1/90 @TheJunction: The Blending of Startups

[ “ The Junction is an open house for entrepreneurs. Any active entrepreneur (regardless of his/her idea) is welcome to join, be a part of, and work at The Junction ” ]

Imagine a place where amazing developers, marketers, creative, designers and biz-dev working on their own cool startup. This is The Junction, a great place for startups to do their magic and make their dream come to life. Working here for two months made me realize that we have a huge opportunity laying under our nose – each startup is built by people with very different background but at the end of the day, our path to success looks very much the same

We all need the power of creative thinking, the right-brain of a graphic designer, the analytical mind of a developer, the wisdom of a marketer and the experience of a biz-dev. No matter what you’re working on, you need it. Why not blending our strength by helping each other out to push everyone forward?

1/90 was born – 1 day out of 90 days, which is The Junction cycle (3 months per startup).

What happened here:

1. We created a shared excel file (Google Docs) stating per startup: name, current phase, what we need most, what can we help with.

2. We met at 09:30 and did some quick lottery of the startups. Then, by number, the startup’s members explained what they need *now*, trying to be as *specific* as possible, in 3-5 minutes. People in the “audience” raised hands, if they matched the need, and we paired them together.

3. We split forces and in the next 20 minutes tried to explain each other, with some details, what exactly is needed (what is the desired outcome). At 10:15, people started to work for others, creating logos, thinking of UX/mockups, thinking of strategic marketing options and creating some working web applications. The best moment, from my perspective, was when Dany (creative @DoubleSpread) said – “it’s amazing how you take a JPG I made and transform it to a working web site in less than a day, that’s crazy!” and Effie’s (dev @Mealway) replied “no, what’s crazy is how you can create beautiful JPG in 2-3 hours from ideas I can hardly explain”. Beautiful.

4. We ended the day afternoon, where every person said what s/he did, who s/he helped, who helped her/him and how was the experience in general. The vibe was great and people really felt much more connected to each other. It was not only blending of stratups but also blending of people and friends.

I believe there is huge room for making this “event” even better in terms of productivity but I loved the fact that the team (~25 people) decided together, by themselves, how to do it and gave their heart to it. Everyone liked the idea and asked to do it at least 2-3 times per “wave” of people (so maybe it should be called 2/90 or 3/90 ).

I feel that I was part of something great, thanks to amazing group of talented, hard working and generous people. Cheers!