Welcome To TwoDayStartup

Over the last week, I've just had so much "startup" in my head that I feel like I should be writing it all down to benefit other startup entrepreneurs...

The truth is, even though most of my new Tampa followers know me only from my work in leading a StartupWeekend Tampa team to victory, I've done two-day starts on web ideas dozens, if not over a hundred times in the last 15 years.

Some of those starts have led to great success (and even a successful book), like my 2,500,000 member sweepstakes game, Windough.
Some have led to great satisfaction and impact, like my crowd-funding peer charity, WishingFund.
But most have led to nothing but a wild 2 day ride, a little disappointment, and lessons learned.

In fact, here's a short list of some of my failed and abandoned ideas that started with a two-day start (and this is only since '08, since my GoDaddy receipts only go back that far):

• PDFtoPostal - A print driver that prints right to a postal mail service.
• Win4Good - A sweepstakes site that shares winnings with charity.
• StarScratch - A scratch-off sweepstakes site.
• FreeU.edu - A free online university.
• ForeverTales - Online recordable children's books
• VoiceCastLIVE - Easy, affordable group voicemail broadcasts.
• MagicSalesBox - An all-in-one automated marketing system.
• TypeTunes - An easy piano teaching system based on the QUERTY keyboard.
• JoeHero - A website about people coming together to do good things.
• RibbonBook - A facebook integrated automated greeting card service.
• Percentric - Find out why people leave your website
• TheUserSpeaks - A remote usability research website

I had always been somewhat ashamed of my failure list, until recently when I began to reconnect with others in the Tampa and the national startup community.  As I've spoken with more and more hopeful startup entrepreneurs while looking for potential partners, I found myself often in the position of dispensing advice... almost effortlessly, about markets, revenues, technology, testing...

To my surprise, I actually could help these people... gauging by the flow of thank you emails and friend requests.  So, I started thinking of myself not as an entrepreneur with a few good hits and 10,000 hours of failure... but as a 10,000 hour expert on developing a web startup idea to an initial market test.

And, as StartupWeekend Tampa proved, it isn't glitz, glamour or hype that wins an investor's attention... it's substance and experience.  And that I have to share.