Last weekend I took part in Brisbane's Startup Weekend 2017. I went in blind. Not only had I never attended a Startup Weekend before, but I also have never even heard of it and bought my tickets after only a cursory reading of the promotional page. The event came to my notice while the early bird ticket price was still active and I figured $60 was cheap enough for me just to go along and see what the weekend was about. I am very glad I did! Because the weekend was not only great fun, but I feel I learnt a lot about the whole Startup process and I feel more connected to the Brisbane startup scene.

I pitched Kids Exp - it got some votes but not enough!

The Weekend started Friday night when we got an introduction to the concept and asked to pitch ideas. The ideas had to be pre-prototype. It was okay if you had thought long and hard about them and even did some market research. But if you had a prototype or a minimum viable product that was already on the market, you couldn't pitch.

I pitched a modified version of the idea behind Route 17 as Kids Experience. My idea was that when you have kids, you don't have a lot of time or energy to research and plan activities to do with the kids. So even if you have a chunk of time to spend with the kids, you might just end up watching TV because you are too exhausted to think of something else. So why not make an app that helps you plan and execute activities to do with your kids, before your kids start thinking you are uncool very quickly, even if you are Batman!

The latter was a bit of an inside joke for anyone reading the current crop of DC comics. But in retrospect, it was too much of an inside joke. Also in retrospect, the name was not great. There were something like 30 to 40 pitches, you needed something that rolled off the tongue or some other way to be memorable. If I attend another weekend and pitch again, I'll definitely pitch both an easier concept to transmit in the short time with a memorable name that sticks with you.

I still could have tried to recruit people to my idea, but I opted to join another team. One of the other ideas that struck me as good and practical was the concept of renting out your home office space. Sort of like an Airbnb for home offices. So I ended up joining Shared Space! The name was supposed to be a placeholder, but we never ended up finding another name that we liked more. So Shared Space stuck around.

Shared Space team with our first space sharer!

Over the weekend we first put together a Google form survey to gauge if there was a market for the idea. It turns out there was a niche for people who did experience the loneliness and isolation of working from home but were too far away from formal co-working spaces like the ones I covered in the previous post. A lot of people, it seems would appreciate a cheaper and more local option. Also, there are people who live too far from all available co-working spaces.

It was less about renting a space, and more about forming a community that would help lessen the feeling of isolation and might also help maintain focus, increasing accountability etc. However, for some people, it was about the space because either their home offices lacked amenities such as air conditioning or they just needed to go somewhere else from time to time.

I think we did good work and made a great final pitch to the judges. But we didn't place. I suspect we should have spent more time developing our business plan and also putting in some more features that helped to differentiate us from existing competitors in the space. Still, I think the idea has legs, and my team might go ahead with the concept. The lady who originally pitched the concept is sleeping on it and will decide to proceed or not soon.

For my part, I am going ahead exploring collaboration opportunities with people I met over the weekend. I had a meeting lined-up on Wednesday, but it fell through. But I have another meeting scheduled for Friday. Let's hope that goes well and I get some great collaborations coming out of the weekend.