Thread: Went to a Tech Startup Weekend, lessons/mistakes/regret from it

This is the follow up email I sent to the contacts I got last weekend, I sent it out on Monday and I just wanted to share my experience with you guys here.

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Hello again!

It's 6:14am and I haven't slept yet although I told Maris and Danielle that I was dead tired and would be heading to bed. Instead I spent 3 hours at the gym and worked some more on my startup.

I wanted to thank everyone again for being at the event, and for being so kind and friendly. I did not get to personally meet 2/3 of the people there because I'm introverted, shy, and have the social skills of a Techie but not the talent or the good looks.

The people at the event really helped me tremendously by giving me COURAGE.

The reason I'm writing this email to tell you the lessons I've learned and my biggest regret for this event. On pitch night I went up there to pitch a half-baked idea because I wouldn't have been able to live with myself if I didn't but yet I held back. I didn't pitch the startup I had worked on for months and have personally invested thousands of dollars of my own money to have that website go "live" 2-3 weeks ago.

Why, you may wonder. I sent traffic to it and let's just say I had a total of 4 signups and less than 0.5% conversion. It was discouraging to find that the blogs and website I'd emailed and contacted didn't respond or give feedback, not even to tell me "it sucks." But throughout the weekend this regret was eating me up and I finally told other people about my startup. I got tremedous advice and feedback and the responses were overwhelmingly positive. So it's not the idea or the website but rather, easily fixable problems if I were a techie.

My outsourced Indian team from Elance pressured me to write something last minute for the homepage and I did not think it through and that resulted in the low signups. It's my fault and I take full responsibility for it. I would fix it, except it's in PHP and I only know basic html. Also, the website is still not where I want it to be. Some of the changes are really minor but would make a huge difference.

When I was at the gym, I got so excited because my startup only has 2 competitors that are remotely similiar to what I have and my #2 competitor that started a year ago got $750,000 in funding but I came up with an idea that BEAT THE REASON THAT THEY GOT THAT FUNDING, it's way better than their big selling point. If you're interested, I'll explain more later. Suffice to say, I wouldn't have thought it through without advice from Dan (thank you, I owe you one).

Dan gave me a bunch of suggestions, and I threw out the ones that didn't fit and I was mashing the other ones around in my head at least 200 times and found a way to incorporate that into my startup. Not only that, he offered me advice on where to find a lawyer that specializes in startups. How cool is that?

So the next step is for me to get to a lawyer PRONTO, get everything legal and setup and contact the software engineers that said they would like to help. But this time I want to be able to tell them I want to give them some stock in proportion to what little time or help they can offer. This is to show my gratitude despite 2 of them saying they'd do it for free to help me and since the market is "job seekers" and it's huge and no one is doing it...what stock that I can give will be worth quite a bit someday.

The biggest thing I got out of the Startup Weekend besides the amazing people I've met is what actions I need to take next. That list is sure to keep me busy for the next few weeks. When my website went live and stalled...I was frustrated and discouraged because I didn't know what to do. Which brings me to how I found out about the Startup Weekend in Honolulu. I wonder if it was all chance and coincidence.

Several weeks ago I was so bummed out that all I did for one week straight was to eat, sleep, and read everything I could find in the search engines about startups and how they were launched or what needs to be done or advice. And that is how I found Startup Weekend, it was in something I read online that week out of hundreds of sites. I didn't even know something like that would be available in Honolulu, because you associate Tech Startups with Silicon Valley.

I'm very fortunate and blessed because I had saved up enough money to get the website live, and live off of for 6-8 more months until I figure out what I need to do next, get investor funding, or bootstrap by generating revenue. If need be, I can always start other small affiliate marketing websites or some small project to make a little bit of spare cash to pay my bills but it would take time away from the Startup and I'm only going to do that if it becomes crucial.

I've read that a few months may be all that I need if I work really hard. I'll try my best despite being one of the least talented and unremarkable of the whole group...(you guys and gals really blow me away with your brain power and skills) and I'm not saying that to make you feel sorry for me because for what I am doing I am the most qualified.

Who better qualified to launch a startup to help millions of discouraged, frustrated, hopeless, and broke unemployed people than someone like me?

Someone who quit college after 2 semesters, quit lots of crappy jobs after a few months, and have tried so many things and have failed time and time again. I've disappointed my brother, my parents, and myself...but what I've learned was that "You are not your job, you are way more than that. You are unique and maybe you can still make a difference and have an impact. That's what I want to tell these millions of unemployed people."

When I read the articles about the unemployed and their situations it's really heartbreaking especially the man whose wife took the kids and left him because he lost his job and he said how he felt worthless. That made me cry. How can you leave someone you're supposed love for a reason like that? And the girl who said she skipped a meal so she could pay for gas and the parking ticket to go to yet another job fair. I have to succeed not for me, but for these people. That is why my website will be the best/top site that has all the tools to help them. What I have right now is just the beginning, even then I believe the need and value is already there.

Don't do it for me, but for these millions of people that are suffering and in pain, I promise to do everything I can and my very best even if I lose everything...If I can help even a portion of them it would be worth it to me. If there is anyway that you can help or know anyone who can help...please forward this email to them, and the other participants who's email address I don't have.

Thank you for listening!

Katherine Ly
www.jobclipboard.com

Exciting Story! I'm glad to hear you got a lot of support at your event and actually found out what was wrong with your website. I'm curious, how did you find out about your competitor venture capital? How are you planning on getting people interested in this?

I did competition research prior to starting the website. I only have about 2-3 serious competitiors. One was founded in 2006 and what he has is a CRM and he even says salespeople and small business people use it too, so that's not really what I have and what my website does. My website is just strictly for people to track their job searches and to keep track of it all in one place. There is 2 other competitors but they don't really count because one of them dropped off the map, quit, and the website is no longer live...(guess he couldn't get traffic) and the other one's marketing sucks and will probably blow through all the capital.

So I only have 2 competitors to keep an eye on. The one that got the $750k in funding last Dec. actually looks and works pretty good. If I weren't so passionate about my website, I'd go sign up for his hehehee. I actually might still do that to test out their features. I came up with ways to differentiate myself from them and to be better than them. Both of my competitors got a lot of press and media because what we are doing is helping a lot of people. So my plan and goal is to create an awesome marketing plan and get to work. Also, focus on building my Tech/progamming team. Getting together people that will help me because like I said, I'm not that talented at all.

I've also worked on my vision and my business plan the last two days coming back from the event. Now I don't want to just make a useful website with neat little tools and get bought out by Monster or Careerbuilder. That was my goal when I started but I thought about it and realized that they don't deserve it. I'm going to not only kick my competitions' butt but I'm also going to dominate the job search market and make Monster and Careerbuilder obsolete and revamp the entire job search process. It's exciting because I've expanded the vision to where I can see people all jumping on board and getting lots of help from programmers. If I can just get my team of programmers together and motivate them...and get my marketing team together, then I can see it all happening really quickly. I also worked on the presentation and plan to pitch for VC funding a few months down the road.