Before the Weekend
Startup Weekend
Pre-Event Workshops
A startup weekend is a 3-day laboratory where you get to learn and apply a variety of skills to help you become a successful entrepreneur. To help participants get the most out of their Startup Weekend experience, we have created this set of workshops to provide you with some of the skills you’ll apply during the weekend.
How to Find Good Business Ideas
27-28th July, 2024
Blue Diamond Auditorium, 2nd foor
Blue Diamond Auditorium, 2nd foor
About the Event
Good business ideas aren’t just found. They’re discovered, recognized, compared, and tested.
In this practical session, Michael Norton draws on personal experience, startup life, Fortune 100 innovation, small business consulting, and leading 80+ Techstars Startup Weekends to show how entrepreneurs can spot stronger opportunities, assess customer demand, market potential, business model, founder fit, risk, and uncertainty, and decide which ideas deserve the next experiment before committing serious time, money, or energy.
About Instructor
Michael Norton draws on personal experience, startup life, Fortune 100 innovation, small business consulting, and leading 80+ Techstars Startup Weekends to show how entrepreneurs can spot stronger opportunities, assess customer demand, market potential, business model, founder fit, risk, and uncertainty, and decide which ideas deserve the next experiment before committing serious time, money, or energy.
Finding Demand for Your Idea
27-28th July, 2024
Blue Diamond Auditorium, 2nd foor
Blue Diamond Auditorium, 2nd foor
Todd Bashor
About the Event
Most founders start with a solution and then go looking for someone who wants it. That search can take a year, and the answer is usually no.
Demand runs the other direction. It already exists. Someone out there is working on a problem they care about, using an option that isn’t good enough. Find that person and you’re not convincing anyone of anything. They pull.
This is a working session on how to find them.
About Speaker
Todd Bashor helps early stage founders turn ideas into products customers will actually pay for.
Over the last 25 years, he has built, shipped, and scaled software across startups and companies like ServiceNow, FICO, and Intuit. Today, his focus is helping founders navigate the messy early days of product validation, traction, and go-to-market decisions.
Deploying Your First App with AI Agents
27-28th July, 2024
Blue Diamond Auditorium, 2nd foor
What to Bring:
- A charged laptop
- Paid Claude, ChatGPT or Grok subscription (OpenCode available for free)
About the Event
DEVx & Startup Weekend are partnering up to host a 2-hour build night. Never used a coding agent before? Never deployed a webapp before? Perfect!
This workshop is aimed to get you started and help you along the way as it’s easier than ever to release something to the world.
Schedule
- 6:30 Opening presentation
- 6:45 We’ll help you get set up with Claude Code, Codex, Grok or OpenCode.
- 7:30 First deploy together. Same prompt, same win: a live URL you can open.
- 8:00 Make it yours. Remix the app into your idea.
- 8:30 Share what you shipped.
- 8:50 Close + what’s next with Startup Weekend.
- 9:00 Done.
Reminders
Please be courteous and respectful to others.
This is a build night. Raise your hand and ask for help anytime. TA’s are there to unblock you.
About Instructor
Tryston, a San Diego native software engineer and AI enthusiast helping people from all industries use AI in their day-to-day work. Organizer of SD DEVx, a community of meetups connecting 1000+ developers, entrepreneurs and builders.
Claude Cowork for Legal Workflows
27-28th July, 2024
Blue Diamond Auditorium, 2nd foor
Blue Diamond Auditorium, 2nd foor
Max Krueger
Julian Bryant
About the Event
This hands-on workshop is for lawyers, law students, and legal professionals who want to understand how Claude Cowork can support real legal work.
Participants will learn the fundamentals by working through a realistic legal workflow that we’ll develop specifically for the session. We’ll cover how skills can give Claude repeatable instructions, how connectors can bring approved tools and information into the workflow, and how scheduled tasks can support recurring work.
The workshop will also address the practical considerations of using AI in a legal setting, including confidentiality, responsible use, reliable review, and attorney oversight. No coding experience is required.
About Instructors
Max Krueger is a Claude Ambassador and teach practical AI workshops with nonprofits, veterans, and local community groups. Max also runs AI Tinkerers San Diego.
Julian Bryant is a practicing attorney with over 15 years experience in programming that he applys to his own legal practice.