Testimonials

What participants at past events say

Question	Personal Insights
Describe yourself	Age - 32, Marital status - Not married (but engaged)
Why did you go	Chose to go to Startup camp as I like working in high pressure and intense environments. Thought of weekend of no sleep was attractive. Additionally, I believe that learning by doing is the best and most effective way of learning something real fast. Books can be put down, video lessons can be paused, actual classes, well, you can only go as fast as the slowest person. I also love the sense of tangible achievement. Startup camp was perfect; go in one way, come out the other with a real business.
What were the highs	Working with others who were just as intense. Making people laugh at a silly idea and actually convince them (at least some of them) that it was worth something.
What were the lows	Didn't have time for that.
What did you gain from the experience	I've been out of the loop for almost 5 years when it comes to web technologies, startups etc. I managed to fast track a lot of the catch up in a very short period of time.
Describe a challenge for your team	We were ready to soft launch by 6 am on Saturday but at 5:50 am, one little change to the site crashed the whole thing. The devs scrambled and we decided to use the test version on the production environment. Voila, system got back up by 9 am. I liked the fact that no-one panic or chucked a tantrum.

Question	Personal Insights
Describe yourself	26 year old software engineer, Irish, 0 kids, snowboarder, writer of code and 0 dogs.
Why did you go	My girlfriend was away that weekend and I was bored. Wanted to meet and network with people but also to spend the weekend writing some code.
What were the highs	Seeing the crowds reaction to the product on twitter. Loved the presentations, some unique and funny, others quite serious. Loved the feedback from the VC Panel but also loved the entire bidding process.
What were the lows	Noxious odors emanating from my body due to not washing for two days. It was sad to realize that once the product was sold to the winning party in the auction that I would not be working on the concept again.
What did you gain from the experience	Met some awesome people, realized that I could do a lot of the work solo and could create a viable business in as little as 1 day really.
Describe a challenge for your team	Loved the idea brainstorming. Over a hundred ideas on the table within 15 minutes. Crossing off what was viable and not was great fun. Learned that everyone has interesting ideas, the execution of those ideas is the different issue.
Other	From nothing to awesome in 2 days. Feeling proud to have created a business in serious little time and watching the excitement of people bidding for your creation. Learning new skills and showing how easy it is to start something now to everyone else. In the last startup camp I learned so much regarding the promotion of the product, there is still always more to learn though.

Question	Personal Insights
Describe yourself	I’m a 29 year old unmarried male with no kids. In my day job I run two companies; a website consultancy & development company which I started 9 years ago, and which has won numerous business awards and is one of a handful of Google partners globally, and I’ve recently founded and also run a company which provides web-based client and task management for companies in the services sector.
Why did you go	Being an entrepreneur is a fairly solitary existence. Startup Camp provided me with a way to build personal relationships with other people in the startup community, people who had faced, were facing, or will probably face the same sort of challenges, opportunities, thrills and terrors that I’m facing on a regular basis.
What were the highs	The highlight is the challenge of being able to be completely creative without the constraints common in running a going concern. Using different technology, with different types of clients, in a team made up of almost strangers provides an incredible rush/challenge/learning opportunity.
What were the lows	The biggest low is the realisation that the ambitions you and your team have going into the experience are way too wild for the 40 hours you have available to deliver on them. The technical ‘hygiene’ issues related to servers, choice of programming language, and mostly starting from zero (and thus having to put time into foundational stuff) is also often a disappointment and frustration, however, this is all part of the challenge and learning in many ways. A two week long camp should mitigate the effects of this, certainly in percentage of time spent dealing with them, as the camp will go long enough to build up some momentum.
What did you gain from the experience	I personally gained a better appreciation of my own strengths and weaknesses, as well as an all to hard to find benchmark of my capabilities and propensity as an entrepreneur.
Describe a challenge for your team	Our main challenge at the recent Startup Camp in Sydney was choosing what to actually work on. Our team was assembled – somewhat unusually – around a pre-existing idea/plan/mission, however due to some confusion when people were being allocated, we found more than half of the team put into the group had no idea there was a pre-existing plan. This caused quite a lot of – fairly professional – conflict, and we ended up resolving the issue through a prioritisation and voting scheme. Given the whole thing unfolded over a few hours, it would have probably made good content, as there were a number of fairly headstrong opinions involved.

Question	Personal Insights
Describe yourself	Atmospheric physicist by trade. 49yo vegetarian. Occupation - inventor/entrepreneur. Job - don't have a paid one at the moment. Hobbies - bushwalking, eating, building stuff out of wood
Why did you go	To learn from everyone else at StartUp camp and hopefully offer something
What were the highs	Learning from everyone else, being challenged, finding myself outside my comfort zone
What were the lows	Finding myself outside my comfort zone. When my computer broke and I could no longer offer the only skill I had (3D animation).
What did you gain from the experience	Seeing how people could get together and make something work in a short period of time - I was inspired…and a little humbled by the energy and skills of others.
Describe a challenge for your team	The whole event but probably the organisation needed to prepare our presentations. We were a bit clunky but given that 7 brains had to form one plan I think we did OK.

Question	Personal Insights
Describe yourself	41, married, no kids yet but a cat. Originally studied law but in the internet industry since 1995. I have managed a couple of digital agencies until last year. Now I'm a freelance consultant in the areas of user experience and online / social media strategy. I'm also currently studying for my MBA. I love diving, Cuban music and dancing and skiing.
Why did you go	Spur of the moment decision. Learned about it on Friday morning and thought it sounded exciting.
What were the highs	Punching out something actually usable in such a short time and the sheer brilliance of working with a group of smart minds in unison.
What were the lows	Maybe that not everyone (in other groups) seemed to take it equally seriously.
What did you gain from the experience	An appreciation for how much can be done in how short a time.
Describe a challenge for your team	After the camp one of us got a nasty phone call threatening our group with a law suit. Within minutes we were all on skype resolving the situation, both technically and politically.

Question	Personal Insights
Describe yourself	30, Married, Play the violin and soccer (not at the same time). No Kids yet, Working in IT. Am a game developer by day.
Why did you go	Ive had the entrepreneurship "thing" in me since I was 13 but until a couple of years ago didnt quite know how to go about it. Then had a chat with Bart at one of the Sillicon Beach drinks about a Coworking session and he proposed something even better - "how about a startup in one weekend", were his exact words.
What were the highs	Actually achieving what is thought to be unachievable - Brainstorming, Implementing and Pitching (to VCs) a startup. And not to mention the meeting with so many people much much smarter than you.
What were the lows	Having to go back to work on monday after the weekend and saying goodbyes, albeit temporary ones.
Describe a challenge for your team	Coming up with idea was the challenge. Ended up being a Vote.
Other	You had to be there to experience it. I had missed the first startup camp and even though I knew it was going to be awesome, I had now idea how much until I attended (and built cool stuff in) the second camp. Any geek/entrepreneur will know why it is cool.

Question	Personal Insights
Describe yourself	30, married, expecting, full time entrepreneur
Why did you go	Learn, meet like minded people
What were the highs	Launch, networking, discussions
What were the lows	Lack of sleep, too much pizza
What did you gain from the experience	Good connections
Describe a challenge for your team	Late night epiphanies, slogging along in order to get to the launch. Relieve at the launch (sometimes)

If you have attended a StartupCamp please add your perspectives too!

Question	Personal Insights
Describe yourself
Why did you go
What were the highs
What were the lows
What did you gain from the experience
Describe a challenge for your team