Can you take an idea from pitch to launch in 54 hours? Nearly 100 cities are participating in the Startup Weekend Global Battle for Startup Weekend and this can be your chance to experience one of the most intense weekends of your life. Startup junkies, this is your chance to build a company and relationships.

I participated in Startup Weekend Indianapolis 2010 and joined a team to get the app, Notesee, launched in 54 hours (53 hours by the time the pitch session was over). The team consisted of five team members: me as a front-end developer, David the Ruby/Rails developer, Joel the excellent designer, and two business developers. We jumped into a quiet space and started planning with a montage of discussion, writing, coding, and strategizing to make this app functional. This went on for the rest of Friday and Saturday, then Sunday rolled around. Sunday was a blur with all of us rushing to make sure the app was running and the final presentation was ready for the judges. It’s difficult to really explain the roller coaster of a weekend, the whole event was amazing and exhausting, and I’m ready to do it again.

You have the chance to make something great and launch a real company in 54 hours, but more importantly, you can meet driven individuals in your community. Take this opportunity to build a disruptive company and join a class of startups grown out of Startup Weekend like LaunchRock, Scanadu, and Mingly. Did I mention you will be participating in Global Entrepreneurship Week?

Startup Weekend Bloomington 2011

Register Now!

$15 off registration Promo Code: sbox

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This is an excerpt from my friend Nate’s recent blog post “How to Get Millions of Users“, which is a great distillation of some big and heady thoughts tying product design, development, marketing, and onboarding all together in a nice little package. It’s a pretty long post, but read it all. I promise it’s worth it:

When we build products for groups of people we aim for a fictitious middle. While we’re trying to make something people LOVE we make assumption about what they love. It would be like saying to your girlfriend “I hear women LOVE Victoria’s Secret. Go try this on.” when in actuality some women might like that but she really loves sweat pants; taken as an individual, demographics mean jack.

When we build products for real people — starting with ourselves — however, we know exactly what to build.

Before he launched Foursquare, Dennis Crowley would go around saying “I just want a Leaderboard for my Saturday night and I want to be at the top of it.” Foursquare wasn’t just built for himself, it was built with a very specific set of friends in mind — those he spent his Saturday night’s with.

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Freelancers everywhere. Lend me your ears.

Working at home is great, in theory. You wake up, make yourself an omelet (or don’t), pull on some sweats and start the day. There is no wasted time commuting and no meetings to attend. Your boss isn’t checking how often you’re on Facebook or asking questions about your progress. Better yet, there’s no guy with bad body odor playing Michael Bolton in the cubicle next door. Life is sweet.

If only it were that simple. In real life there’s no time for omelets. You’re busy managing multiple tasks and looking for projects on top of a supposedly healthy social life.  But doing quality work takes more than just time. It takes motivation. Some can function from the comfort of their couches or kitchen tables. Others, not so much.

At the local coffee shop you wait 20 minutes for a table, only to find walls with no outlets and a weak wireless connection. Hours later you look at your clock and realize you’ve been there 3 hours and all you have to show for it is an empty latte and nothing done. It’s enough to make you swear off coffee.

Where’s the happy medium? Inspiration comes from surrounding yourself with inspiring people, but nobody likes to be micromanaged.

Hackers in Residence is for freelance developers and designers looking for office space and project opportunities. Use our space in exchange for a fraction of your time to work on projects for our sprouts. You reap the benefits of a laid-back, creative atmosphere while maintaining a constant work flow and access to our resources and networks. Better yet, you can get health care at the SproutBox group rate.

Best of both worlds? We think so.

Interested? See our Opportunities page for more information on how to apply and what we’re looking for.

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