Senior Lisa Jones had an "over-the-top" workload last week, with prelims and course assignments due Oct. 1. Even so, she added one more item to her to-do list: Start up a company over the weekend.

Jones was one of 63 would-be entrepreneurs from on and off campus who participated in Startup Weekend Cornell, a Sept. 28-30 workshop in Sage Hall where they pitched business ideas, formed teams and started the seeds of companies, all in 54 hours.

The event was unique because it was an "intense, company-creation marathon," said Zach Shulman '87, J.D. '90, associate director of the Samuel C. Johnson Graduate School of Management's Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute and director of BR Advisory, two of the event's sponsors. "Students worked around the clock, and importantly those students were from across the campus. I was really happy with the relatively large number of MBA students who participated. The MBAs matched up with the techies to fill out teams," he said.

Jones, an environmental science and sustainable development major, had initially proposed an idea for a commercial composting operation in New York City. But when other participants voted for other ideas, she chose to work with the Pick2Pay team. Its idea was an iPhone app that would keep track of cash-back and awards points for various credit cards to help identify the best payment option at a particular store.

"I admit at first I was not terribly interested in the idea of helping to design an iPhone app, but I knew the group business-building exercise would prove to be a powerful learning experience, regardless of the fact that I know nearly nothing about the technology sector," she said. "After just a couple hours of working together, we had made tremendous headway toward the design and utility of the credit-card benefits app."

By Saturday, the team had an electronic prototype of what the app would look like and divided up tasks related to demographics, revenue and other research and development issues.

By Sunday evening, the weekend culminated with presentations in front of local entrepreneurial leaders. Pick2Pay had the most complete business plan, said Michael Beller '84, a competition judge and managing partner of the consulting firm Lightship Partners, which he founded in 2001.

"Pick2Pay demonstrated and articulated a complete business plan with a clear definition of a market opportunity, a solution, a prototype and a launch plan that could test the market within the next few weeks, he said. "All of the teams and ideas were really excellent. Some teams will need a little more time to validate their market opportunity, others will need more time to build a product, while others will need a little more time to clarify their go-to-market plan," Beller added.

Other judges were Tim Novikoff, M.S. '10, Ph.D. candidate in the field of applied math and CEO of Vantageous Inc., and Rhett Weiss, executive director of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute.

The most valuable lesson Jones learned was the amount of progress that can be made with a few people and a short deadline. "Everybody just naturally assumes a role, and the race is on," she said.

The weekend kicked off with NYC Tech Talent Draft, a career fair and panel discussion focused on technology.

Startup Weekend was sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation and Cornell organizations including the Faculty of Computing and Information Science, College of Engineering, Entrepreneurship@Cornell, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute and BR Advisory.