In the midst of the now-signature Juan Great Leap event rainshower, around 25 people from the Juan Great Leap Facebook Group met up for an evening of ideas, energy, and collaboration.
The format was simple. We started with 5-10 minutes of news (in the JGL Community and the larger local startup community). Then we did an Open Floor, where each person had a chance to pitch ANY question or ANY idea for 2 minutes to the whole group. The group would then chime in with their thoughts. At first, people were a bit shy, but after a few minutes the floodgates opened and people began fielding in questions like:
What do you guys think of this startup idea?We’re thinking of having this price for this service, would you buy?What do the tech people here think about this problem?I need a co-founder who can do ________, would you or anyone you know be interested?
It was fun, engrossing, and energy-filled. It was crystal-clear that people wanted to help one another and listen – and this was a sight to behold.
After the Open Floor, there was free-for-all networking and pocket-meetings between people who had startups cooking from the JGL Facebook Group (there are 3-4 now).
Now that we have this one under our belts, we’re thinking of opening this up (announcing it in this blog) and doing it twice a month. It was a very good mix of people who want to take the leap, new startup owners, veteran startup founders, tech startups, non-tech startups, scalable startup businesses and lifestyle businesses – it might be good to check out the next one we’re having no matter where you are in the startup process and no matter what sort of “startup” you’re developing.
These “Mini-meets” would be different from the bigger, JGL Conferences (like the one we had last August in the Ayala Technohub). It would be more intimate, and geared towards direct sharing and collaborating.
Good start for these Mini-meetups! Excited to see where this goes!
JUAN GREAT LEAP 