Arianna O'Dell

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend Startup Weekend : Special Edition, at Madrona Venture group. The event was not marketed, and was promoted solely via word of mouth. Luckily, I heard about it through a friend and was able to get a ticket back in February.

I have attended two start-up weekends in the past. One in Seattle and one in London. The weekends attract cool people, fun projects are built, and lifelong friendships are formed. Each one I have attended, I’ve walked away with new friends, new knowledge, and incredible experiences. If you haven’t been to one you should check it out!

This weekend, I had the chance to work with a phenomenal team on a new product called City Match. City Match is a service that matches its users up with their ideal city. Our team had some awesome developers and designers who were able to build a fantastic product!

“But, Arianna you’re a marketer…. what did you even do all weekend?”

Start-up weekends are a mix of technical and business oriented entrepreneurs and wannaprenuers. Whether you are a business person or a developer, start-up weekend has something for you.

This weekend I did things such as:
-Set up social media channels
-Write press releases
-Set up a landing page
-Engagement on social channels
-Made a cool video

This is an excellent post from Jennifer Cabala on what business people can do during the weekend.

Something I learned this weekend:

Your team is everything – Fortunately, I found myself on great team with an awesome group leader – Grant Goodale. If you haven’t had a chance to work with Grant on a project, I recommend finding a way. His leadership style was extremely motivating and helped keep our team on track. Grant is definitely one of the best leaders that I know!

My team also included :

Elliot Cohen - Elliot is a master developer. He was constantly hard at work all weekend cranking out our product. I had known Elliot for a while on Twitter, but this was the first chance I had to meet him in person. So glad I finally got to!

Cameron Newland - Cameron is awesome and if you don’t already know him, you should. Cameron is one of those smart, witty, hard to find, business/developer types. Working with him is always a blast. Additionally, Cameron has a British accent that can’t be beat.

Justin Ricaurte - I knew of Justin vaguely before this weekend but glad I got to work with him on this project. Is there anything this guy doesn’t know? Don’t think so! The whole weekend I learned so many bits of knowledge from Justin about an array of subjects. Justin is an extremely smart biz/dev person who I highly recommend working with.

Kevin Korpi- Did you see our website design? This is the awesome work of Kevin Korpi who I just met this weekend. Kevin made so many fantastic designs for our team in literally minutes. If you’re looking for a designer, Kevin is a highly skilled, overall cool guy you should be working with!

The entire team was fantastic and I am grateful to have gotten to know these guys all a little better.

Thanks for a great weekend!

Over the past two quarters, I’ve been enrolled in a class at the University of Washington called Creating a Company. The premise of the class is running a start-up. During this experience, I’ve learned a lot – both professionally and personally with my group’s start-up Continuing Minds.

Typically, I sit through my college classes bored and disengaged. Reiterating useless facts and being talked to from a pedestal during lecture has failed to offer me the learning experience I had been craving since enrolling in post-secondary education. I can wholeheartedly say that I’ve learned more about myself in the Creating a Company class than in any other university class I have experienced. As the Creating a Company class is based upon real world application and interaction, I was able to learn business skills that aren’t taught within the typical class room setting.

From learning how to cold call, to learning about how create financial reports, I now feel more confident in any entrepreneurial endeavor I may choose to undertake in the future.
Professionally and personally, I feel this class has aided in my development to a much larger extent than I had anticipated. My three big take always from the class are as follows:

• Having a big ego is unflattering
• Other people can’t read your mind
• Planning is key

Having a Big Ego is Unflattering:
I’ll come right out and say it. I’m bull headed. Completely bull headed and at times can be pretty arrogant. I always think I’m right, I know best, and that I know what I’m doing. This class basically helped me fall flat on my ass, which is something I was in desperate need of. Through a few failed marketing campaigns and team arguments, I learned that I don’t know everything, I don’t always know best, and often times I have no idea what I’m doing. Even though the class concludes, I’ll carry this lesson with me for the rest of my life.

Other People Can’t Read Your Mind:
I generally keep my emotions pretty closed off. I refrain from telling people I’m upset and often times let raw emotions bottle up for months. In terms of talking about how I’m feeling, I just don’t do it. Feelings are a sign of weakness! – Or so I thought.

Something I learned from my group was that talking about feelings CAN be acceptable in business. After a few tense arguments at group meetings, one of my teammates suggested a great idea: a check in and check out. Before and after each meeting, we go around and say how we are feeling. To stop for a second and actually think about how I was feeling has helped me more than I could have imagined. Other people can’t read your mind to know when you’re upset about what is happening within the business. You have to speak up and tell them. I’m glad to finally learn this.

Planning is Key:
Going into the business, I would tell my team things like “Pfff, I don’t need a plan!” “Let’s just stop talking and do it!” Usually, I do things on a whim, make snap decisions, and I do most things without planning. The CAC class called for planning and strategic thinking. I thought I didn’t need any of this. Guess who was wrong? What did I learn about plans?

I learned that marketing takes time, research, and patience. As a person who wants instant gratification, this concept was hard for me to grasp. Fully understanding your customers will allow you to serve them better ultimately leading to a better business overall. I now understand this.

The Future:
In the future, I plan to continue down a path of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is in my blood and I can’t wait to see what endeavors the future may hold. This class presented me with a tool kit and many lessons that I can draw upon with anything I may choose to partake in over future years. Thanks CAC and John Castle! Best class at the University of Washington.

Continuing Minds will be continuing! — Stay Tuned