Comments on: Startup Weekend: Lessons Learned

By: Paul Osborn

Paul Osborn — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 01:25:25 +0000

Hi Blake – I’m attending the Seattle 2 Startup, and have drawn from this blog and postings some “Lessons Learned” which we are sharing among the Project Managers and teams ahead of time – learning from your mistakes – heaven forbid. Hope this is OK? Thanks to everyone who has contributed btw !!

Paul

By: Mike Schinkel

Mike Schinkel — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 03:25:09 +0000

Blake:

Great post. Often you learn a lot more by failing that you do by succeeding as you demonstrated your learnings here.

Wish I could have been there to share the learning. Next time…

-Mike

By: Andrew Duthie

Andrew Duthie — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:56:49 +0000

Blake, you’ve succinctly described something I witnessed at Nashville Startup Weekend as well. It was interesting hearing a couple of teams say how great it was that they ran democratically, but I felt they would have accomplished more with someone specifically at the helm. Just because someone leads the team doesn’t make it that individual’s project, nor does it diminish the rest of the team members’ contributions.

By: Blake Perdue

Blake Perdue — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:02:59 +0000

@george I think you have a very good point. I think most of the groups expected the founder (person with the idea) to be the leaders. But, this shouldn’t always be the case. In SSR case, myself or Randall should have stepped up and taken on the role of CEO, or at least brought the matter to everyone’s attention. Lesson learned

By: Paul Tran

Paul Tran — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:58:19 +0000

Hi Blake,

You are helping others become successful by learning from what you went through. Thanks for sharing this experience with the rest of us.

Paul Tran
BrightIdea.com

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:19:06 +0000

Hi Blake,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Definitely a great postmortem on the entire project and weekend. Its always better to take away the positive aspects of something like this.

By: George

George — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:48:59 +0000

Excellent observations blake. Some of my own…

I agree with you that a business needs a leader, someone to make the tough calls, to do what’s best for the team regardless of any individual’s feelings. BUT, what do we do with people that have great ideas, yet don’t have the wisdom or experience to deal with personnel conflicts? Does everyone with a great idea have the traits of a great leader? Do great ideas only come from great leaders?

Perhaps the answer is that, at least in SW, the person who pitches and whose idea is accepted, abdicates the role of CEO to someone on the team who can carry out his vision. Of course, that’s always an option, but maybe doesn’t seem obvious to many people. That might have been a solution in SSR.

I think Lance did an excellent job of redirecting the team to find its purpose. I also thought that Saturday night they had all agreed on a direction that was to be carried out Sun morning. I don’t know exactly what happened Sun morning, but it was disappointing to see them agree on Sat nite to pursue a direction, to have it once again, cussed and discussed, and never move forward on Sun morning.

There were some very passionate, bright people on that team. I think they formed as a team in the beginning and could have delivered. But they may have failed to understand that when you are on a team, you do what is best for the team, regardless of what you personally want to do.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 05:36:03 +0000

Thanks for the great analysis Blake! I agree completely and I’ve learned even more from your post. Sorry I couldn’t help out that much. I just wish I had more experience on both the technical and business side.