Startup Weekend: An Entrepreneur’s Escape

What I expected was nothing that I could even imagine from a 54 hour weekend full of entrepreneurial minded people like me. I was sponsored by Xavier University to give it my all; whether that be passionate conversations, pitching ideas, or working on a company that won the weekend.  It was truly one of the best weekends of my life.  This article will go into detail about each day as well as our final pitch to investors and entrepreneurs in the Cincinnati area.

Day 1: Meet, Pitch & Team Up

Friday, 6:00 pm: I arrived in downtown Cincinnati feeling passionate about the weekend ahead, not really knowing what to expect. People were divided up based on expertise (coders, marketers, etc.)

Next, people were allowed to pitch any idea they had in mind for 60 seconds. From this, participants could talk to each person about their idea and vote. The top 10 ideas were picked based on votes, which is when we had to narrow ourselves down to a team. For me, it starts with conversation. The number one factor I had when talking with each person about their idea was if I could feel comfortable and know I could have an impact on their idea. I found my team made up of smart coders and analytic gurus who loved video games. For me, I have no interest in video games, but knew that my marketing background would help them tremendously in developing go to market plans and acquiring a user base. 

10:00 pm: It was time to start working! Our group was eager to work and create a company. After a quick brainstorm we created Streamplify; a comprehensive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics platform for an edge on online streaming. We created a website, logo, and basic API getting prepared for what would be one of best weekends of my life.  

Day 2: Learn & Work

Saturday, 9:00 am: The grind started when we got there. After a quick and delicious breakfast, the team created some tasks to get completed by the end of the day. I was working on developing a marketing approach where we could get potential users to the website. We used the website, Twitch, to gain a presence to what we would offer, as well as build an API that would help users better understand their followers, with a goal of making their steam as profitable and productive as possible.

1:00 pm: Throughout the day, the team stayed focused on the objectives, knowing that time was valuable. We created a term to describe to users what the process would be called. The process is called the streaming performance index or SPI (figure below). This is a set of performance analytic measurements that utilize a set of API’s in ways that follow certain behavior tendencies. These tendencies include things like trends, engagements, conversations, and overall value of each user. The goal of Streamplify is for users to see results based on this SPI that are presented in a comprehensive way that gives users easier access to significant data with an end goal of increasing subscribers and viewers.

Streaming Performance Index (SPI) is a set of performance analytic measurements that utilize a set of API’s in ways that follow certain behavior tendencies.

10:00 pm: Although tired, we knew we had something special. We knew from market research that there was in fact a need for such an analytics tool, and a large user base that could use it. We knew tomorrow was pitch day, and we had a couple more things to perfect. The night was young and the ambition was high. 

Day 3: A Day Like No Other: Final Touches

Sunday, 9:00 am: We came in early and started working on final touches of our API as well as creating more of a user base. We gathered data from users of Twitch to see if they would be interested in such a service. From the 20 responses, we knew we had something special.

11:00 am: We hopped on a conference call with an executive from IBM who helped foster the growth of IBM Watson. His insight was something that we needed to finish what we started. He offered input that was invaluable, where we took away so much about different processes and decisions that needed to be made.

3:00 pm: We showed a couple different mentors what we have been up to as well as walk them through what we created. They were very interested in how the whole user experience worked as well as how simply we could offer valuable analysis for users. It was satisfying to hear that they wanted to follow our process once the competition was over, a sign that we were doing something right.

6:00 pm: Pitch time! We created our pitch deck over the course of about 3 hours, where we wanted to be unique and stand out.  We pitched first out of the ten teams, and it went fantastic. Our passion and energy showed where judges were intrigued with how we can create a service like no other for such a large user base. Even though we were sleep deprived, we were happy to have come this far as a group to create a company in 54 hours. The other groups that presented were very interesting as well; where ideas became reality.  The judges announced the top 3, where we were the last one's to be called. We won! What a way to end the weekend.  

Key Takeaways:

• Come in open minded

• Let the creativity flow

• Don't hold back

• Make mistakes and pivot