Psst… wanna make a billion bucks?
For IT mega-entrepreneurs, this isn’t just a dream, it’s seen as an achievable goal.
The Melbourne Start-Up Weekend, held over the weekend of 7 May, was just one of many such events held in recent weeks, and the calendar into the future looks quite busy, with 70 events being scheduled from Charlotte, North Carolina to Jakarta, Indonesia.
From Friday night to Sunday evenings, attendees are encouraged to work with each other to realise tech-related ideas and concepts into firm, marketable products using so-called ‘LEAN’ start-up methodologies, which include rapid ‘iterations’ or version development of the idea and implementation of the idea using existing free ‘off-the-shelf’ open-source software.
In principle, it all sounds very exciting – dozens of participants, both with IT and marketing backgrounds, seeking to excel and reach that goal of achieving a ‘minimum viable product’ – but in practice, at least in the case of the event I attended, it didn’t quite work out that way.
Why not? Read on…