This is why we didn’t win Startup Weekend, but won in life.

Something amazing happened during LA Startup Weekend that I wanted to share with you. It’s about the amazing team I worked with. As I talked to people from other teams, I noticed that we were different from many of them.

Other teams focused on what Startup Weekend was about, which is launching a company. We knew that at the end of the weeekend, we had a chance to pitch our idea in front of angels, VCs, and other influential people, so it made sense to work on a pitch that would allow us to raise money – which is needed to launch a company. Peerlance, however, wasn’t focused on launching a company, we were a company.

We only had two meetings as a team, one at the beginning on Friday night for fifteen minutes and one after the pitches on Sunday night. In between, we were all doing our own things. This is because we didn’t have time for meetings, we were busy.

Our dev team wasn’t trying to create a prototype that would show investors how our product would work. Within the weekend, we were tying to create a product that we could actually start using ourselves.

Our marketing team wasn’t focused on how we should market the product, we were actually marketing it. On Sunday, our entire team was using the product and sharing it with our friends.

We launched our product. Sure, maybe it isn’t a polished product, but we launched it. There’s nothing more exciting than a product launch for a startup team, and we were able to experience it this weekend. There were moments when our team was laughing and high-fiving each other, having fun using our product, and forgetting about the contest entirely. We were high enough to start spamming our Facebook friends.

We loved each other. It may sound cheesy, but there’s nothing that makes us happier than bonding with people. That happened this weekend. For one weekend, we were a family, not a single person left out. In our last meeting, it was amazing how open and honest we all were to each other. The love continued on an email thread.

This weekend, I experienced the life and death of a very real company. We faced both excitement and disappointment. We shared an experience that will be with us for a lifetime.