Startup Weekend changed my life and that of my two cofounders. But we hacked it, oh yeah, we did it in a grand style and this is how you can, too.

Day 0 – Eliminate distractions and crush your fear.
On Day 0, make up your mind to participate and give it your all. I know you might have registered weeks ahead of Day 0. But trust me day 0 is crucial. All the distractions not to participate reside here. Fear of your idea being stolen; fear of the unknown and oh, you also just remembered your promise to hang out with the guys. Day 0 is the deciding factor, my advice, go to StartupWeekend and give it your all.

Day 1 – Which should I join? A good idea? Or a good team?
So many ideas, so many awesome folks, which team or idea do you join? Do you join a team because of the problem they are seeking to solve or because of the super awesomeness of the team? It is not an easy call. Generally a good team can pivot on ideas which don’t seem to work. However, it is not the same with a not-so-good team — they might not even realize their initial idea is not working in the first place. That said, you need to pick a good team seeking to solve a problem you are passionate about and identify with. In outlining the tool sets to build your fancy product, make your work easy, use APIs and startup tools like Dropifi, Trello, Dropbox among others.

Day 2 – It’s not just code. Get out and talk to customers.
That’s right, I said it, to hack Startup Weekend you need to look beyond the “all code, no talk” mantra. Think customers, think market validation, think distribution channels. Validating whether people will actually use your product is as important as building the product itself. No matter the problem you seek to solve, you need to involve customer feedback — you need to gain some user traction. I know it’s difficult because you only have 54 hours, but we managed to do that. Guess what? The judges were impressed. We were judged the winners of the very first Accra Startup Weekend. How cool.

Day 3 – Polish the presentation, not the product.
Business is all about presentation. On Day 3, polishing your final presentation should be the focus of your team. I saw many teams working hard to put their products in shape rather than concentrating on their presentation to the judges. Presentations shouldn’t be skewed towards product features and technologies but to the business model and the company’s value selling point.

In conclusion, the overall experience of Startup Weekend is a real take home. You realize how you have underutilized your potential and most importantly how awesome you can be if you are focused and determined.

Dropifi wants to put a widget at the contact us pages of companies to allow easy communication between prospective customers and businesses.

Startup Weekend, a non-profit organization based in Seattle, Washington, announced the Global Startup Battle to challenge and inspire entrepreneurs from around the world during Global Entrepreneurship Week.

48 teams have been entered into the Global Startup Battle, and voting begun at 12pm Noon PST on November 22 and end on November 28 at 11PM PST.

Get all of your friends to vote for Dropifi! Use emails, Facebook, Twitter etc, to generate buzz for Dropifi. Everyone can vote once.

Vote now and share. Winner will be announced on November 30.

• Grand Prize: A Table at Launch Pad at the Launch Conference (San Francisco) to meet the top investors in Silicon Valley in March 2012! Includes flight for 2 team members.
• A slot at the DEMO Asia Startup Pavilion in Singapore, February 2012
• 40 Hours of Web Design from BTrax
• PR Launch Package from the Kauffman Foundation
• Meetings with Brad Feld, Managing Director of Foundry Group and  Andy Sack, Director of TechStars Seattle and Managing Partner of Founders Coop.
• A blog post and newsletter promotion from Startup Weekend
• 1 year of bragging rights as the winner of the largest startup competition in the world!

Dropifi, a web messaging platform that turns your contacts into loyal customers has won the top prize at the just ended Accra Startup Weekend. Dropifi competed with 7 other teams. Dropifi wants to put a widget at the contact us pages of companies to allow easy communication between prospective customers and businesses.

Dropifi also provides a dashboard to businesses to analyse information, comments or feedback from website visitors for easy and quick response. Messages received on the dashboard provided to the company are anyalsed for both negative and positive feedback to make it easy for the business to manage contacts and respond to them accordingly.

The teams were judged on three equally-weighed criteria: business model, customer validation and execution.

Dropifi will be entered into the Global Startup Battle. The winner of the Global Startup Battle will have a slot at the DEMO Asia conference in their Startup Showcase. Dropifi will also make a video pitch to a Silicon Valley investor for potential funding. A special one year package from Teambox.com has also been arranged for the winning team. The team has also been awarded an HP laptop. SMS products and services from SMSGH will be given to the team to market their service for one year. A special introduction to Ghana Multimedia Incubation Center, Ghana Venture Capital Trust Fund and Ghana Angel Investor network.

1. Dropifi- A web messaging platform that turns your contacts into loyal customers.
2. Maiddle- A web service for matching housekeepers to potential clients.
3. Identifi-A mobile  app that identify your location and helps you get to your destination.
4.  Panic-eye-A single key alert activity app which wants to be the future of 911.
5. DigiDoc-A web application that will be used by doctors in analyzing patient X-rays and scans everywhere leading to prompt response that will help save lives.
6.  Djumah- A professional networking platform that leverages the power of social networking of both employers and job seekers to identify the most trusted and qualified candidates.
7. TeamTaunt- A social element of sports that creates perhaps the most passion among sports fans but that is not accurately tackled by the various sports network is fan rivalry.

Good luck teams!

DROPIFI

It is a web messaging platform that turns your contacts into loyal customers.

Identifi

A mobile service app. That identify your location and help you to your destination.

MAIDDLE

A web service for matching housekeepers to potential clients

DIGIDOC

A web application that will be used by doctors in analyzing patient X-rays and scans everywhere these leading to prompt response that will help save lives.

TEAM TAUNT

The aspect of sports that creates the most passion is rivalry.

TWASKR

A planning tool that allows you to plan your activities with full knowledge of other activities that will be going on around you. Activities including those of friends, weather, traffic forecast, local announcement.

GAS’YO

Know the LPG filling station. The closest to your home, where gas is still available to refill your empty bottle!

è Beyond the app, we transform old containers into retail shops where you can leave your bottle of gas empty and get it back fully charged tomorrow. We do this mangic! By collecting the bottles and refilling during night-time!

Liaisons

Out-sourced decentralized online platform for customer service.

Iserve

An SMS platform that will provide local information about tradesmen in your locality when they are available and their competing rates.

 AirPay

Pay for goods and services online with you mobile money account.

 TWASKR

A planning tool that allows you to plan your activities with full knowledge of other activities that will be going on around you. Activities including those of friends, weather, traffic forecast, local announcement.

 PANIC – EYE

A single key alert activity app which will be the future of 911. Its disruptive technology for the future.

 SAFEGUARD

A mobile or web app that connects an individual to appropriate help (family, police, etc.) in times of emergency.

• Laptop
• Business cards
• Something to take notes on
• Lots of energy

Pitches
Pitches on Friday night be in a “pitch-fire” format, which means you will have just 60 seconds to get the audience interested in your idea. You will have no slides or props – just a microphone and a smile. You won’t have time to go over features, so just focus on the core of the idea and make your enthusiasm contagious. Here is the format for pitches that we recommend:

• Who are you and what is your background? (5-10 Seconds)
• What is the problem that you product is solving? Or, begin with a story (10-20 Seconds)
• Explain the product and how it solves the problem (10-20 seconds)
• Who do you need on your team (a developer, marketing, designer?) (5-10 seconds)
• Finally, make up a name for your startup so the facilitator can give it a title

Voting & Forming Teams
After pitches, you will have more time to mingle. If you pitched an idea, this is your time to start recruiting others that are interested in your idea. If you did not pitch, or if you are having trouble finding others to join your team, use this time to seek out those that pitched other ideas that you found interesting.

Next, the crowd votes on their favorite pitches. This is a simply a way to encourage quick team forming. This is by no means an exclusive process and if you pitch an idea and it is not voted as one of the top ideas, you are more than welcome to work on it if you find some other people who want to work on the idea with you. From there we will form teams and these are the startup ideas that will be worked on over the weekend.

1. Business Model: The heart of it all. If you haven’t got answers to these questions, you’ve spent too much time on frills & features and need to get back to the basics:
   1. Who is your customer?
   2. What is your core value proposition?
   3. What are your key activities?
   4. What are your revenue streams?
   5. What is your cost structure?
   6. Who/what are your key partners/resources?
   7. What are your distribution channels?
   8. What is your roll-out strategy?

1. Customer Validation: Have you taken the proper steps to ensure that the people who matter (your future customers) support and reinforce your assumptions? Think of Customer Validation as ‘evidence’ to back up the core structure of your ‘theory’ (your Business Model). The more feedback you gather (quantity), the more this feedback comes from your specific target market (quality), and the more you’re able to actually integrate this feedback into the Business Model and product development (execution), the better.

1. Execution: What has your team been able to actually build over the weekend? Even the strongest of Business Plans are useless in the hands of those who can’t properly execute on them. Getting as far as possible in the development of your product/prototype not only helps give Judges a tangible vision of what the final product could be, but proves your strength and skills as a team. This is what truly matters: investors don’t invest as in ideas so much as teams.

The program, which is part of a global movement, typically results in the creation of several new businesses. The purpose of Startup Weekend is to get a variety of creative minds into one room to dream up business concepts and collaborate on a speed-development session over the course of a single weekend.

Ticket price includes: Attending the event, dinner Friday night plus breakfast, lunch and dinner on Saturday and Sunday. Most importantly, the ticket price includes the opportunity to build a startup in a weekend and an entry into the Global Startup Battle. The winner of the Global Startup Battle will have a slot at the DEMO Asia conference in their Startup Showcase. The winning team will have an opportunity to video pitch to a Silicon Valley investor for potential funding. ALL participants will have access to Teambox.com basic licenses for 12 months valued at over $30,000.

Register now to confirm your participation.

If you have any question or are interested in mentoring, speaking or sponsoring, please contact Thomas- thomasoppong@gmail.com

Startup Weekends are weekend-long, hands-on experiences where entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs can find out if startup ideas are viable. On average, half of Startup Weekend’s attendees have technical backgrounds, the other half have business backgrounds.

Beginning with open mic pitches on Friday, attendees are encouraged to bring their best ideas and inspire others to join their team. Over Saturday and Sunday teams design and develop business plans while constantly streamlining their startup vision. On Sunday evening teams demo their prototypes, listen to judges’ feedback and in some cities, win prizes.

Startup Weekends are specifically designed for entrepreneurs interested in receiving feedback on an idea, looking for a co-founder, or who want to learn a new skill. We also welcome anyone looking to test the entrepreneurial waters. Startup Weekends are risk-free environments where everyone is expected to roll up their sleeves and dive into the exhilarating world of startups.