This weekend, hopeful entrepreneurs will gather in Santa Monica for the sold-out Startup Weekend, a frenzied festival of ideas and action. While Startup Weekend is, in fact, a weekend, it is also a Seattle-based network that connects entrepreneurs and holds events all over the world in an effort to encourage a grassroots entrepreneurial movement.
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The event lasts two and a half days. It begins on Friday evening, when participants get together for dinner and networking. A few speeches later, and it’s pitch time. Teams will take the stage, one after another, for an hour and a half, sharing their ideas in 60 seconds or less. After that, the crowd votes on the best pitches. The ideas that win the popular vote are the ones that are worked on over the weekend. From here, teams are formed among the designers, engineers and non-technical talent, who will work together over the next two days to bring their ideas to life.
The teams then work—or, as LA Startup Weekend’s website commands, “GET SHIT DONE”—until Sunday evening, taking breaks only for food, talks and sleep. They’ll have the chance to work with coaches, people such as Philosophie’s co-founder Skot Carruth, technology and media lawyer Eric Galen, MarkedUp founder Aaron Stannard and Dave Schappell, Director of Business Development at Amazon Web Services. With their help, the teams will create prototypes or presentations to be shared with all attendees over dinner on Sunday evening.
The final pitches will be judged by a panel of three: internet entrepreneur Sean Percival, entrepreneur and investor Chris Lyman and Chill.com founder Dan Gould. While no cash prizes are awarded at Startup Weekend, according to official rules, lucky winners may receive in-kind rewards. The winners from the past three years were Zaarly.com, Look.io and SnazzyRoom.com.
So with over 100 creative, driven individuals working out of Coloft for 54 hours this weekend, it truly seems like anything could happen.
Learn more about Startup Weekend LA here.
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