Ask HN: Startup Weekend - How can I add value?

Are there any useful things that I should take with me besides the obvious?

First of all, welcome to the wonderful world of Startup Weekends!

Market testing and customer validation was really emphasized at the last SW I was at. In our team, there was one member who had absolutely no technical background, but that was okay. When we'd come up with our initial idea, he helped a lot by getting out there and talking to potential customers to get a feel for what they did/n't want in a product and what they'd pay. That kind of info guides what you're building, and makes your case stronger when you're presenting!

So I'd say bring a traditional (as in paper) notebook with you, as you never know when you might be out in the field!

I hope someone with some experience can help you answer this question.. I am curious about this as well

(as a tech person and I've been to two startup weekends + numerous hackathons) Whatever idea you come up with the team, I think the way to "motivate" the tech people is to validate that the idea is viable one - that means, do all that is necessary - make calls, go out and talk to people, SELL IT! - to let the tech people know that whatever they are building is worth it.

For example, if you spent 5 hours during your startup weekend outside talking to potential customers and actually lock in a potential buyer AND even invite that person to the demo - heck invite 2 or 3 potential customers - then I think you are doing an awesome job as a non-tech person.

Depends on the audience more than anything, but there are a ton of 'semi-technical' tasks that you could contribute to:

- Setting up Twitter / Facebook / Google Plus accounts for the project and team.

- Posting regular Twitter / Facebook / Google Plus updates to generate buzz. Make sure that your StartupWeekend event is using a Hashtag (like SWLondon) and use it -- people following that will see your tweets and give you a better chance for exposure.

- Develop plain old 'Patio11' style HTML pages for split-testing copyrights.

- Integrate Google Analytics / MixPanel / Googlel Webmaster Tools to be able to track activity (and include stats in your last-day demo).

- If you've got more than one developer using Git, you can help manage code merges (if you're conformatable with that.)

- Set up the domain name and hosting if it's needed.

- If you're familiar with Rails or Django templates (you could brush up on both before you go, they're pretty basic) -- you could work on converting a ThemeForest theme into ERB/HTML while the backend developers work on making the application 'go'.

- Helping to isolate down site copy, slogans, signup jargon.

In short, just volunteer whenever there's something you feel like you can do. If all that is done, nobody's going to hate if you step outside your comfort zone and have trouble -- just preface beforehand "Hey, I've never done that before, but I'll give it a shot."

There are a million things to do at StartupWeekend (including fetching coffee, donuts, caffeine,water) and none of it goes unappreciated. Even if you aren't a technical rockstar, you can be the guy that removes obstacles and hustles his ass off to make sure that the team can get things done. Everybody loves that guy.

I've been in your shoes. If you have any tech skills at all, they will be valuable. At the beginning of Startup Weekend Boston I was doing product management and front-end dev, but by the end of it I was writing code for a language I'd never used before just to bring us a little closer to "finished". Understanding code structures and being able to google for specific syntax takes you a long way.

I've done one Startup Weekend, and it was a little different than I expected - the emphasis wasn't necessarily on technology, so don't worry about not being able to contribute on a technical level.

Instead, what Startup Weekend is about is really more about trying to get out some kind of MVP that you can take to potential customers to have them validate your business idea - can you get customers or suppliers to actually sign up to whatever you build? Easiest way to do this is to call potential customers - unfortunately, most businesses are closed on the weekends, so that takes some of the fun out.

Another thing I noticed is that the teams were extremely fluid - so if you feel left out or marginalized on your current team, it seemed to be more than ok to join another group - the whole idea is probably more to meet people and play startup than to actually come out with a fundable team, tech demo, and business model in 48 hours.

I took part in Startup Weekend Newcastle earlier this year in the first one outside of London or Cambridge in the UK.

While I loved the event it frustrated me how the focus of the weekend seemed to be as far away from technical as possible.

My team involved 4 developers so we wanted to make sure we could build something in the weekend. We built instaquote.co and didn't place in the final results, what annoyed us the most was the fact we were the ONLY team with a MVP/prototype. We 'hacked' our website up and there were times when we found ourselves employed as official VPN guy and official LastFM DJ!!

The winning team had the idea of a online video CV, they won on the premise that they had a BBC interview lined up(didn't happen) and a big customer from the city(didn't happen/they had connections there {family}). Needless to say we were pretty annoyed at the non technical attitude, probably due to the fact Newcastle has about 20 developers who don't call themselves a web guru while only knowing HTML.

BUT by far the best thing to come out of the weekend was the guys I met, I'm still friends and keep in touch to this day and have even started a project with one of my team members! It's about the people you meet IMHO.

Have a great time and I'm sure you will find your role!