Seattle Startup Weekend

I keep thinking that I’ll write up something about skillbit - what our product is and what we do - and I haven’t yet. I’ve been trying to think of best how to describe this exciting new thing. I have finally decided that contrary to how a lot of executive summaries come across - more static than enthusiastically engaged - our crackerjack team has come up with a solid description that finds the right balance of excitement without the usual accompaniment of hyperbole. I hate hyperbole.

So here it is…

Small businesses, project teams, and DnD weenies are missing out. They have incredible skill and talent among their members, but the team leaders simply don’t know what resources they have access to within their own group. Money is wasted on consultants, bloated knowledge management software, and simple inefficiencies of communication. Of course, the team members are missing out, too. They have coaches, assistants, mentors, and friends sitting next to them and they don’t even know it.

What if a tool were created to help these teams of people build up a database of team skills? Searchable, lean, flexible, and powerful: You know your employees but with skillbit, you can also know what they know.

What makes this compelling is that skillbit lives in that smaller space where teams are big enough to not know everyone intimately and small enough to not want to have to spend big to be able to know and use the kind of information we make accessible.

The short version - teams no longer have to choose between working blind and spending big.

There is so much here that makes what we’re doing sound big, exciting, and powerful. And what’s particularly cool about it is that Dev is actually coding this. The breaking news is that we already have some patent pending technology in the works.

Wow.

Okay - so, after some thinking, debating, and a certain amount of disagreeing, we now have a new product idea - Match.com for enterprise. There are some concerns about whether this one would fly any better than the previous idea. And, the best response I’ve heard to this is that any idea can be completely shot down by saying, “What prevents XYZ company from doing the same thing?”

I liked the response to this - “Nothing - the thing is that they haven’t yet.”

My personal thought - as a coach - is the right thing to do now is to focus What would it take to make this a kick-ass idea?

That would be way more helpful than spending time grumbling about how it’s not a good idea or wouldn’t work or what-have-you. Not that I’ve actually caught anyone doing that.  We’re a cool group - we’ll get past the storming phase soon, I’m sure.

-Kimm

Listening to some of the comments as we hear re-pitches and further debate ideas, I have one question that keeps coming up for me - the skill set of the individual matters.

Developers have different kinds of ideas, based on what they know they can do, than the ideas thought up by BizDev folks who know what they can sell, and so forth…

Most important point so far - what we really want to do is to try to come up with an idea that really is representative of Seattle. It remains to be seen whether this is possible or not tonight.

- Kimm

We seem to have agreed - sort of - on top three…

We’re hearing re-pitches and ideas for modifications of these top three:

• Match.com for Enterprise
• Freelancers Network
• Rideshare

Plus - Andrew’s idea of micro-financing green behavior…

- Kimm

As tables, with a fair amount of milling around just discussing general things, we’re debating the ideas that have made the cut. There are lots of good ideas that somehow didn’t get that far so now we’re talking about which of those that are left sound both viable and interesting to us.

If anyone else not here has an opinion, feel free to weigh in.

-Kimm

Guess what - it’s easier to sound enthusiastic about an idea when it’s yours. After sounding rather lackluster for a couple of ideas, Andrew is letting people pitch their own from the podium.

-Kimm

People are pitching ideas…

• TotTrader - easy Facebook way to arrange playdates and trade childcare with friends
• Dedicated childsafe browser where the links don’t work unless whitelisted by parents (or source trusted by parents like group or school
• Don’t Miss Church - Record and podcast church/temple/mosque/religious group of your choice for download - great for people who are housebound, busy, or simply want to learn more about different services available
• RideMatch - cool idea but disappointing results from searching on www.ridematch.com
• Flylady.net for disaster preparedness - this one is mine… cool idea but probably won’t go anywhere because it’s too tough to explain and I’m spending more time listening to ideas and writing about them than trying to pitch it to anyone else or write it down for Andrew!

- Kimm

People are handing in ideas to the podium. I handed in two. Lots of people pitching ideas to each other, visiting other tables.

Everyone is sitting in groups of six or so, talking about ideas. So far, my table has come up with three. I think we’re falling behind the average. Choosing is going to be tough!

- Kimm

We’re all sitting at our tables, sharing ideas that we have brought for starup weekend.