Can you build a booming business in a couple of days? The organizers of
Baltimore Startup Weekend think it's possible. Over the weekend of Friday, April 15 to Sunday, April 17, more than a hundred business-types of all stripes -- programmers, designers, number-crunchers, and marketing gurus -- will assemble in small groups of five to ten each and seek to launch a business in one weekend.
Everyone starts on Friday at the Emerging Technology Center in Canton with individual ideas, and that evening teams start to coalesce around the best kernels of a company that are pitched to the group. By Saturday, work begins in earnest. The majority of that day is devoted to setting up enough of a company that by Sunday night each team can present a fully-formed enterprise to the plenum at the University of Maryland BioPark.
Aside from the knowledge that you've got what it takes to go through a 54-hour entrepreneurial gauntlet, successful participants will also compete for a piece of a cash prize pool estimated at around $10,000, in addition to non-cash prizes like workspace and free legal advice.
Organizers of Baltimore Startup Weekend include Sunrise Design founder Mike Brenner, Monica Beeman of Funding Universe and Startup City, Fulya Gursel of the Emerging Technology Centers in Canton and on 33rd Street in Waverly, and Edcosystem.com founder and CEO Khalid Smith.
"You don't have to know anybody. Just bring an idea or even just your talent," Brenner says.
"Startup weekend was an original concept developed by entrepreneur Andrew Hyde who lived in Boulder, Colorado and then New York, and sold the concept," Brenner explains. Startup Weekend now unfolds in 5 cities each weekend. With funding from the Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City, which promotes entrepreneurship, and sponsors like Red Bull, which promotes staying awake, Startup Weekend participants are provided with enough resources to allow them to focus on developing ideas into products. What follows the weekend can quickly become a real market force: within weeks of formation at a recent Startup Weekend in Los Angeles, Zaarly raised $1 million in venture capital funding.
Brenner is optimistic about what could come out of Charm City's Startup Weekend.
"I think it's great proof that we can do something in town in a weekend that can be viable, and that we can rapidly prototype it in the week or so after the event." When asked what kind of person might be attracted to such a short-term business incubator, he adds, "It's people like me that think they can spend a weekend dedicated and work their asses off and make something cool."
Writer: Sam Hopkins
Sources: Mike Brenner, Baltimore Startup Weekend