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

Past event…

Event Ended

Caledonia House, Lawmoor Street, Glasgow


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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!

Startup Weekend is coming to Glasgow!

Startup Weekend comes to Scotland for the first time on the 25-27th May 2012, challenging Scotland’s entrepreneurs to create, develop and launch a startup in just 54 hours.

Anyone with a business idea is invited to come along and pitch on the Friday night, with the top ideas selected and invited to go forward. People from technical and non technical backgrounds including entrepreneurs, managers, marketers, graphic designers, lawyers and developers are welcome to take part.

Hosted in the Entrepreneurial Spark accelerator space and organised by Michael Hayes of Scottish tech startup blog RookieOven, Allan Lloyds founder of Insight Arcade and Jim Duffy of Entrepreneurial Spark, Startup Weekend Glasgow aims to bring the best talent in the Scottish entrepreneurial community together to develop some truly innovative products.

The event was a huge success for further write up check out the Startup Weekend Glasgow overview on RookieOven, the host of videos on our Moviecom.tv Channel and all the pics from the weekend on Flicker.

Schedule

Friday

May 25
  • 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

May 26
  • 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

May 27
  • 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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Speakers

Gillian O'Neil

Co-Founder Moviecom.tv   |  LinkedInGoogle+

As Co-Founder of both Moviecom.tv and 29studios.com Gillian has gained a raft of experience over the past 13 year in the creative media and technology sector. With over a decade working in the business 2 business arena, Gillian has helped many top businesses win multi-million pound deals and lucrative business awards.

Pamela Stovell

Crossing the intersection of arts and media

After studying arts management and graphic design in Scotland, left the birthplace of capitalism and odes to haggis for the land of skyscrapers and gold rushes. Worked for Launch Music and Overture, two startups that were eventually bought by Yahoo. Became part of the startup team that launched the Silver Lake Film Festival in Los Angeles. Began creating fine art works that have been exhibited internationally, whilst running a design consulting firm focusing on Internet startups.

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Coaches

Steven Wexelstein

Founder and CTO of Zendit   |  LinkedIn

Founder and CTO of Zendit, a cost-effective operation of highly scalable multi-channel Internet applications. Always willing to help Scottish startups, Steven will be on hand to share his knowledge and experience.

Joe Wright

Software Contractor & Founder of DistillWorks   |  LinkedIn

Experienced developer with over 10 years experience and well known throughout the Scottish tech community. When not organising TechMeetups and Code Retreats, Joe's weapon of choice is Clojure, Ruby or Java.

Aaron Bassett

Co-founder of LevelUp   |  LinkedIn

Aaron is an autodidact, web-developer, entrepreneur and co-founder of Level Up, a boutique Python and Django development agency based in Glasgow. He is also Senior Technical Lead at Twig World Ltd, an award winning Educational film production company. A vocal member of the development community Aaron regularly attends and speaks at local Tech meetups, Barcamps and Hacker weekends.

Gavin Robertson

Founder of OkMyWay   |  LinkedIn

Gavin has been involved with several startups in the music industry, including two successful exits, and is currently working on the travel route planner OkMyWay and the Glasgow based network audio system SimpleAudio. He can advise on business planning, revenue modelling, intellectual property and launch strategies.

Murray Buchanan

Adviser/Director   |  LinkedInGoogle+

Murray has twenty years of commercial experience in creativity and innovation and advises founders and boards on strategy, funding, commercialisation and internationalisation. He was previously an intellectual property lawyer and executive at Time Warner and Virgin Group, including throughout the 1990s dot-com bubble. Murray is currently studying at THNK: The Amsterdam School Of Creative Leadership and at The Glasgow School of Art's Graduate School Of Design. He mentors young entrepreneurs on behalf of The Prince's Trust in Scotland.

Peter Aitken

Software Artisan   |  LinkedIn

Peter is an agile/xp coach and ruby developer who has helped charities, pension firms, investment banks, mobile phone repair shops and global media firms improve their process and codebase.

Having graduated from Strathclyde University, Peter landed in the first XP team in Scotland and quickly became test infected. Since then he has come to appreciate that there is a lot more to development than coding and that getting people together is nearly always the solution.

Gillian O'Neil

Founder of Moviecom.tv   |  LinkedInGoogle+

As Co-Founder of both Moviecom.tv and 29studios.com Gillian has gained a raft of experience over the past 13 year in the creative media and technology sector. With over a decade working in the business 2 business arena, Gillian has helped many top businesses win multi-million pound deals and lucrative business awards.

Fiona Godsman

CEO of SIE   |  LinkedIn

Fiona is CEO of the Scottish Institute for Enterprise (SIE), the national organisation for promoting and supporting enterprise and entrepreneurship in Scotland's universities. Fiona is passionate advocate for student enterprise and entrepreneurship in Scotland

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Organizers
Michael Hayes
Allan Lloyds
Jim Duffy
Gavin Robertson
Danny Helson
Fiona Godsman
Narcisa Drulea
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Startup Weekend Glasgow Venue

by swglasgow

The venue for Startup Weekend Glasgow is simply awesome – the Entrepreneurial Spark accelerator. Entrepreneurial Spark is a truly game changing accelerator, based in Glasgow [...]

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