Ultra Light Startups

Every entrepreneur has an idea, but it’s the entrepreneur’s determination or lack their of that determines their true value, which will make them or break them. I recently posted about how ideas are a dime a dozen and how the “take action” multiplier is what makes an idea a product.

I recently attended an Ultra Light Startups meeting. I must say that I was blown away and amazed at what was going on here. The main focus is getting those ideas into action with little to no cost and as fast as possible. In todays fast pace world ideas can be created online and with little to no cost. You CAN start a company with $100 and make it into a viable buisiness.

Let’s walk through the basic structure of the meeting:

• Networking (meet and greet for 30 minutes)
• 1 minute pitches (Entrepreneurs who paid $5)
• Pizza (although it was late so we subsituted for networking)
• Discussion Panel of guest speakers (Topic: Outsourcing)
• Networking (although subsittued for pizza)
• Bar (Wasn’t able to attend, had to leave to finish some work)

Most meetups like this tend to be just a passing around of business cards, but this was a bit different and much more focused (at least for this specific meetup).

Okay, the concept of 1 minute pitches is great. It’s a way for entrepers to help with explaing their product. Their are normally 1 to 2 questions asked at the end of each pitch. The timer was done via an iPhone (awesomeness). So at this event you got a chance to listen to a bunch of startups via their 1 minute pitch. The interesting part with Ultra Light Startups is your fee for the event is based on if you pitch or not. If you are just there to watch, its $20, but if your there to pitch its $5, best idea ever!

Seriously, this creates more of a 100% participation group because it’s cheaper to pitch. Although this disencourages your “steath mode”, but you can pitch your idea with or without a 1 page or more website. So say you have this amazing dating website that uses iPhone users, you could create a simple 1 page website and pitch how it plans to be and ask for advice, and/or just pitch it and sees what comes of it. This can also be great for an idea that you know is awesome, but still have doubts when you explain it to someone. You can get instant feedback and only for $5 and 2 hours of your time!

The discussion panel was very interesting and inspiring. The topic was outsourcing and had a wide range of panelists with various backgrounds with outsource. This was an interesting topic for myself because I am realizing that I need to outsource more of my life. I have plenty of ideas, but taking action is something I have been working on. One thing I have learned is you need to give up the idea that you can do everything. You are limiting yourself by doing it all, although I can code/build/design/whatever with a computer, I should be focusing on a big picture model and breaking out an idea into parts. Then taking these parts and outsourcing them to execute the idea. Listing to the panelist I heard various positives and negatives they have had in the past with outsourcing.

For those of you who are interested in outsourcing here are a few websites to checkout, which were discussed by some of the panelists.

• oDesk
• Guru
• Rent a Coder

This meetup was just amazing and I encourage any reader in the NYC area to attend the next Ultra Light Startups on Thursday, November 6, 2008.

Here is a quick list of those entrepreneurs who gave a 60 second pitch.

• Service Platform
• Institute for the Future (IFTF)
• Service Platform
• Home Shop Technologies
• Spirus Group
• RezRedo
• loip.net
• Message Medium
• Storeside
• Biabnor
• Silicon Alley
• Matuson
• BOOMERateR
• The Wilburn Group
• KwiClick
• SaneBull
• 42sql
• Cybertnet Consulting
• Proper Cloth
• Ideavate
• Carbon Made
• appnexus
• tofagenie
• gigapixel creative

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