About

What: Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects.

Where: TechColumbus; 1275 Kinnear Road; Columbus, OH 43212; Free Parking. More Information

When: July 18 - 20. Friday 6p-11p, Saturday 9a-11p, Sunday 9a-9p

Cost: only $40 for this unique experience!

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More than 100 bright, talented people will come together to develop and launch 10-12 companies in one marathon weekend. Friday night, the group will vote on ideas and choose the top dozen or so. After that, each participant will choose an idea/team to work on and spend the rest of the weekend putting everything together for a launch. When all is said and done, each participant will be a co-founder with an ownership interest in at least one honest-to-goodness startup.

We need all kinds of participants! We need idea people, marketing people, design people, technical people, business people, etc.; everyone can put their skills to work in creating these new companies. And this is a perfect time to try out something new - techies who’d like to try graphic design or accountants who’d like to try a little marketing, this is an excellent opportunity to expand skill sets

Startup Weekend Columbus came about from the energy of the local bloggers raising awareness and support for the event. See what we can create when we put our talents and energies together! Go Columbus!

Special thanks to jodyNcolumbus for suggesting and writing this about page.

12 Comments

12 responses so far ↓

1 huh // Jul 2, 2008 at 10:04 am

I have this sweet startup idea. here it goes: we host a little pretend conference in free flex space provided by the university. we charge people $40 to show up and give us THEIR ideas for awesome startups. we take the $5000+ we made and go and use their ideas. PROFIT!
2 Alvin Borromeo // Jul 2, 2008 at 11:58 am

@huh, you’ve got it all wrong.

1) Startup Weekend is not a conference. It’s about brining together to build products and companies over the course of a weekend. Most of all, it’s about building a community of folks who are interested in startups.

2) The local organizers did not approach TechColumbus, they offered their space up to Startup Weekend because Startup Weekend’s philosophy syncs with what TechColumbus’ mission.

3) We’re not out to make a profit. The $40 fee is there to help defer costs of food, drinks and entertainment throughout the weekend. It will also go towards a t-shirt and other schwag.

4) Startup Weekend does not take participants’ ideas. It’s up to the individual groups that come out of Startup Weekend to develop and build upon their ideas. Startup Weekend, LLC takes no ownership interests in the ideas.

I love how you’re all anonymous and all, but if you have any questions about Startup Weekend Columbus, give me a call. I’m at 614-602-4665.
3 Andrew Hyde // Jul 7, 2008 at 2:20 pm

Alvin, you rock. Spot on.
4 And now, the rest of the story: // Jul 12, 2008 at 12:48 pm

Alvin:

I give you a 7.5 out of 10. Huh does miss the real goal of the weekend (a micro-enterprise growth incubator), but there is something important in Huh’s comment (although, I doubt Huh has any clue as to what that is).

That is, you bring together people together to share ideas, identify and develop a select few, and potentially have one (or more) become a feature on the Big Idea with Donny Deutsch.

Can someone at the conference, even someone from TechColumbus, prirate the idea. The short answer is of course, yes. But Mr. Huh, it is a big leap from idea, to commercial success.

Most businesses fail. I’d venture to guess, after the dot.com bubble burst, even MORE technology ventures fail in comparison to the average start-up company.

So, Alvin, I do think your comments are accurate. Most people are not attending this event to steal an idea. The possibility does exist that an attendee could take someone’s idea at the conference and run with it, although I would think it is far more likely such an occurance would result incidentally, not from someone looking to steal the idea.

I think the big lesson is that this is more about the “how to” than just an “idea.” If someone does a take and run, I would argue it is far more likely that it is a result of that person learning how to develop and commerical the idea through this bootcamp, and far less to do with the idea that someone else had.

Mr. Huh, if you do have a great idea, AND you know how to make it work, go to it. But my guess is your the type to watch TV commercials, and claim you had the idea first. Maybe you did. But history is full of examples of sucessful ‘inventors’ who were NOT the first one to come-up with the idea. It’s the ‘inventor’ that makes it a success that history remembers. If you are good at the second part, I wouldn’t worry too much about never having another good idea.
5 Alvin Borromeo // Jul 12, 2008 at 7:25 pm

Awesome comment. Thanks for filling in the 2.5! I hope you’re one of the people participating.
6 jason krac // Jul 13, 2008 at 9:05 pm

this is a recent post in the 37signals.com blog. Its by David Heinemeier Hansson creator of Rails (Ruby on).

To the earlier point, it takes much more than an idea…

Alvin, his will be an awesome exercise in creativity, team work and community.
7 jason krac // Jul 13, 2008 at 9:06 pm

how about i paste the link!

http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1122-i-had-that-idea-years-ago
8 brian zuercher // Jul 16, 2008 at 8:49 am

Alvin, I am coming and I am excited. Having been on the coast in tech environment you learn that start up is more about networking and convening then the actual idea. The first thing most of my entrepreneur (not the wannabes) friends say is….TELL EVERYONE about your idea. If you can’t get it off the ground, its not usually because someone stole your idea. Cheers to bringing tech start ups to the midwest, it will be contagious.
9 Alvin Borromeo // Jul 16, 2008 at 3:13 pm

Jason and Brian, thanks for the great comments. I’m really looking forward to this. But importantly, I’m interested in the community that results.
10 jason krac // Jul 20, 2008 at 9:14 pm

absolutely worth every penny and much much more…Kudos to the organizers
11 John Ehlers // Jul 20, 2008 at 9:20 pm

Echo jason. And more kudos to the participants who brought nearly a dozen ideas to life in ~50 hrs. Lots of talent, lots of creativity, and lots of good memories (and new friends). Let’s do it again!
12 Ray Blackerby // Jul 20, 2008 at 10:10 pm

I am sorry to say that I absolutely missed this event and I am very interested in hearing about your plans for your next event.