What Is Startup Weekend?

What is Startup Weekend?

Startup Weekend is a global network of passionate leaders and entrepreneurs on a mission to inspire, educate, and empower individuals, teams and communities. Come share ideas, form teams, and launch startups.

Startup Weekend Global Site

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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!

Judges

Paddy Cosgrave

Web Summit, F.ounders, WEF Global Shaper   |  LinkedInGoogle+

Paddy Cosgrave is the founder and curator of the Web Summit in Dublin. 2012's summit brought together over 4,200 attendees and 270 startups from across the world. Paddy has also created F.ounders - an invite-only gathering for 150 of the world's top tech company founders which has been frequented by the founders of Youtube, Skype, Twitter, Netflix, LinkedIn, Rovio and many more. The event has attracted worldwide attention having been dubbed by Bloomberg as "Davos for Geeks" and by Mashable as the "best tech event we've ever attended". In addition to the tech founders, the event also brings together leaders from outside the world of tech such as the Chairman of Goldman Sachs International, Chief Economist of the World Bank and Bono, the lead singer of U2.

Paddy is an advisor to several startups and is number 26 on WIRED's list of 100 most influential people in technology.

Barry O'Neill

CEO, StoryToys   |  LinkedIn

Barry O'Neill is the CEO of StoryToys, a developer and publisher of award winning interactive books for children. The company's products combine a unique blend of storytelling, learning and game components and are available on app stores globally. Prior to StoryToys Barry headed up Namco Bandai’s European mobile business and co-founded mobile games pioneer Upstart Games in 2002, which was sold in 2006. Barry is also advisor to the UK-based Tesseract fund, which invests in early stage game and interactive media ventures, and is the current chairman of Games Ireland.

Eamon Leonard

VP Engineering, Engine Yard   |  LinkedInGoogle+

Eamon Leonard is an advisor to start-ups, an angel investor, a tech community organiser and has an interest in cloud platforms and developer tools. Based in Ireland, he is VP Developers³ at Engine Yard, having joined the company through their acquisition of Orchestra, a PHP Platform-as-a-Service he co-founded in 2011.

Gene Murphy

Founder at Redeem&Get   |  LinkedInGoogle+

Gene is part of the team over at Redeem&Get an online redemption and scheduling tool for vouchers and coupons, and when he's not up to his neck in daily deal redemption's he can be found chatting away at numerous Startup community events. A graduate of Propel 3, NDRC Launchpad, iGAP 4 and a mentor at Startup Bootcamp he's a keen fan of the great Startups launching form the Irish tech community.

Mentors

Anatoly Lebedev

Strategic Partnership Development Manager, Google   |  LinkedInGoogle+

Anatoly Lebedev is a Strategic Partnerships Development Manager at Google with solid background in business and partnership development. Anatoly is working on strategic partnerships in Europe, Middle East and Africa region, he also frequently interacts with startups helping them to build their business strategy. So if you need advice on your startup business model or marketing strategy go to Anatoly for advice.

Andrea Magnorsky

Game Developer and Co-Founder at BatCat Games   |  LinkedIn

Andrea Magnorsky is a professional software developer and has accrued many years of experience building solid applications. She has been consuming new technologies and frameworks daily for the last 10 years in a never-ending quest for knowledge and a happy developer path.

After a long life in the enterprise development world, since early 2012 she is developing games and the proud co-founder of BatCat Games. Andrea is involved in the organisation of GameCraft, Alt Net in Dublin and other code related communities in Ireland.

Edward Fidgeon-Kavanagh

Founder & Managing Director at Clear Presentation Design   |  LinkedInGoogle+

Ed is a pitch consultant who helps his clients to deliver winning presentations that replace the usual “death by powerpoint” style of presentation with one that is simple, clear and engaging.

Having come from a business background he approaches presentations from both a business-sense as well as design standpoint, knowing that for a winning pitch both aspects need to be well thought out.

Ed’s clients have gained access to, and won funding from, various prestigious incubator programmes in Ireland and have secured funding from VCs.

Eimear McCormack

Managing Director at B*Different - Marketing Transformation   |  LinkedInGoogle+

Eimear has over 10+ years experience in the Marketing & Business Management, she has a degree in Media Production & Management & a Master of Business Studies from Dublin City University.

Eimear has always had a passion for business & from a very young age. Nowadays she's highly experienced in marketing from brand management, digital (search, social, eCRM, display), retail/trade, ATL media inc. TV advertising, data planning and consumer insight. Eimear administered a task to contestants on the hit TV Show The Apprentice in 2011, she's also frequent panel guest on Today FM's Business Show & Newstalk Breakfast. Eimear also guest lecture in many universities throughout the year & speaks at many events throughout the year – Web Summit, County Enterprise Boards and business groups.

Recently, Eimear has established her own marketing company called B*Different to help other business succeed in their marketing efforts. Eimear has many years experience working within a start-up businesses and has a passion for start-up's in general.

Eoin Costello

New Frontiers Programme Manager, DIT   |  LinkedInGoogle+

Eoin Costello is currently Hothouse Programme Manager in the Incubation Centre and graduated from Trinity College with a First Class Honours Degree in Business Studies.

Eoin was also the owner and managing director of Novara Technology Limited a web hosting and dedicated server provider. Starting from a spare bedroom in his house, Eoin grew Novara to the second largest Host/ISP in Ireland with in excess of 10,000 clients and sold it to Digiweb Limited in 2008 for a 7 figure sum.

As a business owner he led Omniserve which he sold to management in 2009. From 1992-99 Eoin built the family retail jewellery business from one location to three before selling his share in 1999 in order to provide the start up capital for Novara Technology. He has worked in many impressive areas across the span of his career, from the London Stock Exchange to graduating with a MSc in Business Development & Innovation from the University of Ulster in 2011.

Karl Aherne

Executive Director, Wayra Ireland   |  LinkedInGoogle+

Karl Aherne is a start-up and corporate entrepreneur who creates and aids million euro revenue businesses. Karl is currently managing an impressive start-up investment portfolio, driving commercial acceleration & ROI through Telefonica's Wayra programme.

Karl specialises in idea generation and implementation strategies for innovative new products raising VC and corporate investment for a range of innovative business opportunities. Developed new businesses in Telefonica Ireland including the O2 Money card (winner of the 2012 Best Global Prepaid Card), carrier billing platform (a first in the Telefonica Group) and Telefonica's first App Development business.

Karl also has start-up experience as a founder raising venture capital while being a board advisor to several others. Director of Boardmatch Ireland and member of industry committees for both the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC) and the Telecommunications and Internet Federation (TIF).

Mark Kearns

CEO of Nootrol / Director Inventorium & NDRC   |  LinkedIn

Mark Kearns is currently CEO of Nootrol, a green-tech business enabling multinationals to understand the sustainability and risks embedded within their supply chain operations globally. Mark is also the Director of Inventorium and the Founder of the NDRC's Swequity exchange, where he focuses on seed, early and expansion stage ideas in the technology space. 

Prior to Nootrol Mark led engineering groups in Oracle, Babelgum and Two Way TV where his team won a BAFTA for the most innovative interactive TV service for Big Brother 2. Mark is experienced in on-demand and internet software business models, with particular background in SaaS, Cloud, Financial and Media technologies. He has successfully founded and exited his own software business.

Markham Nolan

Managing Editor, Storyful   |  LinkedInGoogle+

Markham Nolan is the managing editor of Storyful.com, a social media news agency founded on the belief that newsrooms can find their most valuable content on the social web. Having come from a print background was Storyful's fifth full-time employee - the startup company is now 30 strong and continues to grow. Markham was part of a team that pioneered new ways to verify and source breaking news content online collaboratively, consistently and quickly.

Paul O'Grady

Researcher & Software Developer   |  LinkedIn

Paul O'Grady is an independent technology consultant & contractor with over 10 years experience in both computer science research and web development. Paul has a Ph.D in computer science from NUI Maynooth and was a post-doctoral researcher at University College Dublin. He has co-founded a number of startups (one of which came out of the first Startup Weekend Dublin) and has worked in a consultative capacity to a number of others. Paul has worked on a wide range of projects covering a variety of highly technical areas such as machine learning, automatic speech recognition, data mining & location-based services. Paul is currently on contract building internal web services for an investment bank in Dublin.

Paul Watson

CTO @Storyful   |  LinkedInGoogle+

Paul Watson is a full-stack web developer and current CTO of Storyful with 12 years of experience in the industry. He previously worked as senior web-developer maintaining and developing features for Europe's largest
and most popular music video website, MUZU.tv. Prior to this Paul spent 5 years in the TSSG developing research ideas into commercially viable products. He founded and developed the initial FeedHenry offering out of the TSSG before moving onto industry partnership projects with O2 and Thomas Crosbie Holdings. Paul's primary technical skills are in Ruby on Rails, SQL, JavaScript, HTML and CSS.

Peter Crowley

Entrepreneur, Internet Strategist   |  LinkedIn

Peter Crowley has vast experience in business and technological development having created the successful Webzone Limited which ran the carzone website, which was Ireland's number 1 car website. After selling the carzone business to his british competitor Autotrade, Peter moved into entrepreneurship, investment and development. Peter successfully created many Irish motoring websites including local motor distributor websites such as Audi, BMW, Citroen, Mercedes-benz, Peugeot and Volkswagen & over 700 car dealer websites. Peter is heavily involved in new startups and is always looking for new startup opportunities to get involved in, he's currently developing AdPlanter a tool for creating & publishing google Ads from transient content such as used car listings.

Phil Riordan

CEO, Bragbet   |  LinkedInGoogle+

Phil Riordan is a chartered management accountant (CIMA) coming to Bragbet with both financial markets and strong startup experience. This experience includes co-founding an award winning festival and previous financial roles with JP Morgan, IBT and Dolmen Stockbrokers. Phil most recently was VP of Finance and Operations with Getitkeepit and brite:bill from pre funding through it’s growth to a seven figure revenue multinational employing over 20 staff. During this time he led three rounds of funding, established the company’s China office and managed all operations outside of technology and sales, including all legal, finance and board interactions and reporting.

Phil is also a graduate of NCI and Smurfit Graduate Business School, and a winner of the prestigious Irish Times Smurfit Business School MBA Full Scholarship. He is also a mentor at Seedcamp.

Ravi Chodavarapu

Software Consultant & Startup Advisor   |  LinkedInGoogle+

Ravi Chodavarapu started programming in QBasic when he was about 13, learning new languages and technologies through high school and through a Computer Science degree at the University of California. In the 7 years since graduation, he's worked across 3 continents, designing and developing software for companies in several industries including Fidelity, Ericsson and Avaya. Ravi is an expert in Java, JEE, Spring, Eclipse SDK and OSGi.

Sean Blanchfield

Technology Entrepreneur   |  LinkedInGoogle+

Sean Blanchfield is a well-known Irish technology founder, investor, mentor and startup community organiser. He is best known as a founder of DemonWare, an online technology firm that serves over 300 million gamers, including those of Call of Duty, the world’s most successful video game franchise.

He co-founded a mobile solutions company, Phorest, in 2000 as an undergrad. In 2003 he left his Ph.D. to co-found and invest in DemonWare, providing online technology to video games publishers. After DemonWare’s acquisition by Activision Blizzard in 2007, Sean served as CTO of Jolt, a social gaming publishing house, and later founded and invested in Front Square. In 2011 Sean co-founded Scale Front, a startup lab that creates and accelerates new startups.

Aside from his own ventures, Sean works with other entrepreneurs and startups through investment (Swrve, Kore, Jolt), advisory positions (Digit, Mavenhut, Haunted Planet, MetricFire, Batcat), accelerators (NDRC, StartupBootcamp, IT Digital Challenge) and regularly speaks on entrepreneurship at colleges, events and conferences. Sean is also the founder of Techpreneurs, an invite-only monthly meetup of over 100 of Ireland’s leading technology founders.

William McQuillan

Partner, Frontline Ventures   |  LinkedInGoogle+

William McQuillan is a Partner at Frontline Ventures. He was the Co-Founder and CEO of Osmoda.com, an online sales platform targeting some of Europe's top emerging fashion brands. Prior to this he was one of the founding employees of Ondra Partners, a start-up investment-banking boutique.
Ondra grew from a four-person team to being a profitable company, working on some of the largest mergers and acquisitions in Europe and having over 40 people in London, New York and Paris.

He is passionate about entrepreneurship and currently is the London Ambassador for the Sandbox Network, for which he has organised over 40 events in the last 2 years. He is also a mentor for Springboard and Imperial Incubators in London, and is a Startup Leadership Program Fellow.

Charles Lee

Coder, Product and Startup Guy   |  LinkedInGoogle+

Charles is a former project lead for the human genome project at the European Bioinformatics Institute and previously served as Chief Architect at Hotprints, a successful social startup company. He is one of the country's leading technologists with particular strengths in artificial intelligence, "big data" and a leader in agile methodology implementations. Charles has also been a key member of the team that worked on UDDI webservice standard, and has held senior positions in Gamesys and GlaxoSmithKline. He holds a bachelor degree in Biomedical Sciences from Leicester and a Masters in Bioinformatics from Manchester University. Currently he is co-founder and chief product officer at a new tech startup fishtree.com.

Organizers
Stu Fergus
Keith Reid
Russell Banks
Floriana Pelagi
Brian Daly
Schedule

Friday

Jun 7
  • Registration Starts
  • Dinner & Networking
  • Welcome & Speakers
  • Pitches Start
  • Attendees vote for the top ideas
  • Teams start forming and discussing ideas
  • 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

Jun 8
  • Arrive, simple breakfast & coffee
  • Teams formed and setting up workspace for the weekend
  • Lunch
  • Call for needs & skills
  • Coaches help teams one-on-one. They are here to help!
  • Dinner
  • Mid weekend check-in, status reports, call for help
  • Finished for the day. You may stay and work as late as the venue will allow

Sunday

Jun 9
  • Arrive, simple breakfast & coffee
  • Call for help (this is self motivated, so don’t be shy)
  • Lunch
  • Coaches arrive… ASK QUESTIONS
  • Gut check. Start prepping for presentations
  • Dinner
  • FINAL PRESENTATIONS
  • Judging & awards
  • Wrapup
  • Go home!
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