It was all smooth sailing, until it hit me (Day Two — Startup Weekend Sydney 2014)

Okay, Day 2 of this semi-godforsaken Startup Weekend Sydney 2014. Things to note (From a technical IT perspective):

Web/Software Development

1. Probably best to invest time in becoming a Developer, since UX/UI Design can pretty much be done on the fly (it isn’t Rocket Science, neither is Dev, but at least Dev presents more complex challenges that are often more rewarding than piecing together a few wireframe flows — again, looking at this from a technical perspective and having had both academic and professional experience in both fields), you have social media/emails/talking for making marketing super fly, and good skilled Developers are always very scarce/thinly spread/hard to come by whenever I go to general (non-Dev and even Dev intro) meetups around Sydney, Australia (whether that’s because of a skills shortage, Shy/self-directed Devs or both), or even the world at large with code.org initiatives teaching coding in Primary and High schools in the US.

Developers usually seem more down to Earth in personality too, since they can pretty much smell bullshit from two miles away. Also, if all else fails, you can go design, build and market your own idea like a lone wolf. (I can sort of reason the idea of segregating UX/UI design roles from Dev, i.e. time costs involved in each field is enormous, especially when user research is thrown into the mix, but in reality, as much as subjective that UX and UI design is these days with the endless amounts of pathways that can be created in user flows/scenarios/screen elements, it’s nothing a Dev can’t honestly handle).

Your Passionate Idea

2. Ensure your long-term idea is one you’re passionate enough about to spend the next 4–5 years chipping away at, if not more when successful (and is scalable enough to be monetised — otherwise keep it as a hobby until you find a way to pull in revenue — if that ever happens). While it is unfortunate that startup competitions eliminate potentially really bright ideas based on the premise of generic voting, competitions usually end in a few days, a startup does not. Competitions are good for finding where your own feet stand, networking and evaluating where to go next.

Team Collaboration (and Recognition)

3. Ensure team isn’t so big that team members start feeling undervalued or that recognition can’t efficiently be transmitted/received across all members. The Team Lead/Entrepreneur (people who initially had the idea)/team members should constantly reward or recognise people fairly for the work they do. (E.g. Not just praise the Graphic Designer because things look all pretty, neat and tidy…that’s the point of Graphic Design, nothing more). How about the Dev that solved that thing that was gazillion times more involved? Yeah, that’s right, and they pretty much did it themselves. Also, UI Designers are pretty much overlooked and taken for granted. Some people generally don’t care or appreciate when good UI Design is carried out. They just expect things to flow smoothly. UX and UI design are hidden arts to the user, but shouldn’t be to the rest of the team building the product or service.

Executing Business Model (Generating User Traction)

4. Producing a startup/blog with a business model based purely on affiliated ads/marketing is extremely hard (and severely demotivating at times that you’ll want to quit and start over with something fresh, especially when trying to jump over those first few blackhole hoops of initial user validation) to scale/grow/make a buck. It feels like trying to light a match underwater and expecting a volcano to form spitting out gold bars. (That’s how unrealistic it feels from everything I’ve experienced and read to date — Sure it was probably more doable back in 1998 when there wasn’t really a popular internet Search Engine to engulf most ad monetisation, or with Facebook [starting out with bites of angel and seed investment] but then sustaining itself with ads launching in 2004). Fast forward to 2014, and now you’ve got every Tom, Dick and Harry wanting to achieve the same success/revenue/market share as Facebook with pretty much the same re-iterated ideas (because proven business models/user traction) or next to lame as possible ideas (because ‘no one has attempted them yet’).

/Startup spiel. This has been my first Startup Weekend, but not my first time in startup life. It has been a great learning experience (especially soloing pitching an idea) and eye opener with very friendly and knowledgable/experienced people far greater than I am and I look forward to attending more Hackathons/Startup Pitches/Weekends.

NB: Thinking about popping this on a self-hosted blog eventually, but I thought I’d flesh out my current real-time thoughts on what could be known as digital paper. ☺ Let me know your thoughts. (It’s also 1:55AM, and I have been up since 6:15AM the previous day; 20 hours total uptime, with the final Day 3 judging to begin in just a few hours!). ZZZZZzzzzzzz