Startup Weekend Hyderabad : Day One

Startup Weekend is a long event where Entrepreneurs and aspiring Entrepreneurs come together to create a startup.

The attendees can be anyone, technical, non tech, designers, creative or business guys. This year, Startup Weekend was from 22nd to 24th November.

 I’ll be writing about my experience of creating a startup in just 54 hours based on an idea which can be summed up in 1 minute in 3 articles. Each Article will be on each day.

5 Days ago, 18th November

My semester exams were on. As I scrolled through my feed, I came across a Youthopia contest giving away free passes for Startup Weekend. Without a second thought, I answered the question. I was lucky enough to win it and there started my exciting weekend!

Day One: 22nd November, 6:45PM

As I walked in to Progress Software, the venue for Startup weekend, I had no expectations. Just seven hours ago, I was done with me Semester exams. In one word, I was just curious. The room was full of people, the Ice breaker session was on at that moment. Clueless I wandered around, and met some really cool people from software, design and business backgrounds. In just few minutes, I came to know more people that I did in two years of my college. Great start already. Before we went on ahead, Vijay Gummadi, Founder of Carz, spoke of his journey.

Soon after his little speech we got into Idea pitching.

Every attendee gets one minute only to pitch their idea, meaning an idea which could possibly transform into a whole company has to be told in one minute. Almost everyone stood in line to pitch their ideas. In the next few minutes, the room was full of ideas. These were not the next Facebook or twitter. Some of these ideas could well be the next Microsoft, the next Motorola. Those kind of ideas.

The process was first idea pitching and then voting for the best ideas. After the ideas were voted, the pitchers formed their teams to get the best of the next two days and prepare a product.

As a hardware guy, all I saw was software everywhere! Bit of a difficult situation. But the universe had a plan. I found a guy who wanted to make a GPS device. Something I wanted to do couple of months ago. I joined the team.

I read a quote somewhere that went something like “Great people discuss ideas”, and ideas were the only thing discussed here. People connected not on their background but for their ideas.

As I was going on meeting people I met a man, Mr.Sri Peddu from PowerHouse Ventures. I can say that this evening just took the most exciting. Now, this man was the reason behind many startups creating wonderful, life changing products. It was great to actually get an investor POV on startups. What they expect, what the startup founders can do and related stuff.

In just few hours of arriving, I came across so wonderful ideas, people and had a very engaging conversation on investor POV. Remember, this was just day one. Not even a day, few hours in the evening. So much in one evening, I could not imagine the next two days.

I left the venue at about 11pm with a sense of eagerness.

Where did this happen? It was at Progress Software, iLabs Centre Madhapur, Hyderabad.