Startup Weekend in Grand Rapids

I attended the tail end of Startup Weekend at The Factory this weekend. Kudos to Michael Boyink and Aaron Schaap for organizing this in West Michigan. Marc Nager, one of two people who run Startup Weekends all over the country, commented on the energy in the room and the incredible willingness of strangers to get behind ideas and work together. Evidently what we lack in VC we make up for in hard work and generosity.

The final pitches were pretty good considering that some of these ideas weren’t even hatched until Friday afternoon. An app for helping people keep track of things that need to get done even had a pretty functional backend implemented over the weekend. It was great to see eight teams and 40 or so people challenging the economic doom and gloom of our state, putting their ideas out there, listening to others, and taking action to make them real.