Weflix: 1 idea, 1 team and 54 hours

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• #Entrepreneurship
• #Start-up

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Everything started a few months ago. I had that idea in my mind and I kept thinking about it day after day, but I didn’t really know what to do. Where should I start from? Who should I talk to?

I started reading articles written by great motivators and talkers, looking for events to attend in Barcelona, reading feedbacks of new tech-startups that just went public… And everything became more and more clear to me. I had to do something about my idea, I had to keep pushing and see how everything would end.

Being a very impacient and impulsive person, I couldn’t stop thinking about it but I knew I couldn’t build something great on my own. I needed a team, I needed motivated people who I knew I could count on and who believed in the idea as much as I did.

It is often said that you don’t meet people by accident, they are meant to cross your path for a specific reason. That’s how I feel about my team. These two great guys (Jesús Oropesa and Adriano Bayarri) full of ambition and motivation. I didn’t even had the time to finish explaining them what my idea was about, they already wanted to join me. That’s the attitude I was seeking for. And that’s when I knew my team was gold.

We thought the Startup Weekend Barcelona would be the best occasion to work on our project and start building something for real. After a lot of stress for not getting our tickets on time, the day finally arrived: Friday  28th of March, 7:45pm, I was standing on the line of the participants who were about to pitch their idea.

44 ideas were pitched that day and only 12 would have the chance to create a team and start working during 54 hours to present a viable business project to 5 judges who happened to be investors. All participants were awesome. This is why it felt amazingly well to hear my idea was selected among the 44 others. We did it! We finally had the chance to stay together in a room for 54 hours and to start creating something.

However, I didn’t convince any developer to join my team. They already were committed to other projects (that’s when I figured out that I had to improve quite a lot my skills in Human Resources). That basically meant that we wouldn’t be able to develop the app for real; to make it functional. Here we were, two businesses developers and one designer, about to face 11 other teams formed by 8 to 10 people and with very complete profiles.

I would lie if I said it didn’t discouraged me. It did. I felt that we already lost the battle without even starting. But we kept pushing, we worked our ass off if you permit the expression, we pivoted a hundred times and we re-created the concept out of the original idea.

Weflix was born. It was a lot of pressure to know that every single minute was counting and that we had to make the most of it. Mentors and coaches helped us a lot, they were there to give us some advice and some of them got really involved with our project. And that’s without mentioning the organizers. They motivated us, they believed in us since the beginning and they really cheered us up when we didn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.

We didn’t sleep on Saturday night and our faces on Sunday morning weren’t very pleasant to see. But we kept on going because at 5pm we had to present the result of all this hard work.

Jesús and Adri proved me to be amazing team mates. The three of us were synchronized, conscious and were going in the same direction.

4.35pm, only 25 minutes left for me to represent my team and our new-born project. We still were adding some slides to our presentation 15 minutes before the presentations started, we were tired and stressed and all the public started to enter the room. I only had 10 minutes to rehearse my pitch. Each team had 5 minutes to explain the judges what their project was about and 2 minutes to answer the questions. No more, no less.

They finally called Weflix on stage. I tried to do my best to represent my team as it deserved. And that was it, 54 hours of pressure ending in a 5 minutes presentation! It was all done but, somehow, the pressure was still there. The pitches ended and they kept us entertained while the judges were discussing on who deserved best the prizes. And then, they came on stage. They made their decision and the Startup Weekend was about to come at its end. Everyone was silent, waiting for the names of the winning teams coming out of their mouths.

When they called Weflix on stage to pick the 2nd prize, my heart stopped for a second. It’s only when I heard Jesús screaming “We did it!” that I knew it wasn’t a misunderstanding. It was a weird feeling of happiness, excitement, shock and pressure (that one didn’t let me go until the week after) and when I saw the faces of Adri and Jesús, I knew they were feeling exactly the same.

It wasn’t just about the prize. It was about the story behind it, it was about the efforts we’ve put in it and the life lessons we’ve learned that day and that I hope will remain forever. We learned that no matter what, hard work pays; that no matter what other people might think of you, if you fight for what you want, you get it; that the number of people in your team doesn’t determine its greatness.

And still, we have a long way to go and a tone of things to learn. This is not the end, it’s just the beginning of a great adventure. We are now enrolled in a pre-accelerator program powered by Google for Entrepeneurs called NEXT and we’re comitted to develop the project and to work as much as we can.

We don’t know how or when everything is going to end, but we will do our best and all the learning and experience are definitely worth it. Even if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t matter now that we’ve realized what’s truly important to succeed: hard work, faith, discipline but above all, an awesome team.