I’m constantly being asked how StartupWeekend went in Hamburg, Germany. People in America are curious, but can’t read our German written blog. So, as the initiator of StartupWeekend in Germany (short bio in English), I thought it would be a nice idea to give you a short recap of our achievments here from ye’ Old World. Please excuse my Tarzan like raw English. I’m working on it.
Travis, currently a student in the business school (majoring in Finance) at Texas A&M University in College Station, TX, asks Startup Weekend - the Future of Entrepreneurship? He gives an overview of the StartupWeekend Worldwide Flying Magic Circus so far:
- Boulder, CO - created VoSnap, a way of soliciting votes from people in your “network” on anything from what to have for dinner to where to go on vacation.
- New York, NY - created Favoreats, a site for local food recommendations. I like this concept a lot, but it does rely a lot on user generated content - it’ll need to reach a critical mass before it’s very useful to most people.
- Hamburg, Germany - I haven’t figured out yet what they worked on or created, since the site is in German. If anybody can translate or knows what the startup was, I’d love to hear about it.
- Toronto, Canada - created LobbyThem, a site where you can “Browse, Create & Support issues affecting you & your community.”
- Houston, TX - created TipDish, a way to connect “Tippers” (people with news) and “Dishers” (social media leaders, a.k.a. influential bloggers). I like this idea most of all - it seems like a way to modernize the press release, and gives bloggers in the right niche a chance to break important news.
Well, I’m happy to tell you our story, Travis. Our weekend was quite a success. More than 340 have now applied for attendance at StartupWeekend in Germany, my partner Jason Franklin-Stokes and I have accepted about 140 for Hamburg and actually 120 showed up at the venue, a renovated old malt factory at the harbour side of Hamburg, which is used now as a large stylish department store for interiors with event facilities.
We had huge coverage in the blogosphere, in the press, in TV. People liked the idea. To make a short story any shorter, we founded the company, British Limited with 82 equal shareholders, elected the management (one director and one secretary as in a British Limited), we funded the company with 250 Euros, and… believe it or not: We even got an offer for a funding round at a venture capital company on a European level. The pitch will be mid of November. What did we found? An online marketplace for image editing. A place where you as a pro or semi-pro (or even an amatuer) can upload pictures and get edited for a low cost. More than 300 freelancers have already applied for work. The site will hopefully go live in these days: http://edelbild.de/
For us in Hamburg, Germany, StartupWeekend was a huge success. And it was big fun. But we had our lessons too. We will continue with the idea and refine it. What was the diffrence to the other events in America? I believe, the key factor of success was that our crowd was mixed of skilled people of all ages, backgrounds, experiences, professions, new and old economy, so it was a very robust but very talented crowd. But the mix was also a challenge and for some startuppers some sort of a mild culture shock. Saying this, we had also elaborated a very robust and simple guideline on how to work in such a crowded and mixed environment. We varied and optimized these guidelines during the course of the event. And we made some faults too. So we were quite good prepared concerning the working process, but with full freedom to develop and decide on ideas, concepts, results. Btw, we even pitched the (winning) idea on Saturday morning. We did not discuss the ideas before! 13 ideas were pitched and it was thrilling to see the discussions and votings. StartupWeekend was a success and a huge hype in Germany! We are curious to see the events and developments in the other cities! Enjoy! Have a good success! StartupWeekend rock’s!
Btw, What is Startup Weekend? I love the answer from Boulder, Colorado: Startup Weekend is Jazz for Entrepreneurs!!
And here you have some videos and photo galleries galore: an audio gallery from german television, participant’s video clip, video clip,
photos, photos, several slide shows from Friday till Sunday, photos, photos,…
Veröffentlicht in Recap, startupweekend
