An Bui, Spelled An With 1 N

Making skillbit™

Wow. If I had to sum up Seattle Startup Weekend and skillbit in one word, that would be “wow.”

In his opening remarks, Andrew likened startup creation to a roller coaster. I hear what he’s saying, understand it intellectually, but I’m still waiting for the drop down. This morning I woke up to an email box full of next steps for skillbit, must test for bugs, wtf messages from friends wondering what I did with my weekend. Business as usual. It’s great to see enthusiasm and engagement, even though the weekend’s officially over.

There were parts of this weekend that were less than ideal – watching our numbers decrease as the weekend wore on, having a fellow founder (and copy team member) discover his car was stolen (again), and eating emotionally weren’t part of the skillbit creation experience that I’d care to experience again.

That said, those experiences contributed additional richness and texture to creating skillbit. I wouldn’t have changed anything for that very reason.

My earlier post listed what I did for skillbit, and Sunday ended up revealing more to me. Sunday, I became a leader. You don’t need a title, a salary, or a VIP parking space to be a leader. A leader just needs to be. I had this epiphany when other members of the marketing team looked to me for direction, and I coordinated efforts with others to ensure the successful execution of all copy.

skillbit Leadership

At the time, I simply saw the need and filled it. Having full information about skillbit and how it fills market needs went a long way to achieving success. Working with incredibly talented people like Nathan Kaiser of nPost, Matt Cassarino of TourVista, Chuck Erickson of 462 Studios, and Cassie Wallender of iLike enabled me to be personally successful in this weekend’s endeavors. I only hope I provided as much value to their experience as they provided to mine.

Of course, many others were instrumental to the skillbit creation process, including but not limited to: Our lawyer, Adam Philipp, the development team, the UX team, the design team, the business development team, and the public relations team… our sponsors: Adobe, Jott, nPost, Lockergnome, Madrona Venture Group, O’Reilly Radar, SEOMoz, Shoestring Ventures, Sun Microsystems, WSA, and UW’s Foster School of Business. Speaking only for myself, there’s something about being fed, happy, caffeinated (of course, by coffee), and hydrated that leads to productivity.

My big takeaway from this weekend, in terms of a lesson learned? Leadership is more than knowing when to lead and when to follow. Leadership is empowering others to get things accomplished and doing what needs to be done. Great leadership is empowering others in their accomplishments and creating an overall positive experience/interaction. I’ve met so many others I would love to help, serve, work with in the future. The wonderful parts of the weekend? Too numerous for this post to enumerate fully. This weekend ended with a lollipop for me, from Andrew Hyde.

PS – Too Good not to Post

For those of us obsessed with startup jobs, nPost provides a valuable online resource for startup jobs.

For those of us obsessed with productivity/life hacking, RescueTime provides great analytics about what applications suck our time.

*update* @albertmaruggi tweeted regarding my comment about RescueTime - check out both tweets: @albertmaruggi in response to @anwith1n

For those of us obsessed with discovering the skills/talents/knowledge of others, skillbit should be your skills management tool of choice.*

pps - extra special thanks to:
Adam, Clint, TJ, Rob, Nika, Zach, and everyone else involved in the copy creation process - I *heart* you guys so hard!

*full disclosure, An Bui is a founder of skillbit, and wants everyone to try it and let her know what you think!