Past event…

Nov 16 2012 Event Ended

Ever wondered what it takes to be an entrepreneur?

The professional and personal challenges, the high and lows, the failures and the success?

Startup Weekend is a global grassroots movement of active and empowered entrepreneurs who are learning the basics of founding startups and launching successful ventures. It is the largest community of passionate entrepreneurs with over 400 past events in 100 countries around the world in 2011.

The non-profit organization is headquartered in Seattle, Washington but Startup Weekend organizers and facilitators can be found in over 200 cities around the world. From Mongolia to South Africa to London to Brazil, people around the globe are coming together for weekend long workshops to pitch ideas, form teams, and start companies.

All Startup Weekend events follow the same basic model: anyone is welcome to pitch their startup idea and receive feedback from their peers. Teams organically form around the top ideas (as determined by popular vote) and then it’s a 54 hour frenzy of business model creation, coding, designing, and market validation. The weekends culminate with presentations in front of local entrepreneurial leaders with another opportunity for critical feedback.

Whether entrepreneurs found companies, find a cofounder, meet someone new, or learn a skill far outside their usual 9-to-5, everyone is guaranteed to leave the event better prepared to navigate the chaotic but fun world of startups. If you want to put yourself in the shoes of an entrepreneur, register now for the best weekend of your life!

Schedule

Friday

Nov 16

6:30pm Registration Starts
7:00pm Dinner & Networking
7:20pm Welcome & Speakers
7:30pm Pitches Start
9:00pm Attendees vote for the top ideas
9:15pm Teams start forming and discussing ideas
10:00pm Start to formalize teams and take an inventory of skills. Be honest, and direct about what resources and skills are needed for the weekend. You may stay and work as late as the venue will allow

Saturday

Nov 17

9:00am Arrive, simple breakfast & coffee
9:30am Teams formed and setting up workspace for the weekend
12:00pm Lunch
1:00pm Call for needs & skills
2:00pm Coaches help teams one-on-one. They are here to help!
6:30pm Dinner
7:30pm Mid weekend check-in, status reports, call for help
10:00pm Finished for the day. You may stay and work as late as the venue will allow

Sunday

Nov 18

9:00am Arrive, simple breakfast & coffee
10:00am Call for help (this is self motivated, so don’t be shy)
12:00pm Lunch
12:30pm Coaches arrive… ASK QUESTIONS
3:00pm Gut check. Start prepping for presentations
4:00pm Dinner
5:00pm FINAL PRESENTATIONS
7:30pm Judging & awards
8:30pm Wrapup
9:00pm Go home!

Platinum Sponsors

Become one

Judges

Jennifer Browarczyk

Jennifer runs 88mph in Cape Town - an accelerator program for tech startups. After graduating in London she has spent the past 10 years working in Berlin involved in various projects focusing on the the creative industries. She has worked for the Goethe Institute as well as been directly involved with young designers starting their own businesses, organizing coaching, mentoring, and finding ways to attract investment. She is entrepreneurial, dynamic, decisive and passionate. Driven by innovation, love to contribute in the field of startups, technique, concepting, organising and marketing. www.88mph.ac

Eric Edelstein

Eric is a Financial Analyst turned Serial Tech Entrepreneur, and occasional Angel Investor. He has co-founded many of South Africa's largest Internet marketing & product companies such as the incuBeta group (Click2Customers, TrafficSynergy, & Yola) & Springleap.His latest venture provides software for organisations looking to constructively engage with their customers and employees - evly.com

Eric is passionate about all types of online marketing, but especially search marketing (pay per click & search engine optimisation), affiliate marketing and social media marketing. He is based in Cape Town, South Africa, but spent the first half of 2011 living in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

He speaks regularly at tech conferences, and writes for business & technology media. Eric was included in Mail & Guardian's "Top 200 young people to have lunch with", and Old Mutual's "Top 36 South African young entrepreneurs".

Permjot Valia

Permjot Valia is the founder and CEO of Help with Sales Ltd. He has been an active business angel for several years having made over 27 investments in start ups (22 in the UK, 4 in Canada and 1 in Cape Town (so far.)) In 2010, Permjot was nominated by Techcrunch as one of the top start up mentors in Europe. He regularly mentors companies in both the UK and in Canada both privately and on behalf of government agencies such as ACOA (Canada), NWDA (UK) and LDA (UK).

Pontsho Maruping

She started her career in the mining sector with companies such as Anglo American and De Beers. Following this, she joined government with the passion to grow South Africa's science system. Some of the highlights include championing the nanotechnology initiative and the establishment of the South African National Space Agency. Prior to joining the Technology Innovation Agency, she was the CEO of the Mine Health and Safety Council.

Ms. Maruping serves on the South African Council for Space Affairs and the technical committee of the board of the Council for Geosciences.

As a Group Executive: Industrial Sectors, her responsibilities include managing the TIA's investments in Mining, ICT, Energy, Advanced Manufacturing

Silver Sponsors

Coaches

Neil Hinrichsen

Neil's first company Realtime won numerous "Best Company" awards in
the IT industry, was the first company on the Internet in South
Africa, and was Netscape's third regional partner in the world. It
was acquired by Datatec in 1997. During this time he spoke at many
industry conferences throughout Southern Africa, including being the
concluding speaker at one of DiData's Top 100 Clients conferences.

Neil then went on to cofound Fundamo, a mobile payments company backed
by Sanlam, Venfin and Mark Shuttleworth. Fundamo employs over a two
hundred people and has installations in over twenty-six countries. It
was acquired in by VISA in 2011 for $110m.

Neil now focuses on strategy consulting for corporates and startups.
He has worked among others for Sanla and Avusa and with startups in
fields such as healthcare, artificial intelligence and mobile
services.

Neil's other passion is working with people. He is an elder in the
Knysna Vineyard Church, where he heads up the youth ministry. He also
runs workshops on parenting teenagers, mentors township teenagers, and
has served on the Management Committee for Knysna Child Welfare. He
has a keen interest in civics and has served on the Knysna Ratepayers
Executive, the Lake Areas Advisory Committee, and was a founding
member of the Garden Route Protected Area Committee.

Neil holds a Bcom(Hons) degree from UCT and is a member of Mensa. He
has run Comrades and enjoys watersports, reading and music.

Alex Fraser

Invenfin

Alex is the Business Development Manager of Invenfin, which is the venture capital arm of Remgro Limited and Vice Chairperson of Silicon Cape.

Bettina Moss

Having started her career in journalism and then moving into public relations and advertising, Bettina contributes a wealth of expertise and experience gained from an extensive professional communications background.
She spent ten years as Strategy and Client Service Director at Tandem Strategic Brand Consultants and has spent the past 15 years working as a Brand Strategist to clients such as Woolworths, Vital Health Foods, Associated Magazines Corporate, O the Oprah Magazine, Cosmopolitan, BoE Private Clients and WWF (UK).

In 2010 Bettina set up GloWoman as an online network to empower and inspire women and is an inspirational writer, mentor, speaker and facilitator in the field of personal development and women’s empowerment.
Bettina has extended the GloWoman brand into GlowBusiness, and is a facilitator and mentor in the field of Enterprise Development - assisting small and medium enterprises with building their brands. She is a registered SEDA service provider offering Action-Based Brand Marketing and Communications Strategy to SMMEs.

GlowBusiness also offers personal development mentorship and support to assist entrepreneurs on their entrepreneurial journey, through one-on-one mentoring, workshops and talks.

Gwen Kloppers

CEO & Founder of Xtraordinary Women

Gwen is the CEO and Founder of Xtraordinary Women. Gwen resigned from a very successful corporate career of 19 years to pursue her own dreams of being an entrepreneur and living out her purpose. Xtraordinary Women was born out of Gwen's passion to create a community and platform for Xtraordinary Women, doing eXtraordinary things. Gwen began Xtraordinary Women to inspire women to live their lives on purpose as she is passionate about women and helping them turn their dreams into reality.

Andy Volk

VP of Developer Relations for MXit

Andy Volk is the VP of Developer Relations for MXit, the Stellenbosch-based social networking company and Africa’s largest mobile social network.

His early startup experience includes inventing and launching Live365.com in 1999, which grew exponentially to become the Internet’s second-largest broadcaster with over 2.7 million annual tuning hours. More recently, Andy was the VP of Product at Kongregate, the social gaming and community site for gamers and game developers.

Andy has led a range of pioneering web products over the last 13 years, including products at Yahoo! (music, video-on-demand, video player platform, and video search), LOYAL3 (direct-to-consumer company stock purchasing via Facebook), and Scour.com (Internet broadcasting and peer-to-peer technology).

Andy is also the founder of Downtempo, an Internet product development & strategy firm located in San Francisco, whose client projects have included work for MTV, NASA, Craigslist Foundation, SpotXchange, LACMA, and GLOBE.gov. In addition to their client work, Downtempo incubated and launched its own in-house projects, including the world’s first travel advisory search engine.

Nicholas Haralambous

Mobile Entrepreneur

Nicholas Haralambous was the CEO and co-founder of Motribe before the company was successfully acquired by Africa’s largest social network, Mxit in August, 2012.

He was selected as one of the 200 young South Africans to take to lunch by the Mail&Guardian, in 2009 he featured on GQ's list of top 30 men in media and was also a finalist in the Men's Health Best Men Awards in 2010. The company he co founded, Motribe, was named by Forbes as one of the top 20 startups in Africa in 2012.

He is a journalist who quickly moved away from print media, through online and in to mobile media production and management. He has worked in dead-tree media with the Sunday Times and Financial Mail.

Nic's new media experience includes working as the head of the mobile division at Mail & Guardian and Product Manager of Vodacom SA’s mobile social networking division.

Organizers