Start me up – Behind the scenes of Startup Weekend Baton Rouge

At 6:30 p.m. Friday, an anxious energy hovers over a Bon Carre Business Center conference room.

Tables are set, and the participants of Startup Weekend Baton Rouge have already started to get the feel of what might happen this weekend.

For 54 hours, these participants work in teams on a business idea. On Saturday, the teams refine the idea and work on a business plan for a pitch Sunday evening.

The conversation is growing louder by the minute as participants flock in, enjoying a dinner of jambalaya, salad and beer, for those who need an extra dose of liquid courage.

“It’s a little bit awkward right now,” participant Isral Duke says. “You’re trying to meet people and show off, but you don’t want to step on other’s people’s toes.”

Duke is a graphic designer with Duke Branding. He came to Startup Weekend to meet other Baton Rougeans in the tech, design and business world.

“Baton Rouge has a lot of potential to be vibrant,” he says. “I want to be inspired by some of that and want to help out if I can.”

Beside Duke is Patrick Rills, the CTO for Overtime Software. Rills is looking forward to interacting with other I.T. community members to garner some new perspective and methods.

Rills, like most of the crowd, is nervous, but excited.

“I came up with my idea this week, but I’m not as prepared as others; so I’m nervous about it,” he says. “I think I’ll get over it.”

Others aren’t worried about a pitch or the workload of the weekend, they’re wondering what the weekend holds.

“I’m looking forward to the experience,” participant Barb Braud says. “I want to learn what goes into building a brand new company from the ground up.”

Braud is an art director at Lamar, and she didn’t sleep the night before. She’s already scouting a corner for a possible nap.

“I’ve been looking forward to this as soon as I found out they were having it,” she says. “I like these things where they throw people together, and you just come up with stuff.”

Around 4 p.m. Saturday, the formerly loud conversation of the conference room has turned into a dizzying hum.

Beer has been replaced with Red Bull.

The tables once full of dinner plates have been swapped with computer screens, electronic devices, and scraps of paper with quickly jotted notes.

The fervor has begun.

Braud, Rills and Duke have all rallied together and started working on a food truck tracker app. Braud has some gas left in the tank and is working on a few items, including branding, logo design, market research and more.

“We’re on the right track,” she says. “We had some logistics issues, but we got it all figured out. We’re making a lot of progress.”

The team got a boost as Taco de Paco owner Jared Loftus came to speak at the event.

“We got to talk to [Loftus] about what he would need, what he would pay and what he could get his employees to do,” Rills says.

Rills admits he’s over caffeinated, but he’s still swept up in the positive energy of the weekend.

“It’s fun to live in this little bubble,” he says. “It’s nice to go to a place where there’s no ceiling. All the time people are telling you what you can’t do. It’s not like that here. Every idea is a good idea, and it gets you pumped.”

Saturday is full of coaches coming to provide a brief pep talk amidst the commotion. When they leave, each team has to prepare the idea and business pitch more as night approaches.

Helen Ford, a recent LSU graphic design graduate, came to the weekend to “absorb awesomeness.”

At the halfway point, her team has just settled on its idea.

“We finally found our focus an hour ago,” she says. “We spent the entire day going through different things.”

Ford’s team is working on a virtual tour guide for high-end consumers visiting Baton Rouge. She’s working on the third redo of the team’s logo. Although she says her brain is fried and that her team is a little overwhelmed, she’s optimistic about the idea.

“This has definite growth,” she says. “I would stay on [after the weekend]. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to put that idea down and translate it to other markets. The idea that this might become a real product and go somewhere is cool.”

Taylor McConnell is on Ford’s team. McConnell says their team is feeling the pressure.

“This has been a whirlwind,” she says. “It’s been tough to deal with working how to get around all the problems and the pressure of getting it all done in time. It’s easy to get caught up in the ideas of all the things that could be. But now, we’re on the right path.”

McConnell says the team almost changed its idea completely during the second day, but decided against that idea. Going through the difficulties, she’s glad she’s experienced the weekend.

“There’s always this huge level of fear and failure for anyone who’s running their own business,” she says. “Having this opportunity, you learn what it’s like to go through those problems. It’s been tough, but I’ve enjoyed it.”

On the other side of the room, Mohamed Khan, a senior in computer engineering, is still feeding off the positive energy of the room. His team’s idea is to utilize the batter of a power wheelchair to charge mobile devices that use USB outlets.

“I’m realizing there’s so much energy and support that we’re sailing on that,” he says.

He has decided to stray from the website and internet design aspects of the plan for now so the team can work more efficiently.

“The first thing I told my team was we are going to try and give the judges exactly what they want,” he says. “The input we received was very vital, but a lot of the stuff we’ve gotten from them isn’t something we can accomplish in 54 hours.

We’re trying to focus on what the judges are looking for and check those boxes as best as we can.”

By midnight, the teams leave the business center for one last sleep break before returning Sunday to the final day of the Startup Weekend.

At 9 a.m. Sunday, the business center’s doors finally open.

“We got there and got right to it,” Braud says.

Her team, led by programmer Andy Gray, still has some ground to cover, including creating promotional items and completing the programming for the Android version of the app.

Ford’s team is busy preparing its pitch.

“Everyone was nervous and really tired,” she says. “But we were excited so we kept going.”

By 3 p.m., teams are practicing pitches and putting the final touches on the presentation. A presentation coach visits each team. There’s a tech check so nothing is faulty during the slideshow pitch.

Braud’s team is the first to present its idea at 5 p.m. Though she and the rest of the team were confident in the product, the app doesn’t win. The prize goes to accounting software. Khan’s USB outlet device comes in second.

However, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who is mad at the outcome of the weekend.

“Once we gave our pitch, we were all exhausted,” Ford says. “We had a lot of interest from other companies asking us to consider pursuing the product. We think it could be a really great thing. We want to keep going on.”

Ford says the weekend reaffirmed her faith in her design abilities.

“I’m new to the field,” she says. “Being up against other experienced designers, it was great know that I can produce a product that is comparable to other designers. I would definitely do something like this again. I might need time to recover, though.”

Braud says her team will meet and discuss whether they want to continue to work on the app.

By Monday morning, Braud is glad she went for the weekend; but didn’t mind going back to work at 7 a.m.

“It’s something I enjoyed doing,” she says. “The app is something I’d do more on the side. I like having a job to come to. There’s a lot of pressure in just being an entrepreneur. But if I were working on a project and it ended up taking off, I would certainly reconsider.”