New Weekend Conference Announced as ‘Experiment’ for SF Startup Community

by Victor Karamalis Photo by Brian Caldwell on Flickr

For some of us, a weekend is a chance to recuperate from a grueling work week. For others, it is an opportunity to create something that is needed in the world. So, this past week, I had a cup of coffee with Tyler Willis, an up and coming lad who has decided to organize the first San Francisco Startup Weekend on November 16th to 18th. This event is open to all who want to start a company in one weekend and become a co-founder of the new entity. Earlier this year in Boulder, Co., seventy co-founders brought online VoSnap. As featured on TechCrunch, VoSnap started as an idea to quickly make a consensus on a decision within a group via email and text messaging.

Numerous startup weekends have been popping up all over the country. So, Tyler decided that San Francisco and its tech mavens should have one too. When I asked him why he wanted to do this when there are many tech events and conferences in the Bay Area, he replied, “so often, the ‘networking events’ evolve into nothing more than a wasteful night of micropitches, this seemed like it would cut through the BS and let you work alongside someone. Anyone who’s done a stressful period at a startup can tell you, you know with great accuracy who’s worth their salt within a very short amount of time.”

There have already been numerous submissions for ideas already and there are spots available from developers to PR, and business development positions featured on one of the site links until October 26th. And as Tyler puts it, “this seemed like this allowed that to occur in a fun way, and that something really cool might be born out of it.” In my view, this weekend event is at what entrepreneurial startups are all about. Who knows, this experiment might end up being an HP or a Google.