Also in July this year, I participated in Startup Weekend Adelaide which, like Unleashed, was a great event where I met a lot of awesome people, but unlike Unleashed, is less focussed on actually building something that weekend and is more focussed on showing that you have a viable business idea. I didn’t have an idea, but I was impressed by the calibre of ideas pitched! I joined a team called Lend A Skilled Hand, which aims to connect skilled volunteers with projects and opportunities that better fit their skills. As someone who volunteers a lot, this idea was important to me, and the team members were what sold me on joining them (protip: if you’re trying to convince someone to join your team, just “remind” them that you went to primary school together!) The Lend A Skilled Hand (LASH) team is a great team and I love them all dearly.
Over the course of the weekend we designed and built our website, filmed some great videos, and generally had a lot of fun together. We came up with a lot of ideas on how we could build our idea and what avenues we could tap into. Before we knew it, it was Sunday night and time to pitch the polished idea to the judges! Sam (the main idea man) did an absolutely fantastic job of the presentation! The hard work of the entire team throughout the weekend was immediately seen when we were awarded a scholarship to attend Flinders University’s New Venture Institute’s Venture Dorm program. The team were, of course, absolutely thrilled by that, and we all decided to keep going with the idea!
I’ve been blogging a bit about our experiences at Venture Dorm, which you can find here, but I might write a bit more about what I’m personally getting out of it.
The LASH team – Matt, Jess, me, Sam and Nick
