Published on: January 16, 2012 – 5:00 am
By Anna Curran (Founder, CookbookCreate)
Startup Weekend is hosting the first ever Startup Weekend Mobile in New York City on January 20-22, 2012.
In just 54 hours, we’ll go from pitches on Friday night to demos of mobile businesses on Sunday afternoon. Our mentors and judges have been carefully selected and include leading mobile experts like Naveen Salvadurai (Founder of Foursquare), Jennifer Byrne (VP of Business Development at Amex) and Theo Skye (Co-Founder of Medialets).
In addition to the fun of working with a team Read More »
Published on: January 6, 2012 – 3:00 pm
By Robin Wauters (Blogger, TechCrunch)
Startup Weekend, whose mission is to kickstart and foster startup communities worldwide through events and networking sessions, had a very lively 2011.
According to internal statistics shared exclusively with TechCrunch, the organization held a total of 260 events in 202 cities, in 67 countries (you can find the obligatory accompanying infographic below).
All in all, the ‘startup weekends’ attracted some 21,316 people, who collectively formed 2,817 teams. Read More »
Published on: December 13, 2011 – 7:40 pm
By Douglas Latimer (Director, Women 2.0 Startup Weekend Documentary)
A year ago, I was in a Digital Video Intensive Class at SFSU and we wanted to do a group film project. Dave Kockbech pitched the idea of documenting Startup Weekend.
At the time, I had never heard of Startup Weekend. Dave proceeded to explain it was a bunch of hackers hunched over laptops writing code… This didn’t exactly inspire notions of a grand film in my mind.
Regardless, I decided to do some research. What I found amazed me and has continued to be a part of my life since that day. Read More »
Published on: December 9, 2011 – 11:00 am
By Franck Nouyrigat (Co-Founder & CTO, Startup Weekend)
In the last couple of years, I have seen more and more incubators growing and more and more “mentors” helping them. My concern is in regard to the drop of quality I see in mentoring — not to mention that most of the entrepreneurs don’t know how to recognize a bad one…
If you want to go to the root of it, I recommend reading the blog posts of Steve Blank and David Cohen about mentors.
I agree with the semantic differences between a teacher, mentor and coach (here to simplify, I just call them mentors as most of the people falsely do). Read More »
Published on: December 8, 2011 – 11:00 am
By Jenn Viane Riese (Founder, Modern Humanity)
I’m no techie. I’m the Executive Director of a non-profit and I own a consulting company. I thought Ruby on Rails was a strip club. Admit it, it’s a great name for one. I didn’t think I had any right to attend Startup Weekend but I did have an idea, my passion project. Seeing it fail before even getting the chance to try — that was scarier than trying to find common ground in a room full of engineers.
Still I felt I’d be an alien, a fish out of water, a dork trying to fit in. Would everyone think my pitch was lame? Yes, I was convinced. I’d have to go home on Friday night because no one would want to help build my team and no one would find me valuable to theirs. Read More »
Published on: December 6, 2011 – 7:00 am
By Renee DiResta (Associate, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures)
I’ve said before — Startup Weekends are a lot of fun. Participants come together as a team, find a compelling idea, define and attempt to implement a minimum viable product, and come up with a plan to take the idea to market, all within 54 hours. So far, I’ve attended three as a developer. At Women 2.0’s recent Startup Weekend, I had the opportunity to participate from the other side of the table.
This time around, I was an advisor. Every team I spoke to asked me the same question: “What should our business model be?” Read More »
Published on: December 6, 2011 – 6:00 am
By Karen Zeller (Contributing Writer, Women 2.0)
Interviews done with the majority of teams at Women 2.0 Startup Weekend revealed winning mobile strategies to have in mind for aspiring entrepreneurs. The overwhelming majority of startup teams had ambitions of including a mobile solution as part of their offering.
Whether mobile applications were considered so core to their business model that they were prototyped during the weekend varied from team to team, although at least 40% of the teams had not only a web application prototype but also a mobile prototype.
Read More »
Published on: December 6, 2011 – 5:00 am
By Steph Palmeri (Senior Associate, SoftTech VC)
My friends at Best Vendor pulled together data from 180 design and creative professionals on their site to see what tools dominate and unearth some hidden gems and rising stars.
One observation from their post:
Designers’ powerhouse tools like the Adobe Suite remain on the desktop, but more than half of their favorite apps are in the cloud.
Read More »
Published on: December 3, 2011 – 5:00 am
By Lukas Black (Build & Release Engineer, Mozilla)
On November 18th, 2011 — I jumped into the deep end of the Bay Area startup culture I have been lurking on the periphery of for the past two years of living here.
After going to my first Girl Geek Dinner at Microsoft a month ago, and preparing to talk about women in open source at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, it seemed very much up my alley to sign up for the Women 2.0 Startup Weekend held in San Francisco at The Hatchery.
I do always have ideas for new projects/apps though Read More »
Published on: December 2, 2011 – 5:00 am
By Alison Wong (Participant, Women 2.0 Startup Weekend 2011)
I had an idea about creating an online classes service a few weeks before Startup Weekend. My friend and seasoned developer, Dean Mao, also thought it had potential and we started talking about it in more detail. He thought about development, while I conducted user research in the field to gather insights and user needs.
After Dean and I decided we were going to pursue the idea, we realized that Women 2.0 Startup Weekend was coming up and signed up last minute. We hadn’t written any code or decided on our business model, so we thought attending would challenge Read More »
Published on: December 1, 2011 – 5:00 am
By Farrah Moore (Volunteer, Women 2.0 Startup Weekend 2011)
The spirit of entrepreneureship echoed throughout the Hatchery offices at the third annual Startup Weekend hosted by Women 2.0.
Over 150 up-and-coming tech and biz stars gathered to pitch concepts, gain connections and develop projects aimed to alleviate fiscal or social problems.
65% of participants during the 54-hour challenge were female — and, not surprisingly, the gender domination influenced the traits of devised ideas. Teams such as Safe Steps, Perfect Beauty and Carbon 38 highlighted the positive effects Read More »
Published on: November 30, 2011 – 1:00 pm
By Steph Palmeri (Senior Associate, SoftTech VC)
Last Sunday, I spend the afternoon meeting and mentoring several of the Women 2.0 Startup Weekend teams.
As an early stage investor at SoftTech VC, I see hundreds of ideas a month so it seemed fitting that I would be spending time with the teams just as many were diving in to construct and perfect their final Startup Weekend pitches for the judges. Their FIVE MINUTE pitches.
Damn. Five minutes goes pretty quick. And after you’ve spent the last 48 hours laser-focused on an idea, five minutes goes faster then a talented VP of Engineering looking for a new gig. Read More »
Published on: November 28, 2011 – 9:40 pm
By Judy Tuan (Participant, Women 2.0 Startup Weekend 2011)
What do video games, language, bears, and #changetheratio have to do with each other?
The answer lies in this video. Here’s the story of how an idea turned into the startup Words With Bears at Women 2.0 Startup Weekend.
I’d never been to a Startup Weekend or even to a local entrepreneurship event before, but Women Who Code organizer Sasha Laundy encouraged me to sign up.
The day before Startup Weekend officially began, I went Read More »
Published on: November 27, 2011 – 5:00 am
By Karen Song (Developer, Women 2.0 Startup Weekend 2011)
My name is Karen Song and I am a female entrepreneur living in Silicon Valley. This past weekend was my first Women 2.0 Startup Weekend experience — and it was so powerful that I am starting a blog just to talk about it.
Let me start off by saying I don’t relate to women very well. I attribute this to several possibilities. This may sound strange but I can actually go for days without seeing another female because I work with males and then come home to my boyfriend. I am also strangely intimidated by women and the feminine expectations Read More »
Published on: November 27, 2011 – 5:00 am
By Audrey Fischer (Participant, Women 2.0 Startup Weekend 2011)
Editor’s note: These are 11 tips & tricks direct from a Startup Weekend attendee. As always, the freshest startup advice is picked daily here at Women 2.0.
- Brainstorm before before you arrive.
Think about how you can contribute. I initially thought Startup Weekend was all about taking the improvisation route, figuring it out as you go along. In retrospect, I could have saved myself time over the weekend by taking full inventory of my skills ahead of time, and maybe even Read More »
Published on: November 22, 2011 – 7:00 am
By Christina Gunarto & Angie Chang (Co-Organizers, Women 2.0 Startup Weekend 2011)
On Sunday, the teams wasted no time working on their projects. The Hatchery was filled with both excitement and anxiety building up to pitch time.
Everyone was full of energy, squeezing every last ounce of thought from their brains and coding away to put together the final product, presentation and hopefully, a working demo for the judges.
At 6pm, all 150 participants squeezed in for a group photo. One last hurrah before demo time! Read More »
Published on: November 22, 2011 – 5:00 am
By Daisy Jing (Founder, Perfect Beauty)
I’ve always loved entrepreneurship. I’ve loved being surrounded by people who are motivated by nothing else other than their vision, and will suffer through sleepless nights to make it happen.
I moved to San Francisco after college to be part of this network, because I have always wanted to work in startups. However, I never knew where to begin. Every time I went to an entrepreneurship networking event, I felt I as if I couldn’t connect with the people. Read More »
Published on: November 21, 2011 – 7:00 am
By Salem Kimble (Volunteer, Women 2.0 Startup Weekend 2011)
It’s edging on towards late evening on Saturday, November 19, 2011 with a good number of the 22 teams still going strong.
This year’s startups will be pitching everything from fashion to language learning. The size of the startup team varies greatly with several teams of 6 or more people and just a few one and two person groups.
Here’s the breakdown, working titles, missions and happy faces of the developers, designers, business/marketing pros. Read More »
Published on: November 20, 2011 – 1:15 am
By Christina Gunarto & Angie Chang (Co-Organizers, Women 2.0 Startup Weekend 2011)
Things got crazy at the Hatchery in San Francisco on Friday night at Women 2.0 Startup Weekend 2011. The soldout crowd of over 150 was a diverse mix of people by any count: gender (65% female), ethnicity, age (at least 3 youths), location (lots of East Bay folks)…
We started off with Women 2.0 and Startup Weekend representatives making introductions and housekeeping remarks.
Quickly things got exciting when the ice breaker began (pictured, right) — Imagine an out-of-control game of rock, paper and scissors. Read More »
Published on: November 17, 2011 – 5:30 am
By April Joyner (Senior Reporter, Inc.)
We’ve heard it before: You have a great idea, but you just don’t have the time to build it into a sustainable company. Startup Weekend proves that notion false. The three-day event, which has been held in more than 120 cities, has spawned hundreds of businesses —- each in fewer than 54 hours.
Here’s how it works: Participants pitch ideas for startups, which are usually (but not always) tech-based, and assemble into teams to build prototypes. Then, on the last day, the teams present their projects to a panel of local entrepreneurs and investors. Read More »
Published on: November 11, 2011 – 4:30 am
By Maris McEdward (Community Manager, Startup Weekend)
Entrepreneurs are always asking “what’s next?” — What’s the next step? What’s the one connection I can’t afford not to make? What tweak can I make to make my product stronger/better/faster?
But an equally important question is “what can I do to prepare?”
At Startup Weekend, we encourage entrepreneurs to come to us with fresh idea and a willingness to meet and work with potential co-founders. But that doesn’t mean Startup Weekend attendees can’t prepare before the event Read More »
Published on: November 5, 2011 – 5:00 am
By Ainsley O’Connell (Director of Strategy & Partnerships, Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship)
I arrived at Startup Weekend EDU in Washington, D.C. ready to dive in and work on someone else’s idea. I ran into my friend, who said he was planning to pitch a couple of ideas and encouraged me to go for it, even if I hadn’t prepared anything. After all, why not? Surely I’d been mulling over an idea that had some promise?
I realized that I did have something, I had been thinking for a while about the shortcomings of our existing tools for communicating student data to parents. Complex assessment data increasingly guides educators’ work, effectively cutting Read More »
Published on: October 18, 2011 – 3:15 am
By Angie Chang & Christina Gunarto (Organizers, Women 2.0 Startup Weekend)
Women 2.0 and Startup Weekend are partnering on November 18 – 20, 2011 at The Hatchery in San Francisco, CA for Women 2.0 Startup Weekend! We provide the co-working space and brain fuel, and you bring the energy and innovation to build something big over the weekend. Both men and women are invited to get your ticket for Women 2.0 Startup Weekend now!
Maybe you have an idea, maybe you don’t?
Maybe you started a startup before, maybe you haven’t?
Maybe you are a developer, a designer, a do-er?
Bring an idea, or just yourself! Come to join a team and start a project (or company) over the weekend. We will be hacking and building for 54 hours! Read More »
Published on: December 13, 2010 – 11:27 pm
On November 21, 2010, MarketYoYo (formerly named Crowdmarket) was awarded “Most Likely to Change a Million Lives” and “2nd Prize Overall” at Women 2.0 Startup Weekend.
Two days later, Alexis Ringwald (pictured, left) and Xuwen Zhang expanded their team to five (Rajat Mahajan, Ran Tao and myself) to further build on the idea of an SMS service to enable BOP (Base of the Pyramid) female entrepreneurs to connect directly with buyers. I was really excited to be a part of the team and loved the way all five of us were able to rally around a cause just after our first meeting at a coffee shop. With very little time but a lot of talent, inspiration, and passion, we decided to pursue the mWomen BOP App Challenge.
A week after initial market research, brainstorming and coding, the idea turned more real after we had conversations with Grameen Phone CEO Kazi Islam, Obopay CEO Carol Realini and VP of Product Marketing David Schwartz. The end goal was to build an easy-to-use SMS-based mobile service that enables female entrepreneurs in rural India to connect directly with buyers in an online marketplace, which we named “MarketYoYo”. Read More »
Published on: November 30, 2010 – 10:22 am
Women 2.0 Startup Weekend hosted over 135 attendees (with 55% women in attendance!!) at the 54-hour hackathon. 60 ideas were pitched on Friday night, yielding 22 startups by Sunday night.
Pictures from Women 2.0 Startup Weekend are on Facebook.
Winning teams from the weekend — Women’s Health and Mobile (WHAM!) led by Karen Baker, and InToTheMarket led by Alexis Ringwald — will be presenting their mobile apps for women at December 8th’s TEDxBayArea TEDwomen in Palo Alto!
A documentary team was at Women 2.0 Startup Weekend and filmed the entire weekend! Help fund the Women 2.0 Startup Weekend documentary on Kickstarter.
