Although similar to other Startup weekend events founder Elias Bizannes has really kicked it up a notch in several different areas.  This includes but is not limited to ...

1. You request to participate rather then purchase a ticket
2. It's mobile as we are traveling from San Francisco to SXSWi in Austin
3. You have to raise money to get on the bus even after you get picked
4. You have to promote, represent, and create buzz for your company up to and at the event. 
5. You have to sell your company at the end of SXSWi

So, it's exciting that I have an opportunity to participate however, I am going to need your help in two different areas to help make this event and our regional representation a success.

In order to gain the most face time with the VC's, VIP conference parties, press access, etc I need to raise a lot of money and a lot of awareness (in the form of website traffic). Additionally, me doing so also gives me the opportunity to be a spokes person for my team.  My goal is to raise the most money and web traffic tapping into the passionate entrepreneurial community here in Cleveland so we have a Cleveland native taking the podium in front of the entire tech universe.  

For capital, I want to use $250 dollars as the investment amount and tap into every startup here in town.  I know you can afford to chip in and help increase our regional representation at the conference.  If we all do this Cleveland will get the face time and recognition it deserves.

Additionally we are going to produce more traffic to the Startup Bus website as we travel and attend the conference that the servers crash. Considering the biggest VC's, press, and companies from San Francisco, Austin, Boston, and New York will be there I want them to feel what' brewing in Cleveland.

To make this a community affair I am going to be heavily documenting my experience, travels, and adventures along the way.  So watch for blog posts, tweets, podcasts, pictures, and video.  Viewing, commenting, and participating will help me make Cleveland's presence felt by everyone on the bus and at the conference.

I'm going to be a father, the sonogram, part 1 from Anthony Broad-Crawford on Vimeo

1. Chris Seper of MedCityNews
2. Brent Williams of Kraftmaid

These are some really cool technologists (and entrepreneur's) and thus this should be a really exciting panel.  Topics include

1. Is 2010 the year of mobile development (Actually 2009 was and 2010 is just the continuation of the crescendo)
2. Real time search, white whale or holy grail (actually, tip of the iceberg .. just wait until I bring up the Synaptic web)
3. Has social media killed privacy (probably not, there is just a lag in market adoption of the "social stack")

As you can imagine I am excited to participate and I highly encourage everyone attend.  You can find more information here.

This conversation made me immediately think about a phrase / exercise that has been screamed from the heavens initially by Kathy Sierra and then Joel Spolsky.

This phrase helps a company, in very simple terms, articulate their value prop.  The phrase is produced through an exercise of filling in the following very simple template ...

We help [type of human] be awesome at [thing]

If you as a business can't articulate your products value proposition simply and succinctly in this template then neither will your product.  If it's not reflected in your product you probably aren't helping your users kick ass.  You need to make your users kick ass or adoption will be highly unlikely.  

I won't restate what has already been written about this topic so please read Joel's post. It contains links to almost all the other posts on the topic.

• Elias Bizannes, Acting Chair of the Board of Directors, DataPortability Project
• Alisa Leonard, Head of Communications, DataPortability Project
• Steve Repetti, Board Member (Secretary), DataPortability Project
• Brady Brim-DeForest, Board Member (Treasurer), DataPortability Project
• Anthony Broad-Crawford, Board Member, DataPortability Project
• Phil Wolff, Board Member, DataPortability Project

You can follow the proposals filing status here.  Again, please read the proposal here!

Sold out - We sold out the event.  Scratch that, we over sold the event.  We had originally planned on only selling seventy five tickets for the event. However, with several days still remaining until the event started and people still asking to register we decided to increase the attendance cap to a hundred.  Then we sold out again.  

Most votes - Startup weekends are awarded to the highest vote receiving cities.  Obviously members of a city only vote for their own (if not, that's both totally cool and kind of weird, go Des Moine), however, Cleveland received more votes than any other city to date.  Think about that, cities such as Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angelas, Boston and New York have all hosted Startup Weekends of their own.  We raised more votes then all of them.  

Capital raise - Startup Weekend Cleveland also raised more local money then any other city to date.  This includes the same afore mentioned cities above.  A huge thanks goes out to all our sponsors.  All of which can be found here. 

Increased local awareness - The community really rallied to make this an "eye opening event".  This includes several radio, television, and national movements to showcase not only the event but the local startup talent and enthusiasm that exists.  Actually given people access and the opportunity to participate, promote, engage, and launch their own ideas is awesome.

We launched some stuff - The really cool part about Startup Weekends and specifically our own was the emergence of some really cool companies / products.  To name a few in no particular order

• Pricefixr - Find and share the lowest prices and make your grocery runs a breeze.  The more you contribute to the Pricefixr community the more we all save together.
• 140Match - Twitter match making done right.
• Local Food 365 - We take empty lots and unused spaces and revitalize them into urban greenhouses that beautify the local area and bring fresh, local produce to tables in the community.

In conclusion, you can see a lot happened at this conference and overall it was a smashing success.  I am glad we are meeting tomorrow (December 2nd) to begin planning the second conference.  We are going to be taking a lot of lessons learned and great feedback to make the next event even better then the first.  Hope to see you there.

I've been doing some market research on a business / product for a little while now.  It would greatly benefit early to middle stage startups.  Sitting here at the conference I realized I was knee deep in entrepreneurs from a lot of local Cleveland startups.  So, I grabbed some sheets of paper and a few of the founders and started doing some research.  Then I got reved up and this is what happened 

So long story short, this product is going to launch. I need it, the market needs it, and I got the vision and experience to do this. Still rough and needs some work, nevertheless, stay tuned.

Now that I have had some time to actually read the book, I must say, after the first few chapters I am already incredibly impressed. A lot of their ideas, principles, and methodologies are spot on. It's interesting to see some similarities between our thinking and theirs.  Validation is good.

However, the thing that has resonated the most thus far is the passage on Metcalfe's law.  For those not familiar with Metcalfe's law

The value of a communication system grows at approximately the square of the number of users of the system.

Jason et al go onto state that there exists a corollary when it comes to projects teams

The efficiency of the team is approximately the inverse of the square of the number of members in the team.

When my group first got started we were a team of three people including myself.  We were charged with bringing our 1.0 product to market.  We were unstoppable.  Nor, given our size did we need meetings, process, heavy methodology at all.  We did everything real-time and did it well.

If you take their conclusion as fact you could argue our success was directly related to our size.  If for example we had a ten person team we wouldn't have been able to accomplish our product release in the same amount of time, nor the same amount of quality.

Now that our business has grown over the last few years so has our organization.  We are no longer three people; we are fourteen.  Additionally, our organization is spread out across both coasts. So how do we maintain that same level of quality and real-time without excess meetings and process. 

Additionally, our group must respond to market change, customer demand, sales demand, user demand and product demand.  This also needs to be done by potentially by turning on a dime.  As a startup, and especially one in a young market, this is one of our true competitive advantages.  Bloating makes that difficult..

I wish I had the answer;  I don't.  Thus far we consistently rage against the machine and critically evaluate our process bi-weekly in order to stay lean as possible.  This process allows us to determine what is working, what isn't, what can we remove, and if need be, what do we need to add.

If you have the answer, please do tell.

As always, Jerry did an awesome job coordinating and leading the team.  The dude is amazing.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the Idea Center is an absolutely amazing venue.  The open bar space, registration, orientation, pitching and brainstorming session were great and fit nicely into the space.  We will most likely use this venue again next year.  

If I highlight anything from the first night, it has to be the energy and enthusiasm of the attendees.  You can truly tell this city is hungry for a strong entrepreneurial sector.  You could viscerally feel it in the introduction to the event, the elevator pitches, the voting, and the initial breakout sessions.  We have hungry entrepreneurs here in the city.

I look forward to letting everyone know more as the conference continues.  Until then, please check out the pictures I am uploading to Flickr.