15 Reasons why attend Startup Weekend

Here are my 15 reasons why every person who wants to be an entrepreneur has to attend startup weekend especially if they are planning to startup in the technology space. 

1. Get to evaluate and try out your product idea in a risk free manner. If you have an idea and don't know if it will work you can come to the event and pitch it - if you get enough votes probably there is some credibility to your idea.
2. Connect and network with developers and marketing and business professionals who can possibly work with you in the future. You can evaluate their skills over 54 hours in the toughest circumstances and find the right person who you can work with. 
3. Get to meet mentors and spend 1 on 1 quality time with them when in real life trying to get even a few minutes of their time is very hard. They will help you fine tune your idea even further.
4. Ability to brainstorm with experienced professionals and fine tune your idea to something that can be taken to market.
5. Learn how to pitch and sell your idea in 1 minute. This will force you to practice your pitch.
6. Ability to present in front of Angels, VCs and Incubators. If you are able to impress them then the world is yours to conquer.
7. Learn through practice. Try out things and find out things that work.
8. Learn about different tools and techniques people use and see the effectiveness of those techniques that different teams adopted.
9. Understand the process of going about in starting up a technology product startup that takes you through the phases of ideation, team formation, market evaluation, product development and roll out all in 54 hours.
10. Teaches you to never give up. There are times it looks so daunting what needs to be done but with perseverance it is amazing what can be achieved in 54 hours.
11. Be a part of a global community of startup weekenders who number in the 10s of thousands.
12. Learn to have fun and achieve great things that you feel very passionate about.
13. Give you a preview of what the 18 hour days would be like when you are actually doing your startup.
14. Forces you to learn to make quick decisions.
15. Finally the awesome food - 7 meals to keep your batteries running.