I recently had a lot of fun providing some mentorship to several teams at Startup Weekend LA.

Startup Weekend recently started tackling verticals and this was the first time that one was devoted exclusively to entertainment and media. There were some incredibly talented folks generating some really cool product ideas!

If you're not familiar with Startup Weekend, it’s a global non-profit that basically puts teams together for about 48 hours. They generate ideas on Friday night, self-organize, work through the weekend, and then pitch a concept (e.g., working prototype, business plan) to a group of judges on Sunday evening. Teams generally consist of a Product person, developers, and of course, a UXer.

Much of my work with the teams involved providing advice on how to go about embarking on a path to product discovery, coaching around delivering a proof of concept to then validate with users, as well as trying to rein in a few pretty grandiose ideas such that they could deliver incremental value. In other words, focus. Interfaces come later.

Overall, it was so fun. I can do this stuff all day long - and was almost late to my wife’s birthday dinner because of that! Doh.

Best of luck to all the teams boot-strapping it or seeking some early round funding!

Marc