Fifty-four hours, five big ideas, future viable businesses

Header image for Interrobang article
Calling all student entrepreneurs! It's time to fine-tune your business ideas, because Startup Weekend is taking over Fanshawe from February 7 to 9.

Stuart Murray, one of the organizers of the event, described it as “a 54-hour event where developers, designers, engineers, marketers, product managers and aspiring entrepreneurs get together, share ideas, form teams and create startups.” It's a frenzied weekend full of big ideas.

On February 7, people pitch their startup business ideas to the attendees. The crowd picks the top five ideas, and teams are formed for each one. The teams work over the weekend to take the idea and turn it into a basic viable product, such as a smartphone app. On February 9, each team gives a five-minute presentation, and the judges will award cash prizes, provided by key sponsor TechAlliance, to the top three teams.

“It's good for people to be exposed to entrepreneurship, maybe if they're interested in startup and they want to learn a bit more about what it might take, or to meet some people and network in the space,” said Ian Haase, vice-president of TechAlliance.

“It's also an excellent place for people to build a team,” he continued. “If you have an idea, but you're missing one or more functional areas — if you're in business, for example, and you need a software developer, or if you are a software developer and you need a business person — it's a great place to try to build a team when the idea is still in its early stages. You can take the idea further without needing as much money.”

Startup Weekend is open to ideas from any sector, so if you're a Fashion Design student with a great idea for a style app, or a Building Technology student with plans to start a green enterprise, it's time to polish up your pitch, but keep in mind that you need to finish the weekend with something to show for all your hard work.

“The challenge, I guess, is that it's a weekend, and so some of the more traditional businesses probably don't suit [the setup] very well,” Haase said. “If you have the right team, you can actually get a beta or a mockup or at least get fairly far along on a technological idea, because it's all online and it can happen pretty fast.”

He gave the example of creating a new medical device, which takes research and development, clinical trials and a ton of work. “The life cycle for getting a medical device to market is years, whereas the life cycle for bringing an IT product to market is months. Because Startup Weekend is all about getting to market, getting customers, going as fast as possible, it's just naturally well suited to software and apps and that sort of thing.”

The ideas that are selected for the weekend ultimately boil down to two things: what can be accomplished in a very short timeframe, and what people need and want. “It really starts with thinking of something that people care enough about to want to spend time on, because a startup's a lot of work, so you have to have the passion for it.”

Haase recommended Startup Weekend for anyone with inclination toward entrepreneurship. “If you're interested in having your own business one day — it doesn't matter if it's right after school or in the future — you can certainly learn a lot about what it might be like if you ever did want to take the plunge to becoming an entrepreneur.”

For more information on Startup Weekend and to purchase tickets, head to ldn.startupweekend.org.