Wow, what a weekend. First of all I want to say thank you to all the sponsors and the guys who the weekend. Touchstone thanks for hosting us. Luna Grill and Chipotle thanks for feeding us. Jonathon Schuster from Sproutbox and Charles from Affinity Lab were just two amazingly intelligent guys to speak with. Thanks again for letting me crash you table at the bar, I really learned a lot from you guys. Clarity Law had an awesome presentation. Unfortunately they didn’t make it to our group when they did their rounds, I think it’s cause we were pretty isolated in a far corner, I’d of loved the opportunity to explain our startup a little better to them, as well to pick their brains about some of the financial concerns we had. Stephen from Young Impact can do a keg stand without any help, I think that’s probably the coolest thing I learned this weekend. A special shout out to Noiz Ivy, we didn’t really get a chance to talk much but as a parent I really like seeing businesses with a focus on education.

Congrats to the winners. There Was a Spark had an awesome presentation and iSpeedShop is really a great idea, I am curious how they can implement some of what they want with current technology. If they pull it off it will be a really innovative application, I hope they do it.

My team, Easy Pay HOA is not going to continue. It’s not because we were discouraged at all by the results. I think we were just a case of right team, wrong product. Sounded great when we went in and I think it could be a very successful business. Most of the feedback we got from the panel after our presentation was requests for features we either had and didn’t demonstrate or our research said wasn’t applicable for the product at this time. I think if we had demoed the property management features such as delinquency tracking we probably could have won. However, I think it’s a good thing we didn’t win because I’m not sure we would have been the best team be awarded the awards offered. Basically, the startup costs for Easy Pay HOA, while not unrealistic were more than I think the team was interested in self financing. 4 out of 5 of us are home owners, so while we understood personally why it would work, we also have mortgages and stopping work to dive in and get the ball rolling quickly isn’t really an option for us.

It still amazes me how that idea came up though. I did pitch my twitter application and of unscatter.com. However, listening to how the founders of SproutBox got going with their rent application I got the idea for paying HOA bills online. So, I got up and pitched again and funny enough that was the product that generated the most interest.

So what did I learn? Well first of all, don’t go into Startup Weekend with any preconceived notions of what you want to do, unless you’re ok with the idea that they probably won’t happen. Go in with an open mind, because you’re there for the experience, and if a business comes out of the weekend that’s an incredibly cool bonus. If you’re interested in doing a startup this experience will be invaluable, and you can also get some very good mentoring out of the process as well.

This weekend has really opened my eyes to new ways to look at what I’m currently doing. For example, unscatter.com I think is going to drop down to being a hobby. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe 100% in the idea it can be something great, but I also think that at this point in my life I’m not ready to launch it. It will be a high maintenance project that I don’t have the time or money to invest in launching correctly right now. Fortunately it’s also ambitious and large enough, no one is going beat me to the punch on that one. I am going to work on my Twitter project, but the name and design is all going to change. More on that later.

Lastly I would like to point out what was best about the weekend. That was the team I worked with to create EasypayHOA. Based off of just team dynamics, we were the best team hands down. We had the right people with the right skills to accomplish just about anything. I’m looking forward to keeping in touch with them.

PUSH FOR PROTO!