This last weekend I participated in an amazing event over in Fremont at the Adobe offices with 121 other Seattleites at Startup Weekend Seattle (of the greater movement aptly called Startup Weekend). We started with nothing but human capital at 6pm Friday the 25th and left with a beta product live at 9pm Sunday the 27th after 51 hours of fun and excitement with amazing people. The product we created is skillbit™, a knowledge discovery application that provides you with the tools necessary to unlock the hidden potential of your team. I’ll describe more further down.

My general opinion of the event as a whole is that it was not only an amazing opportunity to start up a company and leave with [a small amount of] equity in another company, but I had an absolutely amazing time working and socializing with a slew of amazing people with great ideas and perspectives and that I couldn’t have wished for anything more from such an event. The Seattle techie, entrepreneurial crowd is a wonderful group. It was a great opportunity and a pleasure to be able to work with not only my close peers at the event but to spend time associated with such an amazingly skilled, bright, and diverse crowd. Andrew Hyde did an amazing job putting on the event and all of the team leads involved (Chris, Cassie, our glue man Matt, and the others whom I am not aware who was a lead) really made this event a huge success.

Startup Weekend as an event

As a networking event it couldn’t have been more valuable. Other networking and technically minded gatherings around the area all have one dynamic in common — they are social gatherings. None other, though, actually places you in an environment (except for maybe training events) where you actually have a chance to build working relationships with people. That, my friends, is priceless. It’s near impossible to accurately evaluate the workability of a person through conversation. But with a real company with real motivation to work for a shared goal not only is there a natural reason to meet and make relationships with a great number of people, but you actually get to know people.

As a startup and company generation platform I think that it’s a great idea that will sustain itself over time. The investment to put on such an event is (what I would imagine) fairly low and not only do you provide a networking event worth it’s price in gold but the investment put in by the majority of participants is only a weekend letting them leave with easily more than .5% of a company. The risk is only that of a weekend and the potential gain is so high. That being said, there obviously still needs to be people to carry on the projects which is why a core team is elected to continue with the project, but that’s only a fraction of the people involved. These events could even be held more frequently than they currently are and serve as an extremely lucrative business.

Seattle rocked the adobe

Our startup weekend went quite well. We ended up deciding to pursue an idea of a sort of ride sharing/carpooling website the first night but then bagging it a couple hours in due to new information on the competitive landscape and feasibility of the business taking off. After re-evaluating, we ended up with what is now called skillbit.

You work with incredible, talented people. Do you know the knowledge, skills, tools, and resources your people have?

Use skillbit™!
skillbit is a knowledge discovery application that provides you with the tools necessary to unlock the hidden potential of your Team!

Use skillbit to address your talent and skill sharing needs. skillbit captures the knowledge, talent, and skills of your Team, enabling you to discover quickly the depth and breadth of your Team. Access this information in a flexible, fun way with skillbit!

Throughout the event a few people wrote wonderful accounts of what was happening on our startup weekend seattle blog and since several people have written about their experience as well as a new blog was started to collect thoughts, tips, and tricks — a few to note: Andrew, An, Anthony, the skillbit flickr group. I recommend taking checking those out but of course, go check out skillbit or if you’re feeling adventurous sign up and test the private-ish beta.

Some press (check out those awesome FAQ’s including several written by yours truly) has been written including an entry by our own local seattle venture blogger John Cook. We even had a King 5 news crew come during the event. Here’s the bit:

Go on! Get your skillbit on!

Random thing I found interesting was how close our name is similar to the immediately previous Startup Weekend Atlanta’s product.