The First Indiana Startup Weekend
Posted by Kevin Makice
It wasn’t Bloomington. The first official Startup Weekend came last October when West Lafayette—home of our bitter rivals to the north, the Purdue Boilermakers—opened as the sixth weekend in the short history of the event.
Andrew Hyde, founder of SW, had positive things to say about the small-town, Midwest experience:
I was impressed with the team. Very smart, very flexible, and just plain fun people. It was fun being on a college campus with so much going on. Someone would say “I have a BBQ to go to” and then 2 hours later be back at work, creating a company with the 30 or so people in the room. The energy was great all weekend, with the highs and lows you can expect.
That group didn’t do much advance brainstorming as a group, but they still came to the pitch session with 15 ideas. They eventually discarded them all and chose a completely new one, conceived after the weekend began—a contextual chat tool called ScrollTalk. The marketing people came up with a great tagline for the product: “Interest Messaging.”
The West Lafayette event suffered a bit from size, as only three dozen people participated. Our goal is 70, with room to gauge resources and fill needs in the final week to get us as high as 100. If early response is any indication, that shouldn’t be a problem. Registration officially starts later this week.
To prepare for February 8th, I recommend you peruse the blogs and companies created by past weekends. Start with West Lafayette.
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