It’s been a week now since Marcus and I attended the Startup Weekend Hamburg (#swhh11) to work on the fluidnetwork. I first heard about the idea at betahaus Hamburg where Yasha and Markus presented it. They were really enthusiastic about it, the idea of pitching a business concept in 60 seconds, fighting for ressources to build your Startup Team and then working the whole weekend to make this business concept come to life is brilliant. The most exciting thing about it is the sheer energy of execution. In 54 hours there’s no space for sophisticated concepts, you have to think of something special build a platform, a facebook page and a blog around it and present it in a creative way to the jury. And it was a blast, nearly 50 ideas have been around on friday evening, about 15 Teams formed to work on their ideas, 11 presented their business models on sunday evening.
It was a very constructive weekend for us, we talked to so many inspiring people who gave us important feedback on our business concept. This was absolutely valuable. And we even had the chance to present our idea sunday evening which we did not think of after we began working on friday.
To pitch such an complex business model like ours in 60 seconds an to make it attractive enough for others to join the team was really hard. So we didn’t gain enough votes to work with others during the weekend. To be honest we were a bit sad about that. Since we are serious about founding a company we wanted to work on our idea! So we went to drink a few beer. But after a few cold ones, we decided not to give up and to simply roll out our business model canvas and keep on working. This was the best decision we could make, our canvas was an attraction pole for many fellow entrepreneurs. We spoke with the mentors and made great contacts. The best of it was that Yasha finally came over and asked us if we wanted to present our idea, that was unexpected since we at first glance worked alone. But thinking about it a week later I have to say that it’s an absolutely perfect fit to the whole fluidnetwork idea. I’d like to give some special Thanks to a bunch of people who shared their thoughts with us and gave us important feedback. I’ll do that while talking about our learnings:
Sarah Pust is a freelance Writer and Journalist and of course a fellow CoWorker at the Betahaus. She spent hours with us discussing ideas and one of the best was a single statement she made when we were out for a beer on friday night. “This feels like after work partying with my colleagues!” It’s true, coworking is like working with colleagues, but with the simple but important fact that you’re not forced to work with them, it’a “voluntariness colleagueship”. But it is important to have company, feedback and confirmation. As a Freelancer you get money and projects from your clients, this is different to colleagueship. Another point we worked out with Sarah is the point of liability that comes with huge projects. Where there’s fame, money and big clients there’s the fear of single Freelancers to loose ground in the legal stuff. Managing and limiting accountability is a key value proposition for our partners. I already worked with this ideas on our “Coworker-Page”.
Talking about the legal stuff I was really happy for the discussion with Philipp Plog. Philipp attented the Startup Weekend Hamburg as a mentor. Working as a Lawyer at Field Fisher Waterhouse Hamburg he specialises in intellectual property, media & entertainment law. Our questions were how we should handle the contractual relationship between the CoreTeam, the client and our CoWorkers colleagues. I thought it would be more complicated, but with a contract between us and the Coworker we are safe. The accountability to the client is pretty clear since we will sign the contract. It seems the really complicated situations will come up between the people in our future company, not on papers!
When Cem entered the working room I was really happy. Not only because he is a true veteran when it’s up to events in the media and blogger community but also because we had the opportunity in presenting our business model. Cem gave us important advise and made valuable statements like thinking internationally from the start. This is such an important fact, several times we talked to non-german attendees and had to explain the idea in english, it’s challenging but if we want to attract the most creative specialists we have to write in english and other languages, too. The other ideas we were discussing are leading to platform concepts. Connecting the CoWorkers and Specialists is one of our core issues when we’re thinking about our future platform.
The fluidnetwork Community itself was a topic I was dicussing with Lasse Chor whom I would really like to give a rockstar hand for his perfect moderation and his great entrepreneurial spirit during the weekend – it was great having you around Lasse! To motivate the developer team, to create the perfect working environment but also the right working atmosphere, these were the topics in this feedback session. I definitely will read the book Lasse recommended but more than that I will remember stories like the Tuborg-MacBook incident or buying sweets in the middle of the night for your startup colleagues!
It was a fantastic energy floating around there at the Hafen City University. The other teams worked so intense on the realization of their ideas, many of them didn’t sleep much or didn’t sleep at all. The possibility of sharing our idea with likeminds and even getting a glimpse of how it is presenting the idea was very important. I would love to stay in contact with as much of the attendees as possible and of course I will follow the fresh Twitter Accounts, Blogs and Facebook Pages from all the startups from this weekend! I highly recommend you to attend the next startup weekend in your town, if there’s none contact the u.s.-team and organize it!
Read more from the Startup weekend in Hamburg, especially from the winners on following Blogposts:
http://www.digitalmediawomen.de/2011/05/30/rockstars-and-boobs-beim-start-up-weekend-hamburg-swhh11/
http://www.andresasongko.com/blog/entrepreneurship/the-startup-weekend-hamburg-2011/
http://www.hackers-with-attitude.com/2011/05/what-are-you-doing-in-your-spare-time.html
http://hamburg.startupweekend.org/2011/05/29/the-teams-pitching-tonight/
