Startup Weekend has come to a close, here is a great blog post summarizing what happened at the event James Senior blog post. I thought it was interesting that TechFlash honed in on “Learn That Name” in a completely isolated blog post, mission “create a ton of buzz accomplished!” The iPhone app did indeed win the popular vote at the open source conference held at Microsoft over the weekend. That story read in isolation does not convey the weekend at all and in fact serves as a huge barrier to seeing another one happen in the future.
There were a number of parameters that were outlined before the event began, these were the event was to be open source, Bizspark would provide $5,000 to the top team that incorporated Microsoft technology based on a vote of the attendees and H-Farm (a local incubator no affiliation to MS) would invest $5,000 to the team they felt was most promising (Search Kick won both). The was prize money being offered by Microsoft was a request I made. Sticking up for the big guy is so strange, but Bizspark is absolutely being crucified for giving us the community exactly what we asked for.
Rivalries are great and the Apple/Microsoft rivalry certainly rages on. So much so that it surfaced in a forum where there was no right or wrong platform to build on. Startup Weekend is agnostic, we believe in gathering the enterpreneur community and facilitating the launch of great ideas regardless of platform. It’s strange that teams building on multiple platforms at a Startup Weekend event is news, we have never held a platform specific event. TechFlash, equally strange is what happened to the comments on that blog post made by members of the community that were physically present for the event. Those comments on the blog have since disappeared. Two comments that WERE posted under the story are below: (***Note, after a conversation with John Cook, I was made aware that comments were lost on their blog when they did an overhaul of their site. Here are two comments that were lost, no conspiracy theories please, they really did lose their comments almost no posts have comments you will notice***)
“I think it shows that Microsoft continues to demonstrate that having an open mind and embracing developers & consumers where they find them, can be profitable in the long run. Would Apple have done similarly? Definitely not. Kudos to Msft for making sure this was about coding apps, and not coding for Windows.”
-Christopher
“Also note that FriendMosaic got a $2,000 order from the BizSpark team during their presentation”
-Mike Koss
The mission of Startup Weekend is to organize local entrepreneurs, give them a platform to pitch great ideas and facilitate their launch regardless of what platform they happen to be built on. I have no allegiance to Microsoft but I believe they deserve praise for being willing to support local entrepreneurs to build whatever they wanted on their campus. This was hands down the most support we have ever received for an event.
I’m left with a bad taste in my mouth after seeing the isolated blog post on “Learn That Name” as the only piece of press to endure. That article read in isolation is damaging to the community as a whole. It derails progress being made by small groups like Startup Weekend working with large groups like Microsoft. We are two guys working out of our condo, we called Microsoft after we were approached by Grant BlahaeErath, the organizer of B134, a group of 100+ laid off Microsoft employees that wanted a Startup Weekend, we gladly set to work to make it happen.
This did not make any press releases. We asked for this event as a community, we asked for this event as a tiny two man shop working 15 hour days from our condo and we got it. We had an open door in the greater Seattle community to pitch any idea and build any product at Microsoft’s campus. The negative press surrounding their involvement does not incentive them to take that risk again. They provided a huge value add to our community. We launched 15 startups that otherwise would not exist. They extended two CTO’s, a full time tech, amazing wi-fi support, provided meals, a venue, supported their ex-employees, supported startups formed on the spot (made a $2,000 order to Friend Mosaic) and if you weren’t there they were left holding the bag with this kind of press “Microsoft drew embarrassment this weekend when it revealed that the winner of its app development contest was an iPhone app.” Are you friggin kidding me?!?! This was NOT a Microsoft event, this was Startup Weekend hosted at their campus as it was two years ago at Adobe and last year at Google (Amazon next, we hope).
Learn That Name (the iPhone app) is awesome and very close to me, Eric Koester the mastermind behind the app is my attorney, Tim Ting a developer on the team is also a part time developer for Startup Weekend and good friend. These are our friends and allies in the community collaborating on solutions to problems that exist in the community. If Microsoft hadn’t opened their door this app wouldn’t exist nor would 14 other really cool startups. Why wasn’t the the headline “Microsoft supports local entrepreneurs, laid off employees, provides an insane amount of support and answers the phone when two local startup junkies called.” The level of support Microsoft provided is next to non-existent in the community at large and they were completely sandbagged rather than commended for their support. @clintnelsen or leave a comment!
Want to see a poll of attendees that were in attendance? Startup Weekend Redmond Attendee Poll