I went to Startup Weekend Dallas this past Friday and Saturday.
The event was reduced from 3 days to 2 because the building was being used on Sunday by some other organization.
If you don’t know what Startup Weekend is, think of a hackathon for coders. But instead of coders trying to hack into a system, entrepreneurs are tasked to build a business in a team within just 3 days, one weekend. You can find an event in your city. It’s pretty cool!
This was my third Startup Weekend event. The weekend can be challenging, but it’s a beautiful way to stretch your capacity and really see what you’re made of. Especially if you haven’t been in the startup/entrepreneurial mindset for a while, and want to hop back into it, I highly recommend giving Startup Weekend a try.
Everyone pitched a business idea at the beginning of the event, and we narrowed it down to the top 5 ideas we wanted to pursue. Luckily, my idea was chosen!
The idea I pitched was “Passion Finder”. These were events where people can come and try out every instrument, every extracirricular, and every sport with knowledge given from local area “experts” to decide for themselves, with more information, what extracirricular they may want to pursue themselves.
Passion Finder would help people, especially young kids, get plugged into their area of interest at an earlier age and thus make for more successful and fulfilled people.
This was an idea I’ve had since high school, when I realized tennis was the sport I loved to do – I had wasted most of my life until then playing soccer, which I didn’t like and wasn’t good at. I wondered, how many people find out their passion or interest too late? How many people never find it?
Over the weekend, I was able to fine-tune my pitch and come up with ideas, getting feedback along the way, for what I might do if I was to really start this idea. How could I implement and make money for an idea like this?
So I thought that if even one person could benefit from this and be hooked into the thing they loved to do, the earlier the better, then putting on the program would be worth it.
I’m still interested in finding a way to implement this idea. Maybe in a published book, entitled “Why parents should give their kids the most experiences early on to help them to choose based on their interest, not assumptions.” I know that’s a long title for a book, but it gets my point across.
We ended up getting 4th place out of 5 teams, but that doesn’t mean very much to me – I know this solves a need to people if presented correctly, and the benefit would be tangible for up and coming students in the long and short-term.
I’d love to hear what you think about my idea and how I may be able to implement it.
What do you think about Passion Finder?
Do you have any ideas that you’d like to implement or give a try?
If so, put your email here!
MARK SOTOMAYOR 