Startup Weekend Utrecht (Saturday)

Wake up, upcoming enterpreneurs! Utrecht city is still only half awake (it's a saturday), but there's already an exceptional buzz at Seets2Meet, a collection of trendy meeting rooms at Utrecht central station. In a beautiful autumn scenery -a hazy sun on coloured leafs- our enthusiastics gather for coffee and breakfast. All participants had a good (short) night of sleep, in which all new ideas were put to rest. Today they continue; business models are made, we talk about about scalability, sustainability, getting investments and making it work.

This is Startupweekend; where sleep is overrated, yet dreams emerge.

"Good morning!"

After breakfast (and breakfast meetings; some teams are already working on their business development while refueling themselves with croissants and coffee), all participants are gathered into the Mindz Lounge. "Yesterday was very exciting. Today is the first day you will make it actually work. You will work on a business plan and maybe already your marketing. But most important, you will work on your product design!"

But first of all; we will take a moment of peace, happiness and tranquility. All are asked to close their eyes, breathe through the tummy, slowly in and out, and feel the refreshing air of a brand new day. All minds come to rest and still wandering thoughts are put into place. When a state of total at-ease has been accomplished, it's time to kick-off officially: "Together we are going to make your Startupweekend rock! A big applause for all of you here today!" 

The arrival of mentors

All teams are handed over a start-up-kit with all information nessecary. In addition, several mentors and coaches arrive. These gurus -skilled and experienced in different fields of enterpreneurship- are holding office in Seats2Meet today, and can be addressed at any time for questions, advice and uplifting spirit to boost our participant's confidence. With their support, we learn about the feasibility of what has been dreamed up. As playful and unrestricted these sessions seem, mind you, this is no child's play or unlimited playground: we're actually building the foundations of real -and already promising- companies. And therefore, our skilled mentors are here to warn us against the dangers of enterpreneurship, lurking in the shadows of entangling strategies and overwhelming business models.

Who says business modeling requires a desk? The team of project 'Lost in time' takes it outside; armed with ipads, hoods and scarfs -it's quite chilly outside-, they march through the streets near central station to demonstrate an interactive video-experience. A very effective strategy to make the whole team understand what it's about (remember what Maarten Brands stressed yesterday: "Most crucial: you need to know if you're in for the same thing").

"I participate in the Startup Weekend Utrecht because I like getting to know other people who are building businesses." Rick Leunisse (22) is a student psychology at the Utrecht University. The idea to start a business in just 54 hours really appealed to him. "No talking, just creating!" As a student he must be one of the youngest participants. "A lot of people have more experience in the field, but as a student I might add some fresh insights, because I'm relatively new to this."

"It wasn't easy to choose an idea; there were a lot of great pitches and it's hard to decide based upon 60 seconds. But Diederik van Bussel had this amazing enthusiastic energy, and I believe there's a lot to gain: companies underestimate the power of alternative networking possibilities." No hickups so far, but "...we just started, I think we'll encounter some problems during the day. We'll see…"

Step in & step up

"A business strategy is more crucial than ever. Yet many organizations struggle in this area." For the teams who are starting to feel the pressure of time inexorably passing by, we've got some amazing mentors to fill up their 'blank spaces of unknowing'. Camille van den Boom is one of them. Working at Business Models Inc., she knows exactly which business model will fit in a specific business environment. In her talk, she exemplified this by highlighting the model of Spotify. But more important for our upcoming entrepreneurs, with the sparkle she brings along, she's living proof that business is anything but dull or grey. And again, the words of Maarten Brands are echoing through our heads: "You have to be emotionally invested."

The half-way-mark

"This is so much more work than I expected. The devil is in the details, definitely." Launching a startup in 54 hours proves to be quite a challenge. Once you get together with experts from different fields, one realizes there is much more to it than just the idea itself. And even despite this powerful joining of forces, you simply can't think of everything. That's why an important part of todays afternoon focuses on customer validation. You can't cheat here: people get so say what they think and how they feel about it. The Startup weekend roadmap outlines the judging criteria, which contain some useful information about validating your concept. It stresses the importance of finding suitable solutions for taking quick tests (surveys, Twitter & Facebook polls, A/B tests).

"Focus!", insights from a mentor

What's the most important thing to keep in
mind when working on a new project? We asked Desmond Dekker
(27), product manager at Spilgames, who today holds office at Startup. "Focus!", he replied; "First make sure that your main idea is finished, before you continue developing and start digging into details." Desmond likes what he has seen so far. "It's great to see people with different skillsets work together. Developers and designers combined in a single team with businessmen; it actually more rare than you might think. This event is organized really well, which makes it possible to set creative minds to work."

Some last advice for pitching? Desmond: "People are very visually oriented, so make sure you show them something, even if your product isn't finished yet."

Outside, the sun is setting behind the office buildings, dressing them in gloomy, autumn light. Soon, most of them turn into ink-black silhouettes, where no activity remains. However, Seets2Meet is a peculiar exception; behind lit windows our creatives are still working on their biz-models. A little tired, but luckily our mentors keep their spirit alive, with the power of catchy catch phrases. I just heard Yorn Soeteman -founder of budgetgaming- say "Making mistakes is a necessity: if you do everything right, you won't learn anything!"

And if that doesn't do the trick; we have pizza! And an occasional back rub (for the lucky ones, that is).

Tomorrow there will be pitches. Our teams already have their concept nailed down, you would think. Well... not quite. Business-building can be characterized by an interesting kind of progress: all teams focused on a very specific idea. But while discussing and developing it, many sidetracks were pursued along the way. And in a ever-increasing tendency to over-analyze and re-think, some ideas have not yet found their 'backbone'. In some teams, this led to a -modest- discussion: "Really, we need to determine what it is we're actually selling here!" No heads are crushed with ipads yet -sorry to disappoint you there-, but there's definitely some battle going on. Hey, business means war, right?

It has been a long day -and a long blog as well; really, you actually read al the way through till this point? I tip my hat, sir!-, but tomorrow is going to be promising! The pitched ideas are fully grown now, and have evolved into the swans we hoped for. But then again, it's up to the jury and audience to judge for themselves. Will it be a wedding-like scenario, where new companies will be set free like doves? Or a duck-hunt, where unfortunate creatures are shot down immediately? Kick-start, or kicked around? Check in back tomorrow, for our final day of the Startupweekend!