Startup weekends are hugely popular weekends in which groups of people gather, pitch an idea, form a team with people that like the idea and develop the idea further throughout the weekend. It means that you are actually working on a startup idea or app. It’s sort of like a gamejam but instead of creating a game in 48 hours, you create a company in 54.
Startup Weekend Utrecht challenged the participants to come up with “a game or game-related application which could form the basis of a credible business over the course of a weekend”. About 13 teams were formed around a whole range of different concepts.
Friday:
I decided to participate in this startup weekend as I was curious what kind of business I could come up with together with other people I didn’t know and perhaps would get a better feel for viable business ideas and propositions. I would add the creative flavour and ideas. The thing with this startup weekend was that it was heavily promoted among the game dev scene, so there were a lot of familiar faces.
In the end I was really excited about an idea that Ard Bonewald (Gamehouse) pitched, it was about indie games promotion and he already had a name for it: “Ardhouse Games” (harhar). I listened to all the other pitches but I couldn’t get my mind off that Ardhouse idea. For a while now, I had been pondering about getting more things done for the Indie game dev scene in Europe, creating more visibility, organize events to play, connect and collaborate. As I had done for The Netherlands with the INDIGO showcase, I would like to do something in a similar vein for Europe. Could this be such an opportunity?
The pitch session was long, with about 40 people pitching their ideas. I had joined startup weekend together with my friend Eva Nieuwdorp, I knew she would be interested in the Ardhouse idea. After the pitches we joined Ard and told him how excited we were about the project. We had three people. Would we need someone else? We were joined by Jeroen Matser, a recently graduated NHTV IGAD student, and game programmer. We knew we still had a long way to go but it was late already and decided to meet up early in the morning again.
Saturday
In the morning we rushed to Seats2Meet in Hoog-Catharijne to join up with our fellow teammates. We went to our assigned team room, somewhere in a far corner, but with a nice number: 11. The seats were comfy but unhandy, so we had to rearrange the room. After that we started brainstorming about the initial concept Ard had pitched. I told the group I would like to have a focus on Europe as there is much going on for North-America already. The others agreed. We went to brainstorm our ideas on big pieces of paper and plastered them all over the walls.
What could we create? -we thought. We decided it had to be a website that catered to European indies. But what would it do? We researched a couple of examples such as IndieCity, Indievania, LittleIndie and IndiePub (notice the indie in there?). We liked that they want to put the developer in touch with their fans and audience, that it is about the discovery of new things. And to enable the developer to publish his/her game.
So all these platforms already exist, what could we add? Again we turned to the pieces of paper on the wall and started writing keywords. We discussed bundles, recommendation systems, meetups and much much more. We had gotten this nice piece of paper where you can chart your business model. It’s called the “Business Model Canvas” (and goes with a nicely designed book). We put words down on the canvas, trying to figure out what our focus was and what our ‘value propositions’, ‘key resources’ and ‘customer segments’ were. It helped putting things in perspective and give a sense of direction.
Of course it was still a startup weekend, so we could talk to some mentors, SW Utrecht had provided. We wondered what Pim Bouman (Gamious) would think of all the ideas and invited him over to our humble teamspace. He prodded us about our goals and revenue streams and tried to figure it out with us.
Names, names, names, names
We figured it was about time to think about names. Yes, we had Ardhouse, but that was too tongue-in-cheek. What else was there? A whole long list of them! We actually spent hours thinking and brainstorming of a name. We knew it had to be good. A couple of names: … [Insert total randomness]. Yeah so that really didn’t work out too well. Around 11PM we had a pretty rough idea of what our concept would be and we decided to leave things as they were and pick it up the next (last!) day.
Sunday
The final day! We set up shop in the big room across the hall, as the mentors were gone, and 11 felt a bit cramped, we needed more space to conquer the world with our idea!
What to do with this last day?
We switched names: when the organisation did a round (sidenote: at times we were afraid we were forgotten as we were the only ones on this side of the space, all the other teams were close to each other on the other side of seats2meet) and asked us what name we would use for our project, we came up with Indiverse (yeah). We still hadn’t figured it out!
But it was time we set the name in stone. Votes went to a name on the list: indieMelt, a name that would show it’s a melting pot of ideas, people and events. We had a name! But no working website, only ideas. In a couple of hours we needed to pitch our concept to a group of judges… Ard went working on his pitch (we unanimously decided it had to be him that would pitch the project), Eva called up a mutual friend to ask if he could design a logo for us. Jim (Biekmann) said yes, and started working on it remotely and swiftly. I got working on a mock-up of the website we envisioned and tried a couple of (online) tools such as balsamiq and mockingbird.
Somewhat later I finished the mock-up, send it to Ard to incorporate it in his presentation. We registered domain names and started a twitter account.
Jim rushed in and showed us his ideas for a logo, icons and general feel of the website. Brilliant I’d say! And right on time.
We just had a few hours left. Ard made his presentation, our fate was in his hands or actually in his presentation skills. He practiced the pitch in front of us a couple of times. We added, rearranged, adjusted and then… it was time.
Everyone staggered into the presentation room. We were up first… yes, first. Not the most convenient spot (people forget, can’t adjust to how other people are performing, can’t feel the mood of the judges yet, to name a few), but hey it would be over soon! Ard did well, a couple of tweets went out and it was over.
We could sit back and relax, listen to the other pitches. To read more about pitches from other participants: Setup Utrecht made an excellent report of all the pitches via Storify.
In the end we didn’t win. But that was alright. We went in for the learning experience. It was good to focus a whole weekend with likeminded people on a case/ a subject and trying to make it work with the skills, passion and ideas you have. And who knows we might turn our idea into an actual website? The future will tell.
Some lessons learned:
- Yes, you need a name and it is important, no don’t take 6 hours to think of something
- Make good use of everyone’s skills in a team, even if it initially seems there is no need for certain skillsets. Divide roles.
Other links:
Storify by SetupUtrecht:
- Friday: http://storify.com/setuputrecht/startup-weekend-utrecht-friday
- Saturday: http://storify.com/setuputrecht/startup-weekend-utrecht-saturday
- Sunday: http://storify.com/setuputrecht/startup-weekend-utrecht-sunday
Video: Startup Utrecht compilation video by HU students
Photos:
- Setup Utrecht: http://www.flickr.com/photos/setuputrecht/sets/72157627983853795/
- zo-ii: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zo-ii/sets/72157630481992432/