Attending a Startup Weekend means never wondering if someone has a laptop for you to check your email.

Startup Weekend is a great kick in the pants that pushes you to your limits regardless of skill set. Want to see what you’re made of, try creating a startup in 54 hours. Here’s my tips for success.

1. Prepare yourself: You don’t have to spend sleepless nights before Startup Weekend, but make sure you are ready for the event. If you want to design graphics all weekend make sure you’ve got Photoshop installed and ready to go. The clock may start Friday night, but you don’t want to waste it with stupid stuff you could have figured out earlier.
2. Shop around: After the pitches Friday night you’ll have a big choice of which team to join. If you pitched yourself, you might even have to make the tough choice of abandoning your idea and joining forces with others. Either way take the time and walk the room and talk to the presenters. Once you dig deeper and hear the details of the “how” and “why” of their idea you may change your mind.
3. Surround yourself with a solid team: You’ll be spending the next few days with these people. Make sure they’ve got the chops you need, are going to be easy to work with and don’t smell too bad.

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I want to know.

This weekend I’ll be participating in another Startup Weekend event in which a crack team of startup junkies and myself will create a new product or service in one weekend.

There’s a ton of ideas we could do, but I’m looking for ideas that will take the pain out of X or Y.

If you problem is knowing how to eat healthy, I wanna know. If you’re looking for a way to organize your life, I wanna know. [insert your own better examples]

Sure I’m going to personally gravitate toward the sexy high tech solutions, but above all I want to make something this weekend that myself and others will still be using in 6 months. I want to make something of value that real people can benefit from.

So if you’ve got a pain point, let me know and you may just get the product or service of your dreams in one weekend.