Innovation was rife and developers were coding like demons possessed at the Startup Weekend in Redmond this weekend as groups took ideas from whiteboard to demoware in a coffee fuelled 54 hours. It was great to see a wide range of platforms and technologies in play from ASP.NET MVC web apps, AJAX and Silverlight RIAs and mobile clients on WinMo, Palm and iPhone.
The big winner was an app called “Search Kick”, a contextual search app, who walked away with a cool $5000 in cash and a potential investment in the future from H-Farm, also for $5000. Also in the top three was iPhone app, “Learn That Name”, a cool bit of software that helped you put names to faces. The majority of apps (15 of 16) were being built on the Microsoft Web Platform – and everyone had a copy of the Web Platform Installer spun up at least once during the day!
The thing that made me smile was seeing so many passionate, creative people coming together as strangers to create cool software on different platforms, using different tools. The teams had a great time doing so and the real winner was innovation and I’m really excited to see where these apps go as businesses.
My CTO Advice
Myself and Brian Gorbett were “CTOs for hire” and we had a blast brainstorming cool ideas with the teams and guiding them as they made decisions on which technologies to build on. Here are my top tips that I was giving the startups during the weekend:
1. Leverage skills you have in your group
Everyone brings something unique to the table from database architecture, UX design to social media guru – delegate appropriately and get everyone working to their strengths – you are most effective that way.
2. Choose the right technology for the job
If you are building a table in your web app to show data, for heaven’s sake don’t use Silverlight – it’s overkill! Use HTML with some JavaScript from jQuery to make it slick and some client templating from ASP.NET AJAX Preview 4 to bring the the data from the server without refreshing the page. Every technology has a time and place, don’t try and crowbar in a technology just because it’s cool – fit the problem to an appropriate technology.
3. Deliver something that pops
At these events it is easy to bite of more than you can chew. Be aggressive but realistic and aim to deliver something within the time constraints. It is far better to knock one feature out of the park than to deliver 10 half-assed features that fail to pop.
4. Watch the clock
Keep an eye on your time constraints and work in tight iterations. The most successful teams were those that collaborated well and worked in hourly stints and then pulled together what they had done into one solution.
5. The Web Platform Installer is your best friend – use it
The Web Platform Installer is the quickest and easiest way to get a development rig up and running. If ASP.NET is your thing or PHP gets you going you can get it all from server, through to database and tools. The Web Platform Installer gives you everything you need on one hit without having to install everything separately. Work smarter not harder – use the Web Platform Installer.
6. (Ab)use BizSpark
Get Microsoft’s software. Get startup advice. Use our investor network. BizSpark is a (nearly*) free program and if you don’t use it, even just part of it, you are missing a few brain cells. *$100 enrollment fee (due when you exit the program)
Wrapping Up
Congrats to the winning teams and props to everyone who came along and coded their hearts out for 54 hours to deliver a wide array of cool solutions on various platforms. There’s nothing like passionate people and innovation going on to make people stay awake for 54 hours building cool shit.
I’m looking forward to future Startup Weekends and am really interested to see what other groups of entrepreneurs and startups can come up with as Startup Weekend continues to rock the world!
Thanks to the Clint and Marc from Startup Weekend team for coming to Seattle and hosting the biggest event ever!