Next MilValChal Offer - $500 to engage in an experiment

With the previous post on the MilValChal efforts and the Startup Day offer, we talked about doing one build, measure, learn loop. The Startup Day offer was an example of that: Make a hypothesis, run a test, and learn.

 I have personally told hundreds... perhaps close to a thousand people about the startup day offer. And that does not include the 10K people downsteam in my social media.... And yet, we have very very very few takers. I have done this at Startup weekends that I was facilitating, at the Open Coffee meetings, as the Key note speaker at a Startup day conference with over 600 people in the audience, In the Lean Startup Seattle meetings. Do a BML loop and you will get $$$.

 The strange thing is that this Lean Startup experimentation is exactly what startups should be doing. Fast, timeboxed experiments that lead to understanding of the market.

 One of the thoughts is that our process was not as clear as it should be. This is likely a distraction and that we should take the data at face value. We made an offer, our conversion rate was very very low, so we have not yet found customer/problem fit. We have in fact had one of the Open Coffee participants run an experiment and collect the $$$ from Adam. But the handful who completed it vs the thousands that were aware of it.... Relatively high customer acquisition cost.

Adam Berk (@adamberk) has outlined the next round of the experiment. There is room for 20 people to can get this. Between now and the end of March, if you follow this set of instructions, you can collect $500.

 Here are the instructions:

• Decide on the target persona of your next experiment (can be a customer, user, partner, NOT AN INVESTOR, someone for whom you are directly solving a problem) 

• Talk to 5 of those people and submit your learnings here bit.ly/milvalchal 

•  Form a hypothesis around an action you think they will take, something you can test within a month) ( the community will help you run the experiment if you do not have funds for marketing, landing pages, design, even moderate coding ) 

•  Test the hypothesis. That is, go talk to target customers, make them an offer that tests the question at hand, take something of value in exchange (money, time, space), and then deliver on the offer.  

Write a blog about your learnings using this format:

•  PARAGRAPH 1 My name is {insert name here and feel free to link to your current landing page or personal brand}. The individuals who helped me run this experiment are {link to the mentors who helped you - link directly to their mentor card on Trello OR their landing page for their experiment} The link to my specific hypothesis card on Trello is HERE.  (Board Link: https://trello.com/b/rLMuxqah )  

•  PARAGRAPH 1.5 (Copy and paste the following = I am part of an experimental incubator that gives startups and entrepreneurs funding in exchange for testing and sharing leanstartup hypotheses). 

• PARAGRAPH 2 This section will provide a quantifiable comparison of your prediction vs the results. This sections is mainly for mentors to get a snapshot. I THOUGHT that 5% of 1000 of this specific segment would do this - [this comes DIRECTLY FROM YOUR HYPOTHESIS word for word] ACTUALLY 3% of 500 people did this. In total, I have had conversations with THIS NUMBER OF PEOPLE who match the segment targeted in this experiment. [NO COMMENTARY HERE - this should be black and white which is why we ask for such specific predictions in the first place...] 

• PARAGRAPH 3 COMMENTARY - take the MOST SURPRISING or MOST WRONG metric - and explain why you BELIEVE this happened... this can be positive or negative. Maybe 90% of 1000 people did something, THAT'S GOOD... but really it's bad because of how far off you were. Before you try and scale, you need to know WHY. Maybe only 1% converted, maybe you only got 50 views... pick apart ONE SINGLE VARIABLE THAT WAS MOST WRONG. 

• PARAGRAPH 4 BONUS COMMENTARY explain the rest of the variables... If your last experiment had negative results... restate your problem and customer statements here. 

• PARAGRAPH 5 NEXT STEP... post it in the blog itself, and provide a LINK to the next experiment in trello.  ( https://trello.com/b/rLMuxqah ) 

 For you to collect the offered money, you must accept the challenge by tweeting @adamberk and @sechrest within next ten days (by 2017/2/19) , must complete the challenge by end of march - Payments are limited to the first 20 people @$500 each // funds must be used to run the experiment defined in paragraph 5:)

The regular milvalchal is open to anyone, no rule changes, no limits, no entry windows (for now) , So if you want to run the whole experiment and get a $10K investment in your startup, that offer is still there: Slingshot Ventures invests in ALL startup teams at a fixed MILLION dollar valuation if you do custdev and run experiments. More info here

Startup Day Offer - One Build Measure Learn Loop with Liberty Ventures

The early startup journey is full of unknowns. It has a lot of beliefs about how the world can and should work. As entrepreneurs, we need to ground our beliefs in the reality of what our real actual customers will actually do. The Lean Startup path way to do this is to run experiments:

1. Predict a result in the world
2. Build an experiment/test that will 
3. Run the test to see what really happens. 
4. Measure the results
5. See if your prediction (belief) matches what really happened (data)

We like Data Driven Startups. If you go through your whole Lean Canvas and associated business assumption, you will be able to learn quickly and to find a business in the midst of all the data.  

However, we see that entrepreneurs tend to lean into their assumptions and try to start building and then selling the solution that they have not tested and validated with the market. That is, they don't actually have meaningful Lean Customer Development conversations with real customers.  If they do talk to customers, they are either "themselves" as the customer, or they are so informal in the process, that they actually don't get good data about what people are actually willing to do. 

As outlined in the previous post, Just one Lean Experiment ( http://www.oomaat.com/2016/10/just-one-lean-experiment-to-progress-to.html ) , Liberty Ventures and Adam Berk (@adamberk) is offering $1000 for one Lean Experiment , which goes through the whole Build-Measure-Learn Loop and then documents it in a post. 

As a special opportunity for my Estonian trip and the Startup Day in Tartu, Adam has agreed to do a specific offer again. There has been $5000 set aside for up to 5 teams that choose to commit to, complete and then document only one Build-Measure-Loop. 

To start this journey ,  go to http://bit.ly/libertyventures 

You will get to a landing page. Click on the "Get Funding" page, and then you will be asked to do a tweet. Put into the tweet - "I saw this from @sechrest"  , 

You will then be asked to:

1.  Form a prediction (a hypothesis) 
2. Post it into a Trello board via email
3. Run 5 interviews with customers
4. Document the interviews in a report form
5. Post a blog about it on medium (or your own blog) 

If you do this, loop, which should take a week or so, then you will get $1000. There is $5000 set aside. So the first 5 to complete it will get paid. 

Pitch foundations: Getting ready to pitch your startup

As you are getting ready to pitch your startup, there are some good things to remember. First, you are going to need several pitch formats. A 30 second pitch (elevator pitch) , a 1 minute pitch, a 3 minute pitch, a 5 minute pitch, a 10 minute pitch.

These are not the same pitch slower. They are different pitches aimed at getting a specific thing to happen. That is, they are pitches in different contexts.  And they all have the same overall task as a goal: To get to the next meeting.

Additionally, they all have the same foundation at the core. When you work on your Lean Canvas, you are working to illuminate that core business model.  Let’s take a look at how that might work.

For the 30 second pitch, you are trying to provide enough of an overview that you get people’s attention. If we look at the Geoffrey Moore framework out of Tor Grønsund’s post:

http://torgronsund.com/2011/11/29/7-proven-templates-for-creating-value-propositions-that-work

Then we would see the following:

For  ____________ (target customer)

who ____________  (statement of the need or opportunity)

our (product/service name) is  ____________  (product category)

that (statement of benefit) ____________ .

Some of this looks remarkably like the Lean Canvas:

So let’s translate the Value Proposition into the same words as the Lean Canvas:

For  ____________ (CUSTOMER)

who ____________  (has PROBLEM)

our (PRODUCT NAME) is  ____________  (PRODUCT CATEGORY)

that ____________(UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION).

We might like to expand on that a little bit more:

For  ____________ (CUSTOMER)

who ____________  (has PROBLEM)

our (PRODUCT NAME) is  ____________  (PRODUCT CATEGORY).

Unlike existing alternatives, _______ (EXISTING ALTERNATIVE #1), _______ (EXISTING ALTERNATIVE #2), and _______ (EXISTING ALTERNATIVE #3), we provide __________ (FEATURE #1) that _____________(UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION).

We see that _________(CUSTOMER ) are spending __________(REVENUE - Market Size)  to solve __________(PROBLEM).  

This provides a little more detail on the company and how it fits into the market place.

However, there are two things that are missing: A request at the end and an attention getting mechanism at the front.

Where we have clarity in the business model, the task of pulling together an appropriate and effective pitch becomes much easier.   Because you will be connecting with Investors multiple times as you engage in the process of seeking investment, it is always good to have a way to mix up the story a bit as well. Saying the same pitch over and over again, without updating and evolving it ends up being  a signal to investors that you are not learning along the way. So please expect to be reworking and revising the various pieces of your pitch along the way.

Hopefully, this will help you create a specific framework that gets you started on an effective pathway to doing a good pitch. Practice this pitch process every day, with different people, and learn how it evolves and how to make it more effective. The key is to be remarkable. That is, to have other people talking about you after you have left. Typical early stage pitch sessions have a dozen or  more companies presenting at the same time. Just given Human short term memory structures, only 3 or 4 of the companies presenting will be remembered. What will you do to be remarkable enough to not only be remembered, but to have the investors telling your story for you?

Everyone on your team should understand your core business model and be able to give a pitch at a moments notice. In a startup, everyone is a sales person.

Lean First means Customer Discovery before Product Development

I regularly get people contacting me to talk about their startup and the work they are doing. Frequently they are very very busy doing startup-y things like managing their team, organizing their tasks, raising money... But strangely, not really doing any significant Customer Development. I have run several experiments now where I have made them an offer to take a small time-out, and to run a Lean Startup Experiment to do just one Build-Measure-Learn loop in a formal and transparent way. My experience is that there is serious significant resistance among entrepreneurs to really talk to real customers.

As a person who believes deeply in the Lean Startup methodology, I would start the conversation urging you to stop building your prototype. Clear the space for you to do significant customer engagement.

The Lean Startup idea is that you put Customer Development before Product Development. That is you talk to , understand and adapt to a customer base, discovering and validating your customers before you build things.

You have three main risks:
1) Technical Risk - Can it be built
2) Market Risk - Should it be built
3) Execution risk - Can my team build it

These are in order. Chances are, you do not have technical risk.
And Chances are that you have not talked to enough customers to resolve that there are really customers who have a real problem that are really willing to pay you. (Note that there is a significant difference between the 98% of people who are cheerleaders that tell you happy thoughts and the 2% of customers who really really really are ready to pay you now to solve a problem)

You need to find 100 customers who really really really want to pay you now to solve a problem; before you take one more step on building the product, find those 100 people.

I recommend that you read these three books, in order:

Running Lean by Ash Maurya
Lean Customer Development by Cindy Alvarez
Scaling Lean by Ash Maurya.

And I recommend that you get the Startup Owners Manual by Steve Blank, and strive to read one page a day. Keep reading pages one at a time until they start falling into place.

This would allow you to get focus on this Customer Development before Product Development.

If you are ready to take a leap into a Customer Development experiment, take a look at the work of Adam Berk ( @adamberk ) as outlined in http://www.oomaat.com/2016/10/just-one-lean-experiment-to-progress-to.html

Remember in the Theory of OOMAAT, your first step is to find just one customer. Don't think about anything more than things that lead you to your first paying customer.  Then we can worry about how we might get to ten paying customers. 

Standups every 90 minutes at a Startup Weekend? Why?

Tonight, I am facilitating another Startup Weekend. It will be my 55th startup weekend event. When I do a startup weekend, I try to engage the group in regular standup status meetings every 90 minutes. 

Startup Weekend is a business sprint. Trying to get from idea to revenue in a weekend, with a group of strangers. The surprizing thing is that 11% of these teams formed over the weekend are alive a year later moving money. ( I suspect that the teams made up of people who have been to several startup weekends because we have such a high return rate for participants. )

If we are able to get the teams formed, seated and working by 9:00pm on friday, that gives us time to get two standups. One at 10:30 and one at midnight.  And then over Saturday, to do standups at 10:30am, Noon, 2:30pm, 5:00pm, 7:30pm.....

I just read the article by Jason Fried on Medium - Status meetings are the scurge - https://m.signalvnoise.com/status-meetings-are-the-scourge-39f49267ca90#.cn3v2wyb9

And I am sure that the Technical coders in the room feel somewhat unhappy about all the interruptions. So.... Why would I want to continue this practice?

* Help people get to know each other

     It is frequent that teams hole up and never get to see others. By having to stand together, they at least get to see other people and to engage with them. All 100+ people stand up and circle up to do the standups. When they work right, 13 teams can be done in 8 minutes. 

* Use teams progress to focus the work of other teams

     When teams report out things that the other teams have not thought of, often they are able to get those things one the task list and going much much faster. 

* To break attention to "too big to do" tasks into smaller pieces

      It is frequent that people have big fuzzy ideas and have not figured out how to drive them down to small manageable tasks. By breaking things into very small sprints, we are able to get people to focus on things that move the ball forward faster. Instead of being lost in the midst of a fuzzy swamp of ill-formed ideas. 

* To force people to physically move and increase productivity

     When people get up, move, push the blood around, they come back a bit more energized and a bit more focused. Without these breaks, people tend to get a bit fuzzy headed. A weekend is a long sprint without breaks. 

* To enable people to interact between teams more over the weekend

      By actually physically seeing everyone together, it creates many more relationships over the weekend, than when people are only talking the whole weekend to their 6 team members. 

* To help team leaders be seen as leaders

       By having the team leaders report out, we help them be better known in the community and help them reenforce their role on the team.

* To build a sense of urgency

      If every task you are doing has to be small. Think Pomodoro (25 minute tasks), then the need to do something now gets stronger. The whole "No Talk, All Action" motto is focused at this idea of doing instead of discussion. If you can't decide in 5 minutes, flip a coin. If you can't get the task done in 25 minutes, break it up into smaller pieces. 

     With Pomodoro (25 minute sprints) and a team of 8 people, with 20 hours of real working time, you should be able to get 8 * 40 = 320 tasks in the weekend. For many this is more progress than most people make in a month. 

* To really drive forward the sense of small rapid iteration

      If all of you tests are designed to be answered in 90 minutes, you will learn much much quicker than if your tests are designed to be answered in a day. By using the Build-Measure-learn process with very quick iterations, you make much faster learning.

Most people have habits that make it hard for them to make rapid progress. By doing standups, we drive some of those habits away , at least for a weekend. 

This weekend, I will experiment with using Slack + Trello as a tool and see if this helps any of these areas. Perhaps there are some ways to get people to be more effective with less interruption. However, moving your body and meeting other people are in some cases more important that staying in the current task that is taking way way too long to be effective.

Just one Lean Experiment to progress to a Data driven Startup

When people use the Lean Canvas well, not only do they fill out the canvas, they generate hypotheses and then run tests around each of the hypotheses to see which are valid

That process includes something like:

•  Make a hypothesis
•  Craft a test of that hypothesis
•  Have clarity on the success metrics
•  Execute the test
•  Report out on the results of the test
•  Make a plan for the next cycle ( Perservere or Pivot) 

@adamberk put together the MilValChal to explore a process to engage more deeply in running customer development tests.


https://medium.com/@adamberk/01-for-your-thoughts-100-for-your-startup-hypothesis-789562799f10#.ngdy9ysqx


The goal is to help people make more effective progress towards doing a complete experiment cycle, with the belief that transparent experimentation will lead to value creation at a higher ROI than not.

We have been having a conversation about how to help people focus on the basics of doing explicit experiments. So very often people skim through the experiment effort jumping directly to the conclusions they already had in mind. In our discussion about how to move people forward, we discussed doing a single full experiment. We want to bring the MilValChal vision together. So we want to experiment with having people do one complete experiment. 

To bring people full circle through one complete experiment, @adamberk has $25K to help 25 companies make focused progress to complete a Lean Experiment. He will pay out $100 to as many people as fill out the first half of the Experiment Report Board (left side) within a week of this post being published and $900 to anyone (of those people who enter the funnel in the first week) who fills out the second half and writes a medium post sharing their learnings and next steps based specifically on those learnings.


To collect the $100, you must do the following

• Accept the challenge publicly by going to bit.ly/libertyventures and entering your email
• Click to tweet
• Tweet a copy of the left side of this canvas filled in CORRECTLY or make it to column 3 of this hypothesis board

For you to get this $1000, do the following:
Complete a single experiment cycle (it is harder than it sounds!)

• Make a copy of - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GcbuvjiuG9IKgjgNjc2EX9d26nWhjhE23AeZa2VdKVk/edit?usp=sharing
• Fill out the left side 
• Make a hypothesis
• Design a test
• have clear success criteria
• submit first half of the report form as a link on the Trello card. By mailing to: adamberk2+r98n12o9zczmdszzdx8j@boards.trello.com

In the SUBJECT of the email write = “My is, my Twitter is . A Lean Experiment: ”

In the BODY of the email write = “I believe that 15 submitted Interviews will prove that out of of <$Y> who are will take by November 1st, 2016.

• Interview 15 people
• Submit 15 interview forms by filling out this form: https://bitly.com/milvalchal+
• Write an experiment report form -> submit completed form - mailing to: adamberk2+r98n12o9zczmdszzdx8j@boards.trello.com
• Write a medium post. Tweet a link to the post to: @adamberk “I want my $900” the post must contain ALL of the following… http://leaningoutloud.blogspot.com/2016/08/results-only-metric-that-matters-in.html

You will have a significant number of experiments ahead of each of these key milestones:

• Customer/Product fit
• Product / Solution Fit
• Customer / Solution / Value proposition Fit
• Clarity on Existing alternatives
• Clarity on where to find early adopters
• Clarity on the Revenue/Expense fit
• Clarity on the Sales Funnel Metrics mechanisms

If there is an experiment proving each of these milestones, the chances of your startup having a good foundation are greatly improved.

This pathway starts by doing one experiment. Will it help you to do a complete experiment to start with this $1000 challenge?

http://bit.ly/libertyventures

The Startup experience: Linear vs Exponential

When you are starting a company, the week by week growth rate is important to track. Initially, it will be very chaotic. Hopefully, early on, you will find a way to make your revenue process predictable. Investors are looking for evidence of this predictability. They are also looking for something else. They are looking for evidence of growth. When they are thinking about growth in revenues, they are looking for a percentage growth on a week by week basis. More data points can help you get a handle on the foundations of your business model. 

Looking at the curve above. This company starts with $1000 Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR). The blue line represents an initial growth rate of $100/month, which is 10% growth in the first month. The Orange line represents a Monthly growth rate of 10% a month, month over month. While the Red line represents a 5% month over month growth. 

All of these start out at the same point, but the 10% month over month growth quickly outstrips the linear growth. At the end of 3 years (36 months) , the 10% growth represents a 5X increase compared to the 5% growth curve. 

More interestingly, while the linear growth started at 10%, by month thirty, it has crossed over and is the same as the 5% curve. 

When you are looking at your growth oriented startup, you should be looking at at least kind of exponential growth. That is growing at a regular X% growth month over month. 

If you have a 10% month over month growth, your company is approximately a 3X company. If you have 20% month over month growth, then your company is a 9X company. If you are aiming at a 10X company, you need to reach 22% month over month growth on a sustained basis. 

Cashflow Projection: A Pillar of your Startup

The last two boxes in the Lean Canvas are Income and Expense. From a canvas point of view it is meant to get you to be thinking about the key factors involved in your business. However, the point of the Lean Canvas is to built the foundations of your business model. To get your model to a sufficient level of detail that you can use it over time, you build a cashflow projection.  Each of the details of your startup that are critical to the business process will show up in this spreadsheet.

Each box of the Lean Canvas provides assumptions and critical factors for your business model and they will form the basis of your cashflow spreadsheet. As you run your business, you will want to compute and recompute how your business model as represented by the spreadsheet matches up with the actual results that you see in your business. You will want to do this on a weekly basis. 

Looking at the graph above, we see a business that is subscription business, which has very limited expenses and which has a 15% growth rate as the basis of this chart. The ongoing expenses over whelm the income for a long time. While we see the income starting to turn the corner, this business will be cashflow negative for more than 3 years. 

However, small changes in growth rate can change the experience dramatically. 

This next graph is the same company, but with a 25% growth rate each month. This is a company , which is a 10X company, but in order to survive, it will need to take $200,000 in outside funding. 

​

With this new cash infusion, the company is able to remain solvent, at least in this model. However, if the growth rate was higher , with just a 30% per month growth rate, that same company would not need to take outside money at all. 

The small differences in revenue and the growth rate of the revenue can make substantial differences on the lifespan of your company. Digging into the details of the consequences of your assumptions will be vital to your progress. 

​There are several key factors you need to work with:

• The initial amount of cash you bring to the company
• The point at which you run out of cash. Which is determined by your Burn Rate. This company has a one year Runway
• The point at which you get to cash flow positive.
• And the point that you break even. 

Spend the time to build  and then regularly revise your cashflow projection for your startup. 

​

Throwing out good work

“You did great work on the scenario documents”, I said. They really were a lot better. The language was clearer, the instructions for the readers were better and the actual stories were more to the point. A major improvement, after having struggled with the scenarios for months.

“We decided to throw them out of the game altogether”, I continued.

Katie looked understandably confused. Didn’t I just say that they were much better? Had all the work gone to waste?

Making Playing Lean, the board game that teaches Lean Startup, has been a great challenge. Besides the actual playability of the game, we have had to make sure that there are enough startup lessons taught for the game to have value. Finding that balance had been a major part of the job.

That is why we introduced the scenarios. They were documents describing the beginnings of well known companies in a familiar industry. The first go was at Social Media. Players could be Friendster, Myspace, Facebook or Twitter. The outcome would be up to the choices players made, counterfactual history in the making.

Except something always felt wrong with them. It felt forced, we had to keep reminding players to read them out loud. Reading became a little awkward as the game progressed, but we could not really put our fingers on why.

We just assumed that it was because the quality of the documents themselves were so poor.

When the typos were weeded out, the structure was better and everything was much improved, it only took one playtesting to realise it: The scenarios had to die. The concept still felt forced and awkward.

Though the actual writing was discarded altogether, it lead to a major improvement in the game.

The broader lesson is that we fell into a trap. We convinced ourselves that the quality of our work wasn't good enough, that we could not rely on our testing until there had been major improvement. This made us discard a lot of of good feedback.

It may sometimes be the case that low quality experiments gives the wrong idea about an experiment. But be aware, it is a dangerous line of thinking. At the extreme end of it, only a fully functional, thoroughly designed and well engineered product can invalidate your idea.

It is important to be pay attention to what kind of people you are testing on as well. Some testers are more inclined to look past visual design and basic quality issues and evaluate the core idea of a product. Others won't get past the typos and poorly matched colors before they pass negative judgement.

Before my next experiment I will ask myself: What kind of people am I testing with? How high must the quality be before I will accept a negative result? It may just save me, Katie and the rest of the Playing Lean team a lot of time.

Twitter: @simenfurLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simenfur
Website: www.playinglean.com
Bio: Simen is the CEO of Iterate, a consultancy based in Oslo, Norway. He is also the co-creator for Playing Lean, the board game that teaches Lean Startup.

Startup Weekend as a game of Pickup Ball

Startup Weekend is a great way to sprint from Idea to Revenue in a weekend. I am thrilled with some of the results that I have seen. However, when I encourage people to engage in a startup weekend, I often get resistance. "Oh, I already have a startup" or "Oh, I don't have an idea" or "I am already happy working at XYZ Big company"

Startup Weekend is a skill building sprint. It creates urgency and focus, which allow you to learn things faster than you would in most other contexts. Just as when you do pushups and situps to prepare for your marathon run, Startup Weekend gives you a chance to build skills and connections that are hard to get other ways. 

Think of Startup Weekend as a game of Pickup basketball. It may not take you into the big leagues, but it does let you practice that shot in a way that makes you stronger and faster. 

Every weekend, there are over 1,000 people who are out picking up some new skills, trying new roles and exploring new ideas. Even if you are at XYZ Big company, or are already deep in a project  with a startup, Startup Weekend will give you a chance to gain some new muscles. 

Startup Weekend: What is the Point of Tweeting?

As a fan of Startup Weekends, I engage with them as often as I can. As a mentor, as a participant, as an organizer and as a facilitator. I often support people to engage in social media as a part of the process. Not only for the benefit of the event , but also for the benefit of the team. 

Some folks find the discussion of social media and twitter for a team a distraction. As Eli Rubel @eli_rubel eloquantly puts it in his post "How to rock Startup Weekend and land venture funding":

-Social media BS.

Seriously, no one is impressed by your teams Facebook friends liking your ‘Companys’ Facebook page. Also, if you somehow land more than 1K followers, the vast majority of the audience will assume you bought them. THIS IS A WASTE OF TIME AND DOESN’T COUNT AS MARKET VALIDATION. Want to impress the crowd? Go land a real customer or two.

I have seen this thought expressed in many different ways, but basically articulating that Social Media is a waste of time for a Startup Weekend. In addition, as I study the Lean Startup Methodology, I see that there are several places where premature marketing and PR is a way to distract you from getting your critical work done. So, why do I still encourage people to engage in Social media as a part of a team at Startup Weekend? 

The answer lies in the Point of the engagement. Social Media for social media sake is not very helpful, and may in fact be a distraction. However, When we look at Dave McClures ( @davemcclure )  "AARRR, Metrics for Pirates"  ( Dave McClure Blog ) 

We see that there are several channels for acquisition. As a person, I can only talk to a few people an hour. On the Phone, perhaps a few more. However, if I have done my Twitter Dance right, then I can have thousands of people who are interested in what I am doing and interested in the questions that I am asking. 

I agree completely with Eli when he says "Get a real customer or two". Where I disagree is that I think that social media , when done right, is a great way to develop and audience and to acquire customers. There is a huge difference between Social Media Blathering and Social Media as a method of conversation with an audience. If you are good at Social Media Blathering, then I would have to side completely with Eli. On the other hand, if you are working to understand the Growth Hacking process of finding , engaging and validating customers , then the effective use of twitter and other social media is a great channel. 

I see twitter as a much more effective tool for spreading the word to people you don't know , compared to facebook. Facebook is great for connecting between friends and those that are already connected. It is not as effective as reaching far into new audiences who have less of an initial connection to you.  So understanding the Twitter Dance and how to engage an audience is a great skill for any Growth Hacker, even at a Startup Weekend. Or especially at a Startup Weekend. 

If you come to a Startup Weekend as a coder, you do not come unprepared. You have a set of skills, libraries, previously built environments,   github accounts and other tools of the trade. You are not building a whole system from scratch, but you are building upon the previous work which allows you to rapidly deploy a website or application in hours.  As a Business Development person/ Growth Hacker, you should not be coming in unprepared either.  Coming into the Startup Weekend with an ongoing conversation with an audience is a great resource to bring to the event. If you have a pathway to finding hundreds or thousands of potential customers, then you have an important resource for your team at the startup weekend. 

Having watched some Twitter Mavens take website traffic from 0 to 1000 unique visitors in less than an hour, I know that twitter can be a powerful tool. I also know that the twitter dance starts weeks before the event. 

It will impress the audience and judges at a Startup Weekend, when you have clear picture of your sales funnel, with your social media metrics in place and some hard numbers for your conversion rates, where you can watch people move from  Acqusition , to Activations to Revenue in a rapid series of tests. 

When I facilitate a Startup Weekend, I work coordinate around a regular stand up meeting, every 1.5 to 2 hours, with an effort to help people get into the pattern of setting short term rapid milestones, which they target. If you can show that you have a Sales Funnel (preferably on Friday Night) and that by noon on Saturday, you are actively working your sales funnel, and actively working to acquire customers, you will have the key business engine built. 

If you want to rapidly build an effective business, you need to practice the process of growing an audience. One of the key skills for any growth hacker will be to figure out how to Find, Acquire and Activate new customers for the project. Startup Weekend is a great place to practice this skill. And this is why I focus on the question of twitter and social media as part of Startup Weekend business sprints. 

Are you able to attract 1000 twitter followers in an afternoon? And can you then convert 40% of them into active signups on your project by the end of the weekend? If you can, you are seriously on your way to something interesting.