Been to the War

I was at the Google Open Social presentation on Monday. I had registered before I ever went to Startup Weekend. There were at least a dozen Startup Weekend veterans there. There were also a few people that were only there on Friday night who I did not remember.

As I was watching the presentation, people kept coming up to me and saying Hi. The girl next to me said “Wow, you know a lot of people here”. I told her that I just met them on the weekend. I realized something on Monday. It had been about only 24 hours since I had seen many of these people but it was like we were old friends that had not seen each other in a long time.

I met some people that only attended on Friday night of Startup Weekend. That was nothing. I felt the same to them as I feel to anybody that hands me a card at a networking event. It is hard to explain to somebody that has not been to a Startup Weekend but I know that I was not the only person that felt that way. Over the weekend, 2 people asked me to be part of their startups and 1 person asked to be part of mine.

On the Friday of Startup weekend, I chatted with Andrew and he told me that it did not matter which idea we implemented. I thought that he was full of it. I was going to bail out if we had picked the wedding website idea . Personally, I am really happy with the idea we implemented. In hindsight, he was right.

It didn’t matter what idea we implemented. I met some incredibly talented people on the weekend. People that I would enjoy working with again. In full disclosure, I also met some people that annoyed me. However, when we met on Monday, we had been to the war together ( Silicon Valley sense).

Alvin