Lean Startup Machine weekends are a chance to apply the lean startup methodology by trying to build a startup in 48 hours. One of the key goals is demonstrating a process of learning. Learning takes various forms, and might include testing hypotheses through conversations, collecting qualitative and quantitative indicators of interest through surveys, creating MVPs to test acquisition methods and value propositions, getting signed letters of intent to buy a conceptual product, and maybe getting some cold hard cash in hand. Throughout the weekend, teams iterate and pivot as they learn more about their idea and the market through interacting with their customers. A panel of mentors works with the teams when they get stuck, and judge presentations at the end of the weekend to determine a winner.
When I first heard about the LSM in Boston, I signed up. I asked Wes Winham from Indy to join me, and we set off to Boston. This post talks about what I did and saw, and what I learned in the process.
My experience
I had been reading the various resources of the lean startup community for over a year, and was excited to actually put the principles to the test and test out my skills. Doing is a different beast from reading. My personal goal was to work with the team I joined up with to demonstrate that we could work through various difficulties and learn more about the lean startup methodology. I thought whatever team I joined had a chance to win, although it was not my focus.
Our final presentation (PDF, no longer available) gave a good overview of what we ended up doing over the course of the weekend.
The energy and intelligence of the people at this event was a little intimidating at first. There were fifty extremely smart and capable people present. I was a bit out of my element in a city halfway across the nation, but then just started talking with people and things seemed to go well. I enjoyed the networking before the event began. It was clear that everyone was feeling each other out a bit to figure out who they wanted to work with. A weekend is not a huge time commitment, but everyone wanted to have a good experience.
After a round of pitches, everyone cast votes for the different ideas. The top ten idea presenters were chosen as temporary team representatives, and everyone walked around and tried to form into teams. It was a bit chaotic. :)
There were a few ideas and people that seemed most interesting to me, so I walked around for a minute or two getting a sense of the room. I settled on a pitch that was billed as a last minute appointment filler. This could be something that slotted people in for busy service providers, or something that filled up empty slots for not so busy service-providers. It might have been something for service providers, or something more for end users. It seemed open-ended and valuable enough that we could explore some different solutions in the space throughout the course of the weekend. I was excited to work with the team of guys that were interested in the problem as well. It ended up that I was the only "developer" on the team. The rest of the guys billed themselves as "marketers". (LSM also had the distinction of "designer". These roles were pretty open and just served to try to get a range of skillsets at the conference.)