My company Enspyre is co-organizing the very first Startup Weekend in Taipei on August 12-14.
Startup Weekend is an event held in over 100 cities around the world. Everyone arrive on Friday night. Anyone with a business idea stands up and pitches them. Teams are formed around the best ideas and then you spend the rest of the weekend prototyping and programming. On Sunday night you pitch in front of investors and experienced business people.
Earlier this year zaarly.com was born during a Startup Weekend and 3 weeks later they received a USD one million dollar investment. Not to say it is that easy. But 36% of the teams formed at Startup Weekends are still working together 6 months after their event. That’s also a great success number.
It takes an idea and a great team to make a company. Startup Weekend is a platform for bringing them together.
The price includes the event and 7 meals.
We have signed up mentors like:
Alvin, co-founder of Plurk
Jamie Lin, co-founder of appWORKS
Derek Fluker, a serial entrepreneur from Silicon Valley now living in Taipei
Edward Liu from VC firm WI Harper
And many more…
Hey Elias,
You know I’m definitely in for most of the events you guys are organising. It’s always been great. I do have a question for this one though: What is your take on people who will come to the event with an idea/project/start up already on the way? How do you see this working for them?
By now you know where I’m standing with my project and the fact that by August I’ll be incorporated. Thus I’m wondering if I can really bring something in terms of “creating a business” to the team partners that would potentially want to join my project.
Any suggestions?
Ed, don’t take this as gospel, but my take is as follows:
It’s not a ‘competition’ in the sense that you are not competing for a specific prize. It’s an opportunity to pitch your project to a room full of people, assemble a team, and try to move your project forward together. If you already have a team, or you’re not prepared to offer at least the possibility of cutting new people in on your deal, then obviously it may not be a good idea to stand on stage and ask for help turning an idea into a reality.
On the other hand, you could use this opportunity to join someone else’s team for a few days. (Or join a completely new project.) It sounds like a pretty intense experience which will teach you a lot, and maybe some of the contacts you make will be useful in future?
I’m planning to attend as a participant, not involved with the organising at all.
I think Loretta said it really well. I would not directly suggest that you come there with a “pre-packaged” idea like yours. But maybe you have some related, undeveloped idea that you could come and pitch for the sake of finding some new potential team members and of course the chance to meet all the VCs, Angels and other mentors.
Hey Loretta,
Thanks for the input.
I have been working on this project for over two years, thus the basics of the business model, the ecosystem, and development have already been ironed out. Thus i don’t think it would be very interesting to work on this in the course of the weekend (since what teams will be mostly doing is working out the very basic kinks of each projects).
I’m however really looking to cut new people in, and this is why i attend most of these events.
So perhaps you guys could let people like me go up on the scene and present what we do, while mentioning that although we’re not running the race for that specific event, we’d love finding other people for the long term.
I’ll do the same as you otherwise, Elias, join another group.
To everyone else,
I attended a similar (longer) program 6 years ago called the SEEDA Enterprisers. The MIT and University of Cambridge had put it together, and it was properly amazing. I did not meet a single person who had not had his mind blown off during that time.
6 years later, I’m left with a lot of energy, a very useful know-how, a hunger for something different, and a great group of friends/support that i turn to for advice.
Even if you’re not into this kind of things (yet), I can promise you’ll come out of this weekend with something new and useful.
Plus at 1000NTS for 7 meals and WE long entertainment (watching us making fools of ourselves), this is dirt cheap !!
Can someone help me navigate the website? Is the entire weekend going to be held in Chinese or English? Using the language function to switch to UK English actually gets more Chinese on the webpage. Ps, I have food allergies (nuts, fish), how does that work out with the meal package, since I doubt I’ll be able to eat the lunchboxes or whatever you are preparing for everyone.
It was a competition that began on Friday with a one minute pitch to the audience of 150. Winning pitches (15 of the 40 pitches given were chosen) then formed teams who worked for the next two days on a prototype of their project. Each team was then given 5 minutes on Sunday evening to pitch their project in front of a panel of judges, who then picked the top 3 winners.
The top two winning teams were led by foreigners (disclosure: I was one of them).
There seems to be a recent surge of posts from forumosans looking to start up their own businesses in Taiwan. If you’re one of them, then startup weekends like this may be a good starting point (albeit they tend to focus on tech businesses). The next such event will be held in January.
!!