One of the hardest things to do is to find a likeminded co-founder who is as passionate as you on your idea and who would bring a unique set of skills that would complement yours! If you’ve ever hunted for co-founders you will know what I’m talking about, the questions go something like this, how will I know if they are as hardworking as me? Will we work well together? Kind of like dating, you can almost think of SWH2 as a speed dating service for co-founders! Think about it where else are you going to get a chance to work with likeminded awesome people in the Hamilton area? Not only can you find interesting people you can see if you work well together!

Here’s a tip about startup weekend, PITCH your idea! It doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad! Last time round, I came up with an idea while eating pizza on the Friday and I pitched it, “I want to be able to take a picture of the food I’m eating with my cellphone and it should tell me how many calories was in it” that was it and Caltrakr was born! Met an amazing team, worked together on Caltrakr and still continue to keep in touch.

Here’s the next tip, like any good startup when you put your team together make sure that the skills of the team are complementary, no point having a team full of developers if there is no-one that can develop a business strategy for the idea! As much as we all want to be the next picture taking app with filters (cough… cough…) having a solid business strategy will help with your pitches at the end of the weekend. And that goes both ways if you have a team full of business people, you won’t be able to build a proof-of-concept so make sure your team is well rounded.