San Francisco
November 22, 2007 | by Andrew HydeLast weekend was the 7th straight weekend I helped put on a Startup Weekend in a row. That is 39 days on the road. 16,393 airline miles. 16 places to crash (including 5 floors). Just over 430 founders. A truly amazing 7 weeks of my life.
The original interest in Startup Weekend came in from around the globe, from India to West Lafayette. San Francisco wasn’t the city with the most interested at all (one founder told me that ‘every day is Startup Weekend in SF’).
On Friday night I stood in front of a crowd of over a hundred, and by the end of the opening remarks there was a count of 132 in the room (we were graciously hosted by Microsoft at their One Market Street office). This was the biggest Startup Weekend to happen around the globe. And this was in the ‘internet capitol of the world,’ a city I have never been to.
I was a bit scared to say the least. To be honest, I was scared shitless. I wasn’t excited as I had been for the previous 9 weekends. For some reason I thought something would go really wrong. No real good or logical reason, I just had a bad feeling.
The days prior I asked as many people as I could tips on what the area was like and what I should be prepared for. ‘Ego’ was the most common answer, I should be prepared to deal with a bunch of big heads that didn’t want to do too much.
Halfway through Friday night, with 132 pairs of eyes looking at me, my feelings about San Francisco vanished, and I started to have a really good time.
The group had passion. They breathed conscience. They wanted to make positive change on the world, through this weekend and every day in the future.
The group picked a project that came from a simple question: how do you mobilize a large group of volunteers for an emergency? HelpHookup was born (a facebook application to start). Here is what founder Sean Tierney had to say after the event:
Let me just say that in every respect this was an amazing event. It condensed a year long product dev and launch cycle into just 2.5 days and it began on a Friday night with a room full of 132 complete strangers. The fact they were able to keep the wheels on the bus and deliver a working alpha by midnight on Sunday was an impressive feat in itself, but what was even more impressive was to see how leaders emerged and groups solved problems.
We even did a podcast to finish off the event.
It was an amazing weekend filled with many of the Startup Weekend norms of past weekends. Amazing energy, amazing passion. What a fun way to spend a weekend.
San Francisco, we will be back!
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