Startup Weekends are intense. I knew that from experience. I’d been before, as a non-tech, and it was interesting attending one with developer hanging from around my neck this time around.
For those not in the know, Startup Weekends are 54 hour long events where developers, designer, and everyone else (under the flattering title of ‘non-tech’ and typically ‘business people’) congregate around ideas pitched by some of the group. The top ideas live on and teams form around them to be worked on over the weekend. Some, not all are themed. This one focused on education. Typically Startup Weekends gravitate towards software solutions, so I was assuming we would see a lot of education technology, or edutech, present itself at pitch time.
It was also interesting bringing along an idea you really wanted to turn into something. Often Startup Weekend projects either don’t get finished or get shelved (indefinitely) once the 54 hours is up. It’s supposed to be about the processes, not so much the product.
For me I wanted the product, so when I pitched Banqer and got a great team onboard I was pretty happy. We worked aggressively over the weekend and came out with the bones of Banqer and an extremely loose vision for what could be our future.
What I didn’t realise at the time is that I had effectively found my cofounders without knowing them at all. And knowing that team and team dynamics is the number one cause of early stage startup failure I was playing a risky game.
It is still early days, but I do feel I got incredibly lucky and it seems like the #edutech gods were indeed shining down on me. Although we lost a couple of talented team members from the weekend, we’ve got a great core team who are both committed to progressing Banqer and encompass the skillset to get it there.
I could build Banqer alone. But at what cost?
It would be a heck of a lot uglier that is for sure. Development would be at least 10x slower, and I wouldn’t know exactly how it works in classrooms (not like a teacher using it does).
I realised that the idea will forever be mine, but what is the worth of an idea? Not much. I wanted a thing, not just an idea. And that thing can be mine or it can be many people’s thing. I decided that the latter was a much better, bigger, faster thing, so that is what I want.
I hope to see Banqer in schools all across New Zealand one day. Getting there will be tough, but getting there alone would have been close to impossible. I’m really grateful I shared my idea and can continue to share our thing.
