Thubten Comerford first attended a Startup Weekend in September of 2009 when he was invited by the web developer for Startup Weekend Seattle, and now he is volunteering his time to lead the Startup Weekend in Olympia this weekend. As a Startup Weekend veteran, he knows that Startup Weekend is as real as it gets when it comes to starting a business.
“I’ve been a part of several technology startups and this is really the startup experience. It’s meeting deadlines, coming up with something exciting and new, and getting into revenue,” Thubten said.
He also says it is similar to running a 54 hour sprint and at the end you have something to show for. At the end of the sprint, you’ll have more than just a business idea though. Startup Weekend is about meeting people you didn’t know and coming up with something that is marketable, then having that experience continue on. Thubten’s project continued and actually split into to spin off companies that are still going a year later.
One such company is CluePad which helps make sense of SEO for business owners. CluePad gives daily recommendations to business owners on how to improve their business online. The recommendations are based on data about their website, and take anywhere from one to 30 minutes to complete. That is just one example of a technology startup that was created from a Startup Weekend team. Not everyone in the team was a technology person, but they were a part of a team and that is what counts.
“Most people aren’t going to be part of a technology startup, but you can get a feel for the training and be in the environment. It’s like going to space camp, only afterwards you get to be an astronaut. I’ve seen a lot of people hired out after the weekend. Small businesses are the source of new jobs and innovative creations in this country right now. Larger companies aren’t designed to innovate so they buy out smaller companies that were started by a team of people,” Thubten said.
Startup Weekend was started by a small team out of Seattle and now reaches across international borders. To date, Startup Weekend has helped educate more than 17,000 entrepreneurs at over 120 events worldwide, and has facilitated the launch of over 560 new startup ventures around the globe, according to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the nonprofit’s biggest sponsor.
Olympia is fortunate enough to have this worldwide event come to St. Martins University this weekend and have Thubten as the facilitator. Thubten will be facilitating, providing business, technology and social media knowledge to the teams. As well as being a technology startup veteran, he is a social media expert with as many as 80,000 Twitter followers. Look forward to the next article about how important Twitter is to a business. For now, to register for Startup Weekend Olympia, go to www.olympia.startupweekend.org
