Startup Boot Camp Reflection

As I mentioned in an earlier post I attended this local Ottawa event called Startup Boot Camp on the weekend. Well, I’ve got to say, this was one of the most interesting events I’ve ever been to. Let me break down how the weekend went a little bit.

Day 1 (Friday 6pm - 9pm)

The first day started out with an introduction to the event, sponsors, organizers and all that jazz. The didn’t waste any time and moved onto the pitches. There were 8 ideas presented by some really energetic people ranging from major hardware, software or a combination of the two.

After voting on the pitches the bottom two were dropped and everyone split off around whichever idea they found most interesting. The teams ranged from 6-13 people with backgrounds in software, hardware, marketing, sales, business development etc.

After getting to know my team a little bit we headed home to rest up a little bit and get ready from the rest of the weekend.

Day 2 (Saturday 9am - 6pm)

Today everyone gathered together in the main room to be introduced to some of the mentors that would be available to help us develop our pitches. We had financial experts, accountants, lawyers, operations experts, human resources consultants, pretty much everything you might need to get a business started.

After the quick introduction everyone split off into their groups to start working any of the kinks out of their startup with the help of the mentors. I’ve got to say, the experts they brought in were just phenomenal. This event was well worth it just to be able to spend some time with these people and to draw from all the experiences they have had.

By mid afternoon we had most of the details figured out so we decided to individually take a look at the slide deck we needed to put together and jot down some ideas. By the end of the day we had a pretty good idea of what we needed in the deck but still stuck around after 6 to go over things a little bit more and split up some ‘homework’.

Day 3 (Sunday 9am - 6pm)

Again, we started out with an introduction to a new set of mentors, no messing around now though so we quickly broke off and got down to work. Today was all about putting the slide deck together, making it look good and making sure we had answers to all the questions the panel might ask. Around 1pm we started practicing the presentation and tweaking anything we still could based on the mentors comments.

At 3pm everyones back in the room for the pitches in front of the panel. I found it really interesting how the presentations really seemed to reflect on the team behind them. One team had an industrial designer as the lead so their slide deck was super slick, they even had small prototypes that they handed out to the judges. Other side decks really showed the technical expertise of their group with detailed diagrams and flow charts on how their products would work.

After presenting the judges asked some great questions and before announcing the winner provided some feedback to each group on what they really needed to look at to make their product work. All of this advice was right on the money and, I would imagine, will help these startups move forward in the future.

In Closing

Well, in the end my team didn’t win the final prize but I think everyone involved did get a lot out of the event, I know I did. My teammates were an amazing group of people that I was really glad to have met and spent the weekend working with, the mentors and judges gave a huge amount of advice that would be next to impossible to easily get otherwise and I had all kinds of fun.

Big thanks goes out to Rick O’Conner and the rest of the Ottawa Network for putting together this event. Word is they’re already looking to do a repeat of the Startup Boot Camp in March so be ready to sign up, I know I will be!