Loogic English

As you might have noticed the attention I have given to it from here, I’ve really liked the idea of iWeekend and I thought that it would be interesting to do an interview with Luv Sayal, founder of the event. Here’s the interview, hope you enjoy it.

1) Tell us how the idea of bringing StartupWeekend to Spain ocurred to you, what was your initial approach, why you thought that an idea like this could succeed in Spain, what distinguishes iWeekend from StartupWeekend?

I read about the first StartupWeekend held in Colorado and got excited by the idea. In those days, I was thinking about how to give virality to a project. An event like this resolves the issue of marketing for a startup, whatever the startup may be. I decided that this experience would be great for me before launching my own startup. It’s like an accelerated lesson in how to start a company. I wanted to live that experience where I live - in Barcelona. The idea was to organize the event in Barcelona at the earliest and so I got in touch with the founder of StartupWeekend but couldn’t reach an agreement with him. I asked the community if it would be better to do it with another name and that’s how iWeekend was born.

The tech community is vibrant in some Spanish cities. I talked to many people and everyone liked the idea. I didn’t think if it would be successful or not. I just did it because I believed in the idea.

iWeekend is the altruistic competition of StartupWeekend. iWeekend is a non-profit initiative and I believe that it’s philosophy is nobler than the philosophy of StartupWeekend. StartupWeekend is a private enterprise, while from the very beginning, I have wanted that iWeekend belong to the community. We have achieved the support of a bank like La Caixa (Spain’s 3rd largest bank) and companies like Sun and Microsoft in the very first event, while StartupWeekend has only achieved the sponsorship of Microsoft once in 12 events. We already have certain advantage over StartupWeekend.


2) Once you decided to organize it, what steps did you take, where did you look for support, how did you organize with your collaborators, how did you promote, … in general, tell us of the process of organizing the first iWeekend.

Here I have to thank you for talking of my post about StartupWeekend España en Loogic. I had a flood of visits to my blog in those days. Many people got excited and offered their support. Raul Andres took the assignment of creating the web and David Rodriguez created a fantastic logo (although he is not a professional designer). With 10 days left in the event, I saw that there was a lack of support and invited Ollivier Jacq and Bermi Ferrer in the team.

I had spoken to Jesus Monleon of La Caixa about this project back in August and obtained his support the day we launched the website of iWeekend. We took advantage of the snowball effect to get a great place, Citilab Cornellà, and then also the sponsorship of Microsoft and Sun when only 3 days were left for the event. An event of these characteristics gets promoted on its own but still we made the best use of all our contacts to create buzz.

3) iWeekend begins, I suppose that the most difficult thing was to build consensus among so many people, how did you confront this problem, how do you convince a big group of entrepreneurs that it’s necessary to work in a team and collaborate?

This part was very difficult and we have to improve this in the coming iWeekends. The selection of ideas left much to be desired but now we know what mistakes we don’t have to make. There was a huge discussion on the fist day to select the idea and even after the idea was selected. We realized that people did not have sufficient information to choose ideas adequately. On Saturday some people didn’t turn up and a couple of people left the event in frustration. In a big group of people, the majority wins, and there are always people who are not convinced. But once we decided to move ahead, the collaboration and team work were exemplary.

4) About AdLemons, the project that was born from the first iWeekend, how do you see it’s possibilities in the future, how are they going to work on the project from now on, …?

As a participant, I did not vote that idea and so I was not convinced in the beginning, but now I firmly believe in the project because of the people who have committed to move it forward. They’re already working in Basecamp and they will be launching on the 11th of December. I’m really astonished by the enthusiasm and hope that everyone is investing into the project. More than 20 people are actively contributing to the project. If AdLemons continues with the people it has right now and goes on progressing with the same excitement, I believe that it could demonstrate it’s feasibility and profitability very fast. There’s no competition on the national level — it’s a blue ocean. If the first few months of the project are managed well, it could have a brilliant future.

5) And about you as an entrepreneur, what personal projects do you propose from now on? How are you going to give continuity to the initiative of iWeekend?

There are already people who want to organize an iWeekend in other cities. The next one will probably be in Madrid or in Valencia at the beginning of next year. Also there are proposals to do it in San Sebatian and Santiago de Chile. We have to improve the formula so that more iWeekends could be organized around the world.

My personal project is called inteliVida — a personal and social utility that helps you live a more intelligent and productive life. I dream that someday my idea would be selected and developed in an iWeekend. Sometimes dreams come true :)