeting with an incredible team of coaches. Our idea and pitch were helped tremendously by these coaching sessions. The mentors helped us define a clear focus for what could be accomplished in 54 hours. They also helped to make sure we were telling a compelling story when it came time to face the judges.
Did you guys actually do anything, though?
Another fair question. But first, I want to talk to you about my Aba…
On Friday night, Steve turns to us and says he thinks he has an idea to pitch. He’s going to pitch, GrandmaChat — it’s like Snapchat, but for Grandmas. Since my sweet Aba is my favorite person on the planet and I feel like a cesspool of human garbage for how infrequently I talk to her, I was immediately drawn to the idea. Jeff was also on board, and soon we had ReadyTalkers joining forces to take on the world. We were joined by Ilya Shindyapin and our team was complete. Jeff and Ilya would handle the technical side of things, Steve was the idea man and the team lead, and I was just trying to make sure I didn’t ruin everything.
The initial concept was for a sweet, low-cost device that you could send to your grandparents and they could put on their mantle. It was initially a v hip cube, but we quickly pivoted to a tacky picture frame theme because that fits the Grandparent Motif a bit better (at least, that’s what Aba has up at her house). We wanted young people to be able to use the platforms that they were already using because, as we all know, you can’t tell millennials anything. Plus, we all realized that while we have phones in our pockets at all times, none of us were actually using said phones to call home. We also knew we needed to change the name because “GrandmaChat” could easily be interpreted as “GrandmaTinder” and while grannies need love too, that wasn’t where we were headed.
With Saturday morning came a new name and a refined idea. We formally killed the GrandmaChat brand and, like a phoenix, Grandma’s Favorite, emerged from the ashes. Jeff and Ilya set out to create a way to share Facebook photos to a private group that could then be sent to the Grandma’s Favorite device, but we had to pivot when we weren’t sure if we’d get app permissions in time. They moved to Slack as a communication method, and by the end of the day were close to getting everything working. Steve and I spent the day validating our ideas with potential customers and working on the business case. We eventually spoke to eight customers, ranging from ages 24 to 45. We also, as a team, met with coaches who had expertise in hardware, scaling a startup, and in Seniors tech. Saturday evening ended with coffee cups and peanut butter cookie wrappers everywhere, glass walls full of dry erase marker, and a nearly completed working prototype.
Finally, it was Sunday. We had some more work to get everything working in Slack, but Jeff and Ilya made their way through that quickly. Here’s a video we showed during our pitch to help explain the concept:
The big part about Sunday was refining our pitch presentation. We met with another coach whose whole job is to work on and perfect pitches with her clients. We went through several revisions of our slide presentation, before finally settling on what we thought was a winner. When the straws were drawn, the responsibility of presenting fell to me and Jeff.
After hearing five great pitches, it was our turn to speak. I’m pleased to report that I didn’t end up throwing up all over myself or the judges. I also didn’t wet my pants or pass out. These were all very legitimate concerns I had at the time (We got iced right before our presentation. I couldn’t listen to Can I Live like I usually do before any interview or “Oh crap, I gotta do what?” moment in my life. All that was missing was The Grim).
But finally, it was over.
Biggest lessons and surprises from Startup Weekend
For me, one of the biggest lessons from Startup Weekend was the reminder that it takes a village to raise a startup. I was worried going into the weekend that I was going to spend three days way out of my technical depth without any floaties. That notion was soon dispelled when it became obvious that our team needed every member to bring their individual strengths to the table. I can’t code my way out of a paper bag even if I have instructions, but I also have no shame so it’s not an issue to talk to strangers and ask about their grandparents.
The second big takeaway was how useful creative constraints can be. I’m a stereotypical shiny object person and notoriously bounce from idea to idea to idea. While that’s a good thing sometimes, other times it’s more practical to have some hard and fast limitations. With an event like Startup Weekend, you feel the pressure of a finite timeline. It forced us to gut out the stuff we couldn’t get done and really focus on the stuff we could do. The time stress also made us think creatively about our problem without giving us the space to overthink our decisions.
Far and away the biggest surprise of the weekend was — we won. After the judges deliberated, it was decided that Grandma’s Favorite was their favorite too, and we were awarded the first place prize.
So what’s next for Grandma’s Favorite?
Nobody on the team figured we’d win, so once we got over that shock, we started thinking about what’s next. We knew we had a good idea here and we wanted to keep working on it. The first thing we did, though, was make a name change after hearing some feedback. While we were thinking about how much we love our Grandmas (Though, I kind of am Aba’s favorite…), we wanted to be as inclusive as possible. Plus, there are some grandmas out there that are way more tech savvy than my #digital #native self. The name we settled on was silverloop (We didn’t decide if we wanted to make it #tech and call it SilverLoop, but since I’m the one writing the blog post and I prefer all lowercase…).
We created a Twitter page and are working on getting a landing page spun up to see if there’s any interest in our idea beyond Startup Weekend. We’re going to take advantage of our prizes to see what next steps make sense, but only after going to our hard-earned free team breakfast.
Though I had to miss Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals (ALTHOUGH MY BOYS ABSOLUTELY DID NOT MISS THAT GAME), it was worth it for the experience of Startup Weekend. The hosts and organizers of the event did an incredible job to make sure we had everything we needed throughout. The speakers were really informative and helped us shape our vision. We simply would not have done nearly as well without the guidance of our coaches and mentors throughout the weekend.
Speaking for myself, I know that I certainly met my goal at the onset of the weekend. I learned some really cool stuff, met some great folks, and got to work on a project that was really energizing. Even after spending a weekend working away, I came into the office on Monday ready to get after it (I promise). As usual, I’m incredibly thankful for ReadyTalk for being as supportive of their employees as possible (If you want to work here, too — I don’t blame you).
Suffice it to say, I’ve been bitten with the Startup Weekend bug.
