The merit of Start-Up weekends.
This short piece on the effectiveness of a burst of activity
is based on personal experience.
My first engagement with this was some years ago with
designing an event we called “The Real Alchemist Bootcamp”. It was a cheeky
attempt at drawing on the Paul Coelho book and at the same time playing on
words –alchemy - where we helped to turn ideas into businesses.
This project was run at Queens College – Cambridge around 2003
and provided us with a huge level of insight into how we might run them again.
The main outcome or should I say outpouring was the positive buzz and energy
that it provided. We did not have an ecosystem into which the students who took
part could follow.
Several years later we became involved in what we called
“IdeasTransform” and the notion of meaningful entrepreneurship. The reason for
this was due to the increased decibels coming out of accelerators that seemed
to be pushing out App based new ventures that had nothing other than retail,
courier, concierge, fashion, dating and other such proposals. Many were me-too
ideas some of which had succeeded and others which had failed spectacularly!
From this came other similar experiences and bit by bit we
started to see the gestation of social ventures and new technology businesses.
The two with which I have been involved and can see becoming successes are www.kisanhub.com which is providing decision
support for farmers and a host of other services that build on agricultural
data. This firm was born out a start-up weekend I was involved in and came
about when two strangers began to chat and found they had common interests. The
firm raised around $1m in investment and presently employs nearly 30 people –
with twenty in India. There are many other such examples.
More recently we established Start-Up weekends at Cranfield and
already have three new ventures in the making and several others in the
pipeline. (1) Corrosion radar will provide data and solutions to the oil and
gas industry with sensors examining corrosion under insulation (2) PhycoFeed
has technology that can accelerate the production of biofuels using solar
energy. It provides a significant improvement in efficiency. And (3) Datasolver is set to provide privacy
security in the growing explosion of data. We have had other forms too that are
coming along nicely and we can talk more about them in due course.
Happily we have also killed off ideas at these weekends
before too much effort goes into them.
So, what have we learnt?
First thing is to get quality ideas and people together. Secondly bring
together a high calibre and experienced mentor group. Thirdly, have access to a
pot of money people can aim at securing. Fourth, provide relevant content and
process to generate ideas, perhaps pivot them around until something looks
sensible. Doing this under time pressure seems to work because it is quality
time that is not otherwise available to entrepreneurs.
From a purely social perspective – it is fun too! Yes there
is merit. I feel that if we can get even one decent start-up out of a weekend
that is sustainable, generates revenues and creates employment using novel
research based technologies we win on many fronts. The input/output ratio is
worthwhile!
Cranfield Start-Up weekends are free at the point of
delivery. Our next weekend is 18th to 20th May 2017. We
will report in more detail on the ideas and companies which flow through this
event. If you are curious to know more
please follow the link: https://goo.gl/jFvAG8
