‘Startup Weekend’ is a Seattle, Washington (US) based non-profit organization that in association with ‘Google for Entrepreneurs’ which has conducted over 2.9k events in 150+ countries and helped to form 23k+ Startup teams over just a weekend.
Startup Weekend is a 54-hour weekend event, during which groups of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more pitch ideas for new startup companies, form teams around those ideas and work to develop a working prototype, demo, or presentation by Sunday evening.
It is a platform for early-stage startups to pitch in their plans in front of a panel of eminent entrepreneurs and receive valuable advice along with other possible help. The event will start on the evening of 6th September 2019 and will end with results on the evening of 8th September 2019.
The panel of mentors and judges of Startup Weekend’19 will be as follows:
- Nitin Gupta–VP, Radio Mirchi Varija Bajaj– Founder, VARIJA
- Ankush Singla– Co-founder, Coding Ninjas,
- Rachit Agarwal — Co-founder, AdmitKart
- Charu Khanna– Director , American Express
- Varun Yadav– Vertical Business Manager, Google
- Atul Jain– Partner , BSR & Co LLP
- Vivek Kapoor – Co founder, Dineout
- Aditya Arora — CEO Faad Network
- Hamant Maini, Director, JUMO World
- Deepshikha Kumar Anand, Founder SpeakIn, Asian Woman Icon of the Year 2017
- Sumit Duggal, Founder Signcatch, DCE Alum
- Kanav Arora– Vice president, Urbanclap
- KK Verma – Advisory Council, Harvard Business Review
- Puneet Jain- Product Manager (spinny), startup investor and technical analyst.
It is considered as 54 hours Hackathon for Entrepreneurship.
Participations: 20 teams, 6-7 members per team.
How the days will unfold:
Day 1
The event kick-starts in the evening of Friday where 120+ young entrepreneurs present their awesome ideas and business plans.
Day 2
16 teams of budding entrepreneurs work diligently on their idea for 16 hours straight. They are given an opportunity to present their ideas in front of other teams. Mentors carefully analyze the idea and provide the teams with ‘Success Mantras’ to get them through thick and thin. After a round of cross-questioning the teams, mentors devise a framework for every team to overcome the shortcomings.
Day 3
All the teams finalize their pitches and PPT’s. Before the final pitch in front of the Judges, every team is given a chance to have a mock pitch in front of the mentors available in the morning. Final pitching starts in the evening in front of Judges. Every team has 5 minutes to pitch their idea which is followed by questions by Judges for 3-5 minutes.
Judging criteria:
1. Business Model
2. Customer Validation
3. Execution and Design