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The famed 54-hour competition, Startup Weekend LA, kicks off this Friday at Coloft in Santa Monica, beginning with a pitch session then voting to single out the best ideas. Once voting is complete hackers scramble to form teams around the best ideas, and work feverishly until hands-off at 5:00 pm Sunday.
Local winners from the past three years include some impressive ventures like Zaarly.com, Look.io and SnazzyRoom.com. Within one week of winning Startup Weekend, Zaarly received $1 million from Ashton Kutcher and, within seven months of that closed $14 million in Series A from Kleiner Perkins. Look.io met similar success when it was acquired by LivePerson in June 2012.
This year’s participants have the opportunity to recreate the kind of success found in past Startup Weekends and to be recognized by this some amazing judges, who all represent local accelerators: Sam Teller of LaunchPad LA, Jeff Scheinrock of Originate, Jeff Solomon of Amplify.la, William Hsu of Muckerlab and Adam Corey of 500 Startups.
In addition to the all-accelerator judging panel, this Startup Weekend is also part of the larger Global Startup Battle taking place in 198 countries over the past two weekends. Winners from Startup Weekend LA and other cities will be eligible for an impressive set of prizes including $20,000 in match funding for an Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign, a flight to San Francisco for an inspirational visit to Google headquarters and A-list mentorship opportunities.
Prize or no prize, as many as one third of Startup Weekend teams in the past have kept operating together after the event: participants always come away with great lessons learned and new connections.
Startup Weekend alumnus, winner and Zaarly founder, Eric Koester told geekwire.com, the event instilled the ‘go-fast’ attitude within their team.
“I don’t think any of us envisioned on Friday night of Startup Weekend that we’d have something like Zaarly on our hands,” Koester said. “But it goes to show that if you take a big idea and give it to a hard-working, smart team, that anything can happen.”
To learn more about Startup Weekend LA click HERE.
