Read Startup Weekend: How to Take a Company From Concept to Creation in 54 Hours for Free Online

Co-directors in Seattle (L–R): Nouyrigat, Nelsen, and Nager.

     

Chapter 1
     
    No Talk, All Action
     
    Action-Based Networking
     
    Let's say you're new to a city and you want to start dating. Where do you go to begin? Do you walk into a bar, sit down, and just hope that Mr. or Ms. Right will plop themselves down next to you and strike up a conversation? Probably not. After all, you could be there for years. And, let's face it—you might be drunk by the time your true love showed up anyway. Any number of people may come in while you're waiting, but you won't know anything about them and they won't know anything about you. So, aside from the assumptions you can make about the way they dress or what they're drinking, you'd be starting from scratch. Even after a brief conversation, you still probably won't know a lot more. These kinds of interactions are, almost by definition, superficial.
    For years, advice columnists have told us that if we want to meet people, we should go do something . If we join a running club, we'll meet people with whom we at least have running in common. If we volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, we'll find people who are interested in public service and maybe like working with their hands. If we join a book club . . . well, you get the idea.
    The advice that's traditionally been given to lonely hearts is even truer for budding entrepreneurs. You cannot simply wait for the right people to walk into your life or even walk into your office. You have to go out and do something to find them. And you have to do something with them in order to find out if you've got the right match.
    So what are the options? A lot of people try business school. In fact, record numbers of individuals are applying to MBA programs these days. And no wonder; business school allows you to work with other students on projects and see where their talents lie, what interests them, how they work under pressure, and so on. You can stay up late into the night preparing for classes. People's true colors come out. And when you graduate, you have a built-in alumni network to draw on for your later career.
    But business school is a big investment. Moreover, getting an MBA takes a lot of time—and time is one thing that entrepreneurs don't have. If you have an idea for a company now—or if what really gets you going in the morning is putting a startup idea in motion—then having to wait around to complete the business school cycle is not for you. Given the need to take the GMAT and undergo the application process, it will most likely be more than a year before you can even get in.
    Finally, when it comes to meeting the right people with the right skills for what you want to do right now, business school might not cut it. You may have had good, smart people in your graduating class 10 years ago, but have they kept up? Are they the best developers or the best marketers today? Really, who knows what—and who—they know?
    We have also been told that networking in an MBA program is not all it's cracked up to be. Candidates are expected to attend networking events as part of the MBA program. However, most of these events, though technically “professional,” are centered on golf tournaments, picnics, or barbecues. At almost all of them, the emphasis is on talking rather than learning or doing. The more casual events stress the importance of listening to more experienced people talk about their life stories and best practices (many of which are not even relevant today). It can be a very didactic, top-down approach to information sharing.
    One Startup Weekend participant told us that while she certainly made some good connections at these B-school events, “most were lost opportunities in the sense that it was extremely difficult to actually witness the capabilities and skills of the people I was supposed to be meeting. I found a few good mentors, but was