I just got back from the first day of my very first Startup Weekend. If you haven't heard of Startup Weekend before it's an event where developers, designers, and business people get together and launch a startup in 54 hours! So far it's been a pretty crazy experience. I'll go more in depth about the intricacies of the weekend later but I do have one tidbit for any future attendee.

Practice Your Pitch!

When you go to a Startup Weekend you don't have to pitch an idea – we had about 18 pitches between 50 attendees. But if you do plan on making a pitch know that they're hard! You have one minute. That's 60 seconds. Six. Zero. No more. If you go over the moderator just starts clapping!

The thing that I absolutely love about this model is that it removes all of that marketing talk. Quickly and effectively communicate your point or you're not going to make it. Love it!

I pitched an idea which I do think could have done well but I didn't prepare at all. Sixty seconds isn't a long time and if you do trip and stumble over your words it's hard to pick it up and finish in time. My top tip here isn't to memorize a speech but have 3 killer sentences that will communicate your startup idea.

A Sample Pitch

I've gone ahead and created a sample pitch to be used by myself later this year, and also for any of you who are planning on selling any idea ever. If you have any left over time feel free to elaborate on any of those points.

Hi! I'm {name}.

This thing, {name of pain point}, sucks.

If we can fix this pain point we'll get {benefits}

Here's one {solution} we can use to fix it.

I'll be be rocking {team name}.

With that I encourage you to take part in your own Startup Weekend and build something!