Early Retirement Blog

I am attending Start-Up Weekend San Francisco 09. An event that brings together people who want to create start-ups with venture capitalists who want to fund start-ups.  The reason I’m there, is to find web developers and marketing professionals, who want to help take Green Retirement to the next level – to make Green Retirement available for the masses.

It is a learning experience.  And the most valuable lesson I learned on the first evening came from Dave McClure, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, who repeatedly told everyone in attendance who was pitching their start-up idea “Screw your solution – first tell me the problem.  Problem-solution, problem-solution, problem-solution….”

After everyone had the opportunity to briefly pitch their idea, in an attempt to attract others in attendance at Start-up weekend to help them build out their idea, I went around the room trying to get people to help build Green Retirement.  I quickly realized I had a problem – almost everyone in attendance was a Twit.  They were not interested in retirement or green, almost everyone had one thing on their mind, how to build the next twitter app.

“I want to build a Twitter app that will let me order a pizza from anywhere in the world”.  “I want to build a twitter app that will help me stalk my girlfriend”.  Twitter this, twitter that, twitter, twitter, twitter, tweet, tweet.  Almost everyone wanted to do something that involved Twitter in some fashion.  The event could be re-named “Twitter Camp”.

Speaking of Camps, I got to meet Chris the organizer of Laid Off Camp, and we had a great chat.  So, this morning I am going back to San Francisco Start-Up weekend, to see if anyone I spoke to last night is interested in working together.  Hopefully, there is someone at the event who is interested in helping save the planet and the economy, and not just in becoming the next biggest Twit in the world.