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01/25/12 | Uncategorized

4 Reasons You Should Attend Startup Weekend

By Jazmin Hupp (Director of Awesome, Tekserve)
Startup Weekends and Hackathons are held all over the world.

Check out the Startup Weekend event list and signup for their mailing list. If you’re unsure about participating your first time around, contact the local organizers and offer to volunteer for the weekend.

Here are 4 reasons why you should attend Startup Weekend:

Reason #1 — You Can Meet Your Future Team

How do you meet a co-founder or your first engineer? Startup Weekend is the perfect place to meet a future team member or the next great connection that will lead you to a team member. Sick of networking events where you just talk about what you do? The wheat is separated from the chaff at an event that is all about doing and not about talking.

Reason #2 — You Need The Practice

Most successful entrepreneurs aren’t successful their first time out. Startup weekend is the perfect environment to practice your skills in a low-risk and low-cost environment.

Reason #3 — You Don’t Have To Be An Expert

Just because you can’t code in six languages or haven’t started a company before, doesn’t mean you aren’t needed at Startup Weekend. There are a lot of different skills required over the weekend. If you can conduct a survey or create a PowerPoint presentation, you can help. In fact, many people come to Startup Weekend to learn a new skill.

Reason #4 — You Can See If Entrepreneurship Is Right For You

Startup Weekend is a great way to see if full-time entrepreneurship is right for you without quitting your day job. Most entrepreneurs work long hours, often seven days a week. Devoting your entire weekend to starting a company is a good first test.

See It For Yourself

Filmed as a student project with San Francisco State University’s Digital Video Intensive program, Start Something follows three groups of entrepreneurs as they navigate Startup Weekend.

This post was originally posted at Jazmin Hupp’s blog.

About the guest blogger: Jazmin Hupp is the Director of Awesome at Tekserve, the independent Apple computer store in New York City. She volunteers for Women 2.0 in San Francisco and Founder Labs in New York City. Jazmin holds a Bachelors of Science in Management Information Systems. Her passions include travel, learning languages, writing, and yoga. Follow her on Twitter at @jazminhupp.

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