Startup Weekend is an innovative concept, where by in one weekend, just a mere 54 hours, you can go from nothing to a viable company.

Anidea Engineering’s owner, Gabriel Goldstein, attended his first Startup Weekend in 2013 in West Palm Beach.  Although not a Startup company, Gabriel knows there is always something to learn. 

It starts with an opening event with a speaker, then attendees start getting down to business: What is your idea?

They make pitches, wait anxiously as their peers choose which pitches seem the most viable, and then, as ideas are weeded out, groups begin to form. Inspirational speakers tell of their entrepreneurial experiences. Then, they get to work.  break for the night. Day 1 is complete. 

Day 2 begins bright and early, with budding entrepreneurs ready to make something happen. They quickly get to work, feeling the pressure as time trickles away, far too quickly for their liking. Day 3, Sunday, they continue working until it is time. The groups present their companies, and a winner is chosen.

Startup Sponsor / Supporter / Mentor

In 2013, Goldstein worked on an app – YO! – that facilitated conversation between bartenders and patrons in a loud, crowded atmosphere. The would-be drinker communicates visually through the app to the bartender, creating an ease-of-ordering that can’t be beat.

Unfortunately, the team did not win. However, Goldstein not only met some great friends but still to this day, is an experienced entrepreneur who avidly supports the startup community.  He was bitten by the ‘Startup Weekend’ bug and his team was featured in a newspaper article about the event.

Being an entrepreneur is not new to Goldstein. After all, he started Anidea Engineering with literally, just an idea. He has since leveraged his experience to become one of the speakers and sponsors at 2014’s Startup Weekend West Palm Beach, and a mentor and sponsor at Startup Weekend Miami-FIU, which took place Friday, Nov. 20-22, 2015.

Mentoring is not new to Goldstein who has worked with various clients for the last 15 years, helping to mold and shape many of their companies. In addition, he is a mentor at FAU’s Tech Runway, a collaborative work space for entrepreneur to house, educate, mentor and fund their companies from inception through venture funding.

Goldstein used his mentoring experience to assist the teams at Startup Weekend.

“I got to work with a lot of different companies,” Goldstein said. “I was a huge fan of it. It is so much fun to see these companies start from nothing and become something.”

 “As a mentor, it was a lot of fun to go around and challenge the teams on their ideas and make them question things. One of the biggest things about Startup Weekend is validation. Everyone thinks they have a good idea, until you go out and test it in the marketplace,” he said.

Testing the ideas led to some of their downfalls, and others readjusted, reevaluated, tweaked their ideas, and came up with something stronger and more viable.

Working with a younger demographic – many of the participants were college students – did not have the same experiences that Goldstein has had, which shaped their projects and approaches. For example, one group learned about credit card processing, and how small transactions do not lend to a profit.

“As a mentor, I was able to bring my entrepreneurial and life experiences to the table to challenge and guide the teams. I’ve had the advantage of seeing technology evolve in the last 20 years that many of the attendees – bright, gifted students – did not,” Goldstein said, explaining that although he has accumulated years, he still has the same energetic, inquisitive, entrepreneurial spirit that helped him create Anidea Engineering.

Goldstein enjoying one of the more entertaining parts of Startup Weekend.

The teams worked hard on their ideas, testing and learning along the way.

“The incredible value of Startup Weekend is that you have the opportunity to go through many of the processes that you would go through in a team format to launch a company, with very little risk involved. It’s a vast learning experience,” he said.

Former attendees have reached out to Goldstein, as a mentor, and a networking connection.

“It’s a really great organization that I highly recommend for anyone who wants to learn about entrepreneurship and starting their own company and to participate in,” he said. “I’ll participate in any one I’m ever invited to, or any other way I can possibly participate.”

To learn more, visit www.anidea-engineering.com or call us at (561) 383-7311. Check us out and see how we can help you. Have an idea? Get Anidea! We’re located at 8020 Belvedere Road, Suite 1 in West Palm Beach Florida. Not local? Call and we can set up a Skype conversation at gabriel.goldstein.anidea.

• Price points – How many will be sold at a certain price point.  Refresh yourself on the Law of Supply and Demand.
• Market Research – Who is going to buy your product?  How much will they pay for it?  Are there other requirements to be in this market?
• Competition – Are you the only solution to this problem?  How do they price and market their product or service?
• Customer Identification – How are you going to find them?  How will they find you?
• Cash Flow – How much will you need to become cash flow positive?  What kind of funding tranches will you need?  Understand all of your expenses.
• Prototype Costs – You will need to show incremental progress, what will this cost?
• Manufacturing Costs – How much will it cost to make your product?  What if you make 100 at a time?  What if you make 10,000 at a time?
• Consultants – Find specialized people in their field to help you.  And they will need to be compensated.
• Intellectual Property – How are you going to protect your idea?  Are you going to pay a patent attorney/lawyer?
• Lawyers – They are not cheap.   They can help you do things the right way so you don’t get in trouble later.  What will their costs be?  Are they setup to work with small entities?
• Funding Sources – Find an investor?  Find a partner?  Are you going to fund this whole thing yourself?
• Product Launch Budgets – Don’t get to the end and not have the money to tell the world about your company.
• Planning Costs – Everything costs.  See above about the plan.  You will likely need to compensate specialized parties to help you plan.  Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder may be a place to start.

No doubt this looks like a daunting list.  It is.  There is a lot of work and planning to be done to start a company, and I by no means consider this a complete list.

Marketing

Who is going to buy your product?  Why are you making this product?  Marketing determines and conveys the answers to these questions.  It’s how you tell the world why and who and what you do.

There are really a few books I have to suggest here that I really just love about marketing:

Start with Why, Simon Sinek.  This is an awesome book and really transformed the way I communicate and operate my business.

Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell.  Fascinating stories about how ideas propagate to the world and market.  Really you should read everything from both of these authors.

Back to marketing, there are some key core business questions your marketing plan should answer.  Where is this product going to be sold?  How many will be bought at a particular price point?  Who is going to buy this thing?

Keep in mind that you really may end up with several versions of a marketing plan.  Sure, you could sell Bentley’s all day long if you could sell them for $10,000.  However you could never get the price that cheap to sustain that model.  Everyone could sell millions of their products if the price was cheap enough.  So the obvious question is how to you get the price cheap enough, make millions of them to drive the price down.  To get the price down, invest in engineering and machinery and process, and to do that, you need a lot of money.  See the problem in this line of thinking?  You haven’t proven you can sell 1 and you want to invest millions of dollars to make millions of the product.  Before you can make and sell a million units, you need to prove that you can make and sell 100, then 1000, then 10,000.  Determine how your marketing will change based on your volume.

Read the next installment.