This post is inspired by our TeamCamp session last night at @ TheCodeFactory.

I wanted to start by taking the time to thank everyone that came out and especially Chris for organizing the session. As usually I spent the first bit on admin duty at the front desk but had the opportunity to join in shortly after 6:30. Some great discussions and quite a bit of energy and enthusiasm, everyone, at least from my perspective seemed to enjoy themselves. Chris showed us some neat web stuff and we had any number of fun sidebar conversations. Just the right amount of structure and spontaneity.

The inspiration from this post came about from our discussion regarding the TeamCamp Agreement to participate. The essence of the agreement is that this is a collaborative venture and everyone agrees to freely share their ideas. We had quite a bit of discussion around this at our first few meetings and are grateful for the legal opinions we received from Eric and Andrea at FMC and Michael from Lebarge Weinstein. The intent of this agreement is purely defensive. The concern raised by many participants early on was what would happen if someone came to one meeting, shared an idea, never showed up again, the team went on to implement the idea or parts of it and then when the product is successful this person (shared idea but never showed up again) shows up and stakes a claim to the successful start-up. The intent was to avoid this situation and that is the purpose of the agreement.

I am of the opinion that coming up with an idea is just the “tip of the iceberg”.

Coming up with ideas is easy. Implementing them and then making them work is the real challenge. This leads to my start-up journey analogy.

Being in a start-up is a whole lot like taking a journey. A journey starts with the first step. You could consider an idea the first step in the journey. Let’s say that the destination is when your start-up is successful in this analogy. If your destination is a thousand miles away then the first step is really not all that significant. If your destination is only a few steps away then the journey isn’t really all that worthwhile. Therefore one could say that a worthwhile destination (successful start-up) involves a fairly lengthy journey and that first step (idea) is a very insignificant portion of the journey.

The real value in the start-up journey is the vision, drive, determination and persistence to tough out the journey from beginning to end. Anyone can take that first step, however, entrepreneurs take the whole journey. At TeamCamp we are committed to a collaborative environment where entrepreneurs wanting to participate in start-ups can freely share their ideas.

Signing the TeamCamp agreement form is intended to show us that you understand what you are signing up for and committed to the journey.

Team Camper Ian