Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects.
Startup Weekend Singapore 2 happened this weekend, from April 29 to May 1. This time we had over 40 participants spending the whole weekend building their startups, networking and having fun.
The weekend started Friday night, with Joey from Startup Weekend and Meng Wong opening the night to get everyone warm and fuzzy, breaking the ice and getting their creative juices flowing. Six teams were formed and started hacking away to get their ideas up and running for the final presentation on Sunday night.
Kicking off Startup Weekend Singapore 2.
Idea board up and running
The weekend was very interactive with various members of the community passing by, providing mentorship and networking. Alex Marquez from Propellerfish, Bernard Leong from Chalkboard, Carl Coryell-Martin from Pivotal Labs, Darius Cheung from tenCube (acquired by McAfee), Gwen Tan from SGEntrepreneurs, Jeffrey Paine from Battle Ventures, Siew Hoon from WebInTravel and others made sure that everyone had all the support they need to get, feedback and validation from industry experts and fellow entrepreneurs.
Meng also whipped out some awesome dishes done sous-vide. Those were some of the best meats I’ve ever had.
Resident sous-vide chef, Meng.
Fifty-four hours later everybody was ready to present as the judges and mentors are all present. MediaCorp was also there to document the whole event getting feedback and showing how the entrepreneurship scene in Singapore is growing and how community events like Startup Weekend contribute.
Mediacorp filming the final pitches.
Our second Startup Weekend had a very diverse group with a good mix of technical and non-technical folks. I was very impressed with the teams as most of them had working products by the end of weekend. All of the teams were very active in getting customer feedback, market validation and other creative ways in getting their ideas across to their customers.
As a participant at the last Startup Weekend, I know how challenging it is to get focused in two days creating essential pieces to your business. Hopefully the teams continue on developing their product after the weekend and I look forward in using their awesome solutions.
Some pics of the six teams:
Team FirSight preparing their pitch - location-based flirting.
Team OpenLessons was a merger of two different original Friday pitches - KhanAcademy by everyone, for everyone.
Two-man Team DialZero - saving you the pain and hassle of dealing with customer service over the phone.
Team Tresselier - one of the two winners - helping you find a hairstylist.
Team Sliders - one of the two winners - doing a demo to tenCube's Darius and FirstMeta's Aileen. Helping big groups book restaurants on Thursdays.
Microsoft has always been supportive of community and grassroots activities fostering innovation, entrepreneurship and growing the local software economy. Providing these to the attendees of Startup Weekend, Microsoft BizSpark aims to provide startups with Microsoft’s latest software, support from experts and visibility.
I’m looking forward to the next Startup Weekend and hope it happens soon.
All the teams plus Joey and Meng.
If you’re part of a startup or thinking of starting one and want the benefits of BizSpark, feel free to contact me through this blog. I’ll be more than happy to sign you up.
This is a guest contribution by Eugene Fabian of Microsoft and was originally published here. Pictures contributed by Eugene and Gwen.
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