Startup Weekend came and went as any good weekend does – entirely too fast. But rather than being the proverbial ‘lost weekend,’ Startup Weekend saw the creation of five startup companies looking to make their mark online and in the greater Memphis business community.
"Memphis Startup Weekend" by LunaWeb on Flickr
By the end of the event Sunday, Gamewav Media, MisterMenus, CheezyWeezy, Rezzie, and Roll Play all had their business plans in place, some with websites already up – one even had a great promo video.
Each startup is quite different from the next, which meant that each attendee was able to work on the project which most excited them.
A little bit more on each startup:
- Gamewav Media is a portal for online games, centered around a zombie theme.
- MisterMenus allows users to post reviews of local restaurants – at the individual dish level.
- CheezyWeezy allows parents to post cute photos of their kids, while they and other parents rate the photos based on how much it makes them smile.
- Rezzie is a real estate engine which aims to simplify the processes of home buying, home selling – even just finding a realtor to help you find a home.
- Roll Play is a resource for online role playing and collaborative story telling.
Some of the teams may be closer to a full realization of their ideas, but it’s important to remember that Startup Weekend is not a competition. No one team struggled to beat another in any way, unless it was in a race for the beer, pizza, barbecue, Red Bull, or Kooky Canuck burgers.
The real point of Startup Weekend is seeing what happens when a group of creative people get excited about completing a project, and are given free rein (with a little bit of time) to make it come to fruition.
It was fantastic to see so many people feeding off of each other’s ideas and the immensely positive atmosphere at Emerge Memphis. Though the teams spread out through the building, it was clear that the members still came together and interacted, over food, beer, coffee or energy drinks.
That collaborative energy bubbled into the very startups being worked on. It’s clear that the projects would be difficult to complete without a dedicated team of people figuring out how best to get it off the ground – and how to have it start making some money.
It’ll be great to see these startups develop over the next few months – somewhere about three or four months down the line, there will be a reunion, gathering these teams back together to see what it is they’ve done, and how their new businesses have developed.
It’s not just the energy of Startup Weekend that’s positive – there’s the impact that these new businesses will have on the Memphis – and worldwide – communities we belong to. The sheer positivity that drives these projects has to be a sign of some unbelievably good things to come.
