Startup Weekend Charlottesville

Next Time: More designers

AC Capehart — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 17:18:28 +0000

While Virginia’s inaugural Startup Weekend was an unqualified success, there are always ways to make it better. One thing we would have liked to see was more designers at Startup Weekend! Talking about this with our facilitators, they pointed us at the video The Rise of the Designer. If you’re a designer and even the least bit interested in what we are doing at Startup Weekend, you owe it to yourself to watch this video!

Congratulations to our winners

AC Capehart — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 03:34:41 +0000

Wow, were the demos impressive Sunday evening. What a great showdown. No wonder it took the judges so long to deliberate. In the end, they had to come to a decision though and decide they did. Congratulations to our three winning teams:

SwitchBook – The ability to pick up in an audio book where you left off in an e-book

PostalDrop – Send a physical letter from the convenience of your Dropbox

MongoCrypt – Encrypted storage and transmission for MongoDB on Heroku

Facebook Transition

AC Capehart — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 18:11:02 +0000

Interested in entrepreneurial events in Charlottesville? Startup Weekend in Charlottesville is coming to a close, but that doesn’t mean the end of the conversation. We’ve created a Facebook group for you to join. StartupCville is intended to coordinate entrepreneurial events in Charlottesville. Join … Continue reading →

Working Working Working

AC Capehart — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 21:02:16 +0000

We just had a mentor roundup at Charlottesville Startup Weekend. The general consensus is that the teams are doing quite well. Especially working well together. People are building technical solutions, validating business models, designing interfaces and making things happen. The energy is fantastic. Here’s what we’re building this weekend:

Flash Karma – Online platform that connects local community services with volunteers in real-time

Giv2Giv – Give what’s comfortable. The money is invested. Your favorite charities receive a check. Every three months. Forever.

PostalDrop – The quickest and easiest way to take an electronic document and postal mail it to anyone in the country.

ConfiDB / Mumblify – Secure, regulatory-compliant data storage and transmission for any personally identifiable information.

Trends with Friends – The fun and excitement of legal betting with the reach and monetization of social gaming.

Neighborhood Match – A matching service to help you fall in love with your new neighborhood.

Book Mux / Match Book – A tool that synchronizes your ebook and audio book so you can switch back and forth depending on your activity.

Trailer Joey - takes the pre-trailer movie trivia to the next level. When the previews start, you become the reviewer. React live to the trailers, tweet, post, get stuff, write reviews.

Event Nab – Post a description of your event and what you need. Have local businesses bid to provide you with services.

And we’re off to the races!

AC Capehart — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 04:05:30 +0000

We are off to a great start with Virginia’s first Startup Weekend. After some introductory remarks, and some Pizza, we were treated to a very interactive and dynamic keynote by Saras Sarasvathy. Startup Weekend facilitator Joey Aquino kept things moving along with some ice breakers that really helped the crowd interact.

Then came the pitches. 30 people pitched. Then they worked the room. They wheedled and bribed. They pitched and pivoted. Then came the voting. People lost their marbles (into the bins of the teams they wanted to work with). In the end, only 9 were chosen. The teams gelled around those 9, found some space in the Charlottesville Technology Incubator and work started. Of course, we did have to end for the night. Unlike the founders, the organizers needed some sleep.

The venue opens at 08:00 tomorrow morning and most teams seem poised to take advantage of all the available time to hone, refine and build.

Charlottesville’s Startup Weekend starts this evening!

AC Capehart — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 12:44:32 +0000

Charlottesville’s inaugural Startup Weekend starts tonight in the Charlottesville Technology Incubator on the downtown mall.

The main event is sold out. The Sunday Night Showdown has literally one or two tickets left before we’ve filled the space to bursting. We were confident in Charlottesville’s entrepreneurial spirit when we set out to pull this event together, but I think we’ve all been pleasantly surprised and impressed at the turnout and degree of enthusiasm for this event!

Not only is this the inaugural Startup Weekend for Charlottesville, it’s also the first Startup Weekend in Virginia. It has already received some good publicity and visibility, and we expect more press coverage over the course of the weekend. We’ll have some great names there as well including a keynote speech from Saras Sarasvathy, mentorship from Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade Jim Cheng, and several other local tech and business luminaries. We’re really looking forward to seeing what gets put together over the weekend!

See you in a few hours, and thanks from all of us organizers. We couldn’t have done it without you. And if you missed out, don’t worry. We’re so excited for this one I’m confident we’ll find a way to do it again.

Another Startup Weekend Success Story

AC Capehart — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 03:50:31 +0000

A garage sale app just raised a round of funding: A half million dollars from the CEO of Zappos and other investors. A success story many new businesses never get to, but Rumgr did. And it all started at Startup Weekend: Las Vegas. Congratulations to the guys at Rumgr. I can’t wait to see what happens at Startup Weekend: Charlottesville. Are you part of it yet? There’s less than 2 weeks to go if you want early bird pricing on tickets!

Startup Weekend interview with the Rumgr Team: http://startupweekend.org/2011/11/04/sell-stuff-locally-and-painlessly-with-rumgr/

Tech Crunch article on Rumgr: http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/garage-sale-app-rumgr-raises-500k-from-zappos-ceo-and-others/

Startup weekend: Good for employment, not just startups

AC Capehart — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:14:26 +0000

There’s an excellent article in The Bay Citizen that talks about the importance of an entrepreneurial spirit in today’s economy. Russell Hancock, CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley is quoted as saying:

We’ve entered a strange new world. There are opportunities, but they are different. You have to be edgy and supercreative.

There are similar quotes from other influential people in Silicon Valley. The head of human resources and recruiting at facebook says her company seeks the “college student who built a company on the side, or an iPhone app over the weekend.”

So, join us for Charlottesville’s Startup Weekend and build a company on the side, or an iPhone app over the weekend!

Startup Weekend is coming to Charlottesville!

Startup Weekend Crew — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 14:41:09 +0000

Startup Weekends are 54-hour events where developers, designers, marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams, build products, and launch startups!

Startup Weekends are weekend-long, hands-on experiences where entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs can find out if startup ideas are viable. On average, half of Startup Weekend’s attendees have technical backgrounds, the other half have business backgrounds.

Beginning with open mic pitches on Friday, attendees are encouraged to bring their best ideas and inspire others to join their team. Over Saturday and Sunday teams design and develop business plans while constantly streamlining their startup vision. On Sunday evening teams demo their prototypes, listen to judges’ feedback and in some cities, win prizes.

Startup Weekends are specifically designed for entrepreneurs interested in receiving feedback on an idea, looking for a co-founder, or who want to learn a new skill. We also welcome anyone looking to test the entrepreneurial waters. Startup Weekends are risk-free environments where everyone is expected to roll up their sleeves and dive into the exhilarating world of startups.