Startup Weekend Is a Fun Way to Validate Your Startup Ideas

Editorial Notes: Yohan Totting is one of coaches at the Startup Weekend Bali 2014. He shared his experience in participating in the event in Hubud Bali.

A week ago, November 14-16, 2014 to be exact, I had the chance to participate in the Startup Weekend Bali 2014, a global startup event which was held all at once in a number of cities all around the world. The event invited designers, developers, and entrepreneur enthusiasts to join, express their ideas, form teams, and collaborate to validate their startup ideas in just three days. Through this piece of writing, I want to present my view on this event and why I enjoyed it very much.

First thing first is, obviously, the location. There’s no reason why I didn’t enjoy Bali. Moreover, Ubud is strategically located miles away from urban madness, which means I can forget about meeting, traffic jam, or deadline for a while. Serene atmosphere, high class Hubud co-working facilities, stable internet connection, and cool dudes from all over the world with unique background and experience, come on, Ubud really is a place to get inspired. Didn’t take me even a minute to say yes to Peter Wall, Hubud’s co-founder, when he came and asked me to coach the event’s participants.

The opportunity of establishing a new network became was another Startup Weekend Bali’s attraction that got my attention. There were 75 participants who came from 22 different countries to start up with. It’s exciting to hear their stories and learn how they ended up in Bali.

In advance, I met Pieter ‘Levels’, one of coolest coaches there. He said that it wasn’t his habit to join such event, since it takes too much of his time and he prefers working to wasting it that way. He made a project called “12 startups in 12 months”, a program which is dedicated to coding and aims to produce one app each and every month.

Pieter also introduced me to Maitri Fischer, the one who’ll be in charge at the Coworking Popup, a brand new co-working space in Gianyar, Bali. The coworking focuses on upgrading the creativity of Balinese local citizens. In fact, there would be a number of workshops held due to its launching this end of November.

Our Sunday morning, which was the last day of the #SUWBali, was started with an internal fight between members of a team. Well, conflicts are inevitable, particularly when we work with fellow bright individuals who have each own concepts and ideas, not to mention that the team was formed only in days. Fortunately, Benoit Laurent, the facilitator, was able to handle the fight and reduce the tension. Tell you what, the conflicting members even led their team to the big five round.

I have to admit that it was the best startup event I’ve ever participated in. Not only because of the event, but also the soothing and exciting location. It made me feel like being on a vacation and having all my jobs done at the same time.

I do wish for the event to be kept being held in locations as strategic and relaxing as Ubud. The implementation of Lean Startup technology also helped most of participants to understand the steps of starting startups much better.

[Photo: Startup Weekend Bali]

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Yohan Totting is a technology lead at Kolaborasi.co, mentor at Bandung Digital Valley, the one who administers the developer relationship at API Pemilu, and developer of Indo Dapoer at World Bank Jakarta. You can reach him on Twitter (@tyohan) and his personal website.