After brief talks by Joel Fontenot, Mike Merrill, and Jordan Jenkins, there were 33 pitches on Friday night. Nine teams were formed and got quickly to work on setting up their workspace, validating ideas, and strategizing their game plans for the weekend.

Friday Night – Day 1

My experience in Startup Weekend Dallas was by far one of the best, I have had in quite sometime. I had the initial intentions to pitch my IDEA and get a small unique team to help me breathe life into it. Well as I entered the building with my good friend Madelynn, the reality of not being prepared suddenly hit me and hard. I saw a few people standing and getting ready for their pitches while enjoying some food provided by the event organizers. It was at first glance an intimidating atmosphere, but I figured nothing can go wrong!! Well it did, and I completely fumbled the ball in giving sound feedback on my idea! So after 33 pitches were given, we had the opportunity network and sell our ideas to others to gain team members. At this point in time I really gave up the dream of recruiting members for my idea, and sought out ideas that I could jump on board. I must add that there were only 3 designers there, and I being one of them was sought after heavily by the 11 remaining teams. Madelynn had won her pitch, which detailed a job board that had a dating algorithm to it, so as a GOOD friend I decided to help her out and seek team members. I initially wanted to work on a interactive book that could mix with my initial pitch of creating a social video gaming network. Although we landed a few business leads, we were short of a developer and that was going to be quite difficult.

Saturday – Day 2

So finally nine teams had formed from the previous night, and we quickly grabbed our spaces and sat down to brainstorm our potential products/services. Initially when talking about the product which was a job board I quickly turned to a few resources that I had in my bad. Russ Unger wrote a great book for aspiring and professional User Experience Designers entitled  “A Project Guide to UX Design” and I wanted to plan and define our strategy using his book. The day was quite challenging and a few ideas were met with excitement and criticism but in the end we worked and collaborated AS A TEAM. I handled the graphics and communicated with our mobile developer Chase Johnson, while Madelynn handled a few business leads and financials with Paul Johnson and the rest of our team helped with product analysis and usability. We worked quite hard into the night, cranking out ideas and solidifying the product. I tried to help other teams with their design woes but couldn’t get too involved due to our own deadlines. So IF YOUR A DESIGNER READING THIS AND LIVE IN DALLAS PLEASE ATTEND THE NEXT STARTUP WEEKEND!! The shortage of designers really hurt a few ideas but nonetheless everyone worked quite diligent to create their products. The team decided to name the product Corollary!!!

Sunday – Final Day

The morning approached and we worked on the kinks, and presentation. You could fill the pressure mounting as it was getting closer to deadline and presenting time. I remember getting Madelynn ready for the presentation and getting her to review it, until she had it down packed. The lesson was HUGE and monumental from this experience it taught me that:

1) Team work and a good attitude towards anything gets results.

2) That I really have talent and I just need to apply myself and things will start to happen

Well I bet your wondering how everything turned out, you can read the description below to find out how we did!!

And now on to our 1st, 2nd and 3rd place finishers, all of whom won IP and patent protection attorney services by Hulsey IP Law. 3rd place went to GoneBooking (aka Adventure Book), which won $2000 in services. 2nd place went to Corollary, which won $4500 in services. And our 1st place winner was Bookedd, winner of $8500 in services and the chance to continue on this week in competing with all other SW winners around the world in Global Startup Battle.

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