Startup Weekend stormed through Boston once again this past weekend. With almost 150 attendees and 17 teams making it through the weekend, the energy was high.

Sunday night each team presented their business to a team of five judges. Each team was given five minutes to present and three minutes to answer questions. Awards were then given by the judges for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place, Best Design, Most Technical Achievement and Most Fun. In addition, there was an Audience Choice winner and awards for best use of Twilio and Cloudmine. You can see the winners here.

Below are my notes on each team’s presentation and questions the judges asked that I thought would be insightful for people who’ve never attended a Startup Weekend, plus some I didn’t have time to edit out. When possible, I also included part of the answers by each team.

I didn’t transcribe any of this exactly, nor was I able to type as fast as people were speaking, so expect errors. I aimed to capture the gist of what teams presented and what judges asked, rather than the specifics.
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In building an entrepreneurial ecosystem, we often talk about the roles people play. Do we have enough investors, entrepreneurs, seasoned executives?

Roles give us a language for talking about gaps in our ecosystem, and the complex interactions between its participants. By defining roles, we simplify the web of human interactions into concepts we can grasp, and through this comprehension, take action to improve the system.

When talking about the social dynamics of an ecosystem, it’s important to have a shared language to ensure we’re discussing the same problems and creating common solutions. To be useful in teasing out the important dynamics of a system, our shared language needs to be specific and actionable.

To aid in recent discussions, this article reviews terminology laid out by Malcolm Gladwell for analyzing the spread of change, relates that to social dynamics in an economic development context and then elaborates with other terms that may be useful in building an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

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Don’t take business advice from Robert Scoble. At least not this advice.

He means well. But some of the advice he gives could cost you money, or even sink your startup.

Since Robert’s post has been circulating around my entrepreneur circles, I’m writing this post to provide an alternative set of advice burgeoning entrepreneurs might follow.
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Two weeks ago I attended Business of Software 2011 and saw a talk by Alex Osterwalder on the business model canvas, a tool for documenting and exploring business models. Then last weekend I attended Charlotte Startup Weekend 3 and explored the business model canvas in more depth.

If you’re not familiar with Startup Weekend, it is an event where programmers, designers and business people team up to create a startup business within 54 hours. It starts on Friday night and ends Sunday night when each team presents their business to a panel of judges. You can read more about my experience at Startup Weekend Boston here.

I participated on the WiFi Crowd team with eleven other people. During the weekend, as we discussed the business model, I downloaded the Business Model Toolbox app onto my iPad so we could use it in exploring our business model.  Business Model Toolbox allows you to quickly create business model canvases and document the key parts of your model.

We used the tool to help us think through our business model. But I was on the tech team and didn’t get a chance to use it as much as I had wanted. So, during the presentations, I decided to attempt to document each team’s business model based on their presentation. In this post, I present the results of that experiment. Click any business model below to see a larger version.
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Last Friday I hosted a session on the pros, cons and best practices for building and managing virtual teams at the MassTLC Innovation unConference.  In that session, I presented the research I had done over the past two weeks and people shared the techniques they were using for their virtual teams. In this post, I summarize the lessons learned and add a few new links to resources for managing virtual teams.

If you haven’t read my original article introducing the session, you can read it at Virtual Teams: Pros, Cons & Best Practices.

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Business of Software 2011 will be streaming the sessions live this year. To register, visit the web site.

Unfortunately, the Business of Software web site is scant on details of the sessions. To help friends to schedule their days, I’ve copied the schedule here and filled in details from the conference brochure. Times not listed are for breaks, meals and networking. See the full schedule here.

If you want to follow the live discussion from the conference on Twitter, the hash tag is #BoS2011.

Enjoy.

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Tech companies in Boston and Silicon Valley have a talent crunch. They can’t find enough programmers. Yet in small towns and cities across the country, and in countries around the world, programmers struggle to find good jobs.

Why the disconnect?

Large tech companies have been giving workers telecommute options for years. Teams comprise of members all around the world. Research has shown virtual teams can even outperform on-site teams when the right processes are in place. Yet most startups in Boston and Silicon Valley require you to work on-site. The assumption is that startups require teams to be co-located to be effective.

With the current discussions surrounding the talent crunch in Boston, I want to challenge that assumption.

At the MassTLC Innovation 2011 unConference this upcoming Friday, I plan to host a roundtable discussion on the pros, cons and best practices of virtual teams, and challenge the assumption that Boston startups should be building teams locally. This post explores some of the issues I’ll be bringing up.  Continue reading >

I attended Startup Weekend Boston this past weekend, had enormous fun and helped launch a new business.

If you’re not familiar with Startup Weekend, it’s a weekend-long event where teams compete to bring businesses from concept to launch in 54 hours. Today’s post provides a play-by-play of what one of these weekends looks like–or at least my experience of the weekend.

[Disclaimer: I wrote this over the past three days and my memory has failed me on many of the details. If anyone who attended sees anything I missed or that I got wrong, please let me know and I’ll update this post. I’d also love to know who won each category at the end and who the judges were. I remembered a few, but forgot to write the rest down.]
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An underground movement stirs in isolated groups of entrepreneurs across the country. It aims to reduce failure when starting a new business, and when failure does occur, to force it to happen faster so less time and money gets wasted.

That movement is called The Lean Startup.

Started in the world of high growth Internet startups, entrepreneurs are applying its practices to all types of businesses. And just as lean manufacturing transformed manufacturing, the Lean Startup movement will transform new business development.

Economic developers pay heed. By teaching your burgeoning entrepreneurs the lean startup methodology, you can increase your success rate and reduce the impact that failed businesses have on their owners. Continue reading >