Startup weekends prove essence of bootstrapping

Filed in archive Bootstrapper Resources on October 11, 2007

travis Northcutt at flatworldblog and also a contributor on PostRanger.com's Globilization stream, writes this great post about Startup Weekend, a global craze that sticks entrepreneurial types together in a room for a couple of days to see what they come up with.

Weekends have already occurred in: Boulder, CO; New York City; Hamburg, Germany; Toronto, Canada; Houston, TX.

Products emerging from these events so far include: VoSnap, Favoreats, LobbyThem and TipDish.

The process calls to mind the 48 hour film festival where teams get together to create an independent film in a weekend.

Admittedly there's nothing about a startup weekend that makes it by definition a bootstrapping effort.

In the case of the Hamburg, Germany weekend, just 250 Euros ended up funding the project so there's no need to necessarily bring your favorite angel or VC along.

However, the ability to launch a venture immediately without the months or even years of preparation associated with traditional startup and certainly without benefit of a detailed business plan, is at the heart of the bootstrapping process.

Perhaps a bootstrap weekend is in order. Want to sponsor one? Let me know.