What Is Startup Weekend?

What is Startup Weekend?

Startup Weekend is a global network of passionate leaders and entrepreneurs on a mission to inspire, educate, and empower individuals, teams and communities. Come share ideas, form teams, and launch startups.

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Ever wondered what it takes to be an entrepreneur?

The professional and personal challenges, the high and lows, the failures and the success?

Startup Weekend is a global grassroots movement of active and empowered entrepreneurs who are learning the basics of founding startups and launching successful ventures. It is the largest community of passionate entrepreneurs with over 400 past events in 100 countries around the world in 2011.

The non-profit organization is headquartered in Seattle, Washington but Startup Weekend organizers and facilitators can be found in over 200 cities around the world. From Mongolia to South Africa to London to Brazil, people around the globe are coming together for weekend long workshops to pitch ideas, form teams, and start companies.

All Startup Weekend events follow the same basic model: anyone is welcome to pitch their startup idea and receive feedback from their peers. Teams organically form around the top ideas (as determined by popular vote) and then it’s a 54 hour frenzy of business model creation, coding, designing, and market validation. The weekends culminate with presentations in front of local entrepreneurial leaders with another opportunity for critical feedback.

Whether entrepreneurs found companies, find a cofounder, meet someone new, or learn a skill far outside their usual 9-to-5, everyone is guaranteed to leave the event better prepared to navigate the chaotic but fun world of startups. If you want to put yourself in the shoes of an entrepreneur, register now for the best weekend of your life!

Schedule

Friday

Nov 9
  • Registration & Dinner
  • Welcome
  • Keynote Speaker
  • Startup Weekend Kickoff & Hootup Intro
  • Pitches Start
  • Attendees vote for the top ideas
  • Teams start forming and discussing ideas
  • Start to formalize teams and take an inventory of skills. Be honest, and direct about what resources and skills are needed for the weekend. You may stay and work as late as the venue will allow

Saturday

Nov 10
  • Arrive, simple breakfast & coffee
  • Teams formed and setting up workspace for the weekend
  • Lunch
  • Call for needs & skills
  • Coaches help teams one-on-one. They are here to help!
  • Dinner
  • Mid weekend check-in, status reports, call for help
  • Finished for the day. You may stay and work as late as the venue will allow

Sunday

Nov 11
  • Arrive, simple breakfast & coffee
  • Call for help (this is self motivated, so don’t be shy)
  • Depart for Remembrance Day Ceremony
  • Return & Lunch
  • Presentation Coaches arrive… ASK QUESTIONS
  • Gut check. Start prepping for presentations
  • FINAL PRESENTATIONS
  • Judging & awards
  • Wrapup
  • Go home!
Speakers

Rick Perreault

CEO and co-founder of Unbounce

Three years ago, Rick Perreault was just another 40 year old marketing manager on track with a successful career.

Today, he’s CEO and co-founder of Unbounce, the startup that he bootstrapped to be a cashflow positive million dollar business and then raised $950k of funding from investors including Abe Book’s Boris Wertz, 500 Startups' Dave McClure, and Lean Startup instigator Eric Ries.

Come learn how he convinced five other senior professionals to leave their jobs and join as co-founders, launched a product that still doesn’t have all the features customers wanted, and attracted customers that spontaneously evangelize the Unbounce platform from the audiences of Rick’s rare standing-room-only conference appearances.

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Judges

Aaron Smith

Founder and Managing Director at GoVoluntouring.com

Aaron is a multi-award winning marketer who adds a humanistic approach to his work. Acquired by Flight Center just five months after launching, Aaron is still hands-on to grow his intrapreneurial effort into a successful social enterprise.

Aaron blends twelve years of senior tourism management experience with a passion for community service. He has traveled extensively throughout North and Central America, Europe, Australia and East Africa.

Francois Deschenes

CTO at myBestHelper

Francois Deschenes is the CTO of myBestHelper, a business that won first place at Startup Weekend Vancouver 2011. myBestHelper improves the experiences of those seeking and offering help for home-based child care - nannies and babysitters.

Francois is also a senior web developer at Deversus Software and a consultant specializing in data analysis, application performance management, and cloud computing. Prior to that, he has worked for national brands such as Shaw Communications and JPMorgan Chase & Co., and founded a successful web hosting company at the age of 16 which he sold in 2005.

Michael Clouser

Academic Entrepreneur at the University of Central Florida

Michael has been a practicing entrepreneur, venture capitalist, Incubator CEO, and hotelier. His current day job is that of Academic Entrepreneur at the University of Central Florida where he is raising and managing an innovative new university venture capital fund.

Michael recently earned the MSc degree from the Business School at the University of Edinburgh, where he is finishing his PhD work as well. His research both both degrees focuses on entrepreneurship, innovation, and the triple helix of government-university-industry relationships, including public and research policy.

Nanon de Gaspé Beaubien-Mattrick

President and Founder of Beehive Holdings

Nanon de Gaspé Beaubien-Mattrick is President and Founder of Beehive Holdings, an investment firm focused on helping women entrepreneurs take their business to the next level by offering them coaching, capital and a connected network.

Prior to founding Beehive, Nanon served as Senior Vice President of Telemedia Corporation for 10 years. Nanon received a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Mentors

Jason Hanley

Foudner at PMRobot

Jason, a techie at heart, started programming at the age of 10 in BASIC on a Tandy Colour Computer. After studying Computer Science at the University of Waterloo, he worked as a developer on a number of high profile projects, including CorelDRAW and Microsoft Access.

Upon completion of MBA and PMP designations, Jason started building a project management tool for software consulting companies, now called PMRobot.

Jude Brown

Owner of Pikosocial Interactive Agency

After graduating from Simon Fraser University and specializing in Community Economic Development Jude moved to England and worked on community capacity building in both England and France. After coming back to Canada he found his way into sales and marketing before landing in Calgary where he worked as the VP of Investor Relations for a publicly traded company. This experience led him to social media and eventually back to Victoria where he started Pikosocial almost two years ago.

Ian MacKinnon

Co-Founder and Technical Guy at Placeling

Recognized for his talent as a programmer and a leader early on, Ian landed an internship with Google and after graduating with a Masters degree from Waterloo, he went on to work for Pulse Energy and then for SAP as a software developer.

The meeting with Lindsay Watt, the co-founder of Placeling, happened when Ian went to a Co-Founder Speed-dating event hosted by Bootup. Only Lindsay did not actually attend the event. Instead he simply emailed all the attendees (smart or lazy?) and Ian replied.

Placeling is a graduate of GrowLab's inagural cohort in Vancouver and has secured funding to continue their quest to make traveling more fun by effortlessly sharing your experience and discovering other's local expertise.

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Organizers
Evan Willms
Jose Albis
Will Fraser
Andy Bernhart
Courtland Sandover-Sly
Jordan Keats
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