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

Interested in a trip to Montreal? We're taking 50 New England entrepreneurs on a road trip to attend The International Startup Festival (and if there's enough interest, Startup Weekend: Montreal)! Even better, four ventures will have space in a Boston-focused tent at the Festival to feature their products! Details on how to be featured coming soon! If you'd like to sponsor the trip, or an entrepreneur, please email us at boston@startupweekend.org!

We'll depart Boston on July 10th and return either on July 12th or July 14th based on the interest in Startup Weekend: Montreal. Your order is a deposit that will be refunded provided we can find sponsors to cover the cost of the bus, however you will be responsible for the cost of attending the International Startup Festival and (if applicable) Startup Weekend: Montreal, along with the costs of accommodations.

Depending on the response, we may stay for both events, or simply stay for the International Startup Festival. When you complete your order, please let us know whether you intend to attend one or both of the events, but please do not order Startup Weekend: Montreal tickets until we have determined the level of interest!

The International Startup Festival is a 3-day event on the business of startups held in the historic Old Port of Montreal. Happening July 10-12, 2013, it brings together aspiring founders, groundbreaking innovators and veteran entrepreneurs from around the world to share thoughts, do business and have a lot of fun.

The cost to attend the International Startup Festival is $275.

The cost to attend Startup Weekend: Montreal is $75.

Accommodations are available at several hotels and hostels near the International Startup Festival, and are $130 per night or less. Don't forget, you will need a passport to enter Canada from the US!

Not interested in the bus? Registration for Boston's next Startup Weekend will be opening soon!

Schedule

Friday

Nov 9
  • Registration Opens at NERD, Networking, and Dinner!
  • Kick-Off with Ben Einstein
  • Pitch Fire!
  • Voting for Top Teams
  • Form Teams, Elect Location
  • Get to work! You may stay and work as late as the venue will allow
  • You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here...

Saturday

Nov 10
  • Doors open at NERD and Bocoup Loft, breakfast is served
  • Teams continue to work, coaches arrive
  • Lunch
  • Call for needs & skills
  • 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
  • You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here...

Sunday

Nov 11
  • Doors open at NERD, breakfast is served
  • Call for help, coaches arrive (this is self motivated, so don’t be shy)
  • Pitch Practice (required)
  • Lunch
  • Gut check. Start prepping for presentations
  • 4-minute pitches to judges, plus 5-minute Q&A from judges and/or community
  • Dinner break (timing is approximate)
  • Intro to
  • Judging & awards
  • After party at Meadhall!
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Speakers

Ben Einstein

Managing Director - Bolt   |  LinkedIn

Ben Einstein is an experienced product designer and entrepreneur, and co-founder of Bolt, a Boston-based hardware accelerator program that wants to help companies with aspirations for physical products succeed.

http://www.BuildAtBolt.com/

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Judges

Bobbie Carlton

Founder - Carlton PR and Marketing   |  LinkedIn

I run Carlton PR & Marketing, a boutique integrated marketing agency. We focus on delivering marketing results based on our clients' goals.

I also founded Innovation Nights, a free monthly product launch party & networking event that has grown into a local innovation economy mainstay.

Ken Steinberg

CEO - Cambridge Research & Development   |  LinkedIn

A thought leader for many private and public corporations providing insight and direction for entry into new markets and/or increased traction in existing entrenchments. A prolific problem solver with a continuously growing portfolio of patents in numerous fields including computer science, healthcare and safety.

Linda Woods

Director of Customer Marketing - Brainshark   |  

Linda Woods has been building and marketing Internet brands and software products for over 15 years. She is currently the director of customer marketing at Brainshark, Inc., based in Waltham, and is a former winner of Startup Weekend.

Andre Porter

Executive Director - Office of Small Business and Entrepreneurship

Andre M. Porter has been Executive Director of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’s Office of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (OSBE) since May of 2008. Mr. Porter is responsible for managing, coordinating and monitoring the state's overall small and micro-business development efforts. He is also responsible for sustaining and improving the state’s environment for small businesses and advocating for programs and resources that encourage entrepreneurship. The primary objective of OSBE is to support the efforts of entrepreneurs and small businesses to create and maintain jobs in Massachusetts.

Dan Gregory

Co-Director - Northeastern University Center for Entrepreneurship Education

Dan Gregory is on the faculty of Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business where he is Co-Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship Education. He is the Faculty Advisor to IDEA, Northeastern’s student-run venture accelerator.

Mark Sprague

Founder - Lexington eBusiness Consulting

Mark Sprague is a seasoned Boston-based information and software product entrepreneur with a passion for the customer experience. In his 25 year career, he has developed over one hundred products and services that have been used by tens of millions of businesses and consumers. His consumer experiences include the founding of the NorthernLight.com search engine and Software Digest. The hallmark of Mr. Sprague's expertise is his dedication to the development of high-quality products and services. His expertise is focused in Search Engines, Information Products, SEO platforms and Social Media. He currently advises executive on how to improve website performance though his company Lexington eBusiness Consulting, and blogs about various search related technologies at MarkSprague.WordPress.com.

Michael J. Cohen

Corporate Attorney - Brown Rudnick, LLP

Michael J. Cohen is a corporate attorney with the Boston office of Brown Rudnick LLP. His practice focuses on startup, corporate governance and commercial matters for emerging companies preparing for venture capital financing, as well as debt and equity financings, mergers and acquisitions, securities law and general corporate law matters. Michael has been named a SuperLawyers "Rising Star" in 2011 and 2012, and has participated in Boston StartupWeekend events since 2009.

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Coaches

Jeff Vocell

Co-Founder, Director of Product & Marketing - Trendslide   |  LinkedIn

Co-Founder of @trendslide. Building the future of collaborative mobile dashboards that help execs drive business performance. Love building product and marketing.

Shaun Johnson

Co-Founder - Boston Startup School   |  

@BOStartupSchool Co-Founder. Former @TechStars Associate. @Georgetown Hoya & Entrepreneur-in-Residence. @JohnsHopkins alum. Technologist on a mission.

Enrique Shadah

Founder - Startup Blvd.   |  LinkedIn

Professional Intermediary and Consultant, Financial Modeling Whiz, Web Information Architect, Entrepreneur

Tom Denniston

Sales Manager - Incutio, LLC   |  LinkedIn

Tom Denniston is responsible for managing the sales and outbound marketing efforts at Incutio’s US headquarters. Having served in multiple sales roles over the past decade, Tom brings a wealth of experience and enthusiasm to the Incutio team.

Prior to joining Incutio in June 2012, Tom spent the previous six years in senior sales roles at Dyn (a worldwide leader in IaaS) and Conway Office Solutions (a Xerox company). As an avid musician and self-taught recording engineer, it's wise not to bring up either subject in conversation unless you have a few hours to kill. He lives in North Sutton, NH, with his wife, Amber and their 5 children.

Mary-Alice Brady

Founder & CEO - mosaicHUB   |  LinkedIn

Mary-Alice Brady is the founder and CEO of mosaicHUB, an online community that connects entrepreneurs with each other and with experts and resources to help launch, run and grow their businesses. Prior to mosaicHUB, Mary-Alice spent two years at the venture capital firm General Catalyst working on their seed, venture and grow investments. Prior to General Catalyst, she spent several years at Fidelity Investments where she worked closely with the business development team on strategic ventures. She started her career at the law firm Ropes & Gray as a corporate attorney. Mary-Alice is a graduate of Boston College and Boston College Law School. She currently resides in Medford and enjoys competing in triathlons and skiing with her husband in her free time.

Jay Neely

Co-Founder - RiverInsights   |  LinkedIn

Organizer of BarCamp Boston, creator of StartupsInBoston.com, and co-founder of RiverInsights.

Jay is a lifelong generalist. Eight years of experience as a marketing consultant while learning to code one baby step at a time. Jay did product management and front-end development for a previous 1st place winner of Boston Startup Weekend. Jay now does back-end development, front-end development, marketing, and design with his co-founder at RiverInsights. He lives in Somerville, drinks too much coffee, and wants to help you win.

Kurt Overberg

CTO - BzzAgent   |  LinkedIn

In August of 2002, Kurt was on the founding team at BzzAgent. Over the past 9 years, he has managed the technology side of the company as BzzAgent grew all the way from 3 employees to over 80+ employees. Kurt is ultimately responsible for all Technology decisions ranging from office IT to website and hosting architecture as well as budgets and strategy.

Specialties
Generalist: Technical Management (Agile/SCRUM/HR), OLTP Database Design, Information Architecture, Java, Web Technologies, Human Interface Design and mobile applications.

Anshuman Sharma

Co-Founder and CTO - Ubiqi Health   |  LinkedIn

Anshuman leads the product development and technology strategy at Ubiqi Health. He has a background in medical technology, engineering consulting, and remote monitoring applications and has held engineering positions in companies such as Medtronic. In a past life, Anshuman was a guitarist and vocalist in an ’80s rock tribute band.

Dave Wasmer

Software Engineer - Kinvey   |  

Startup hustler, Javascript hacker, Rails veteran, Kinvey engineer, armchair economist, avid sailor, follower of Christ.

Joe Caruso

Advocate for Entrepreneurs, Investor, and Board Member   |  LinkedIn

For the last 20 years Joe has served as mentor, coach, and personal advisor to numerous CEO’s and entrepreneurs….. dealing with issues of strategy, leadership, team building, venture capital, deal structure, exit strategies, and matters of personal growth. In recent years, he has served as investor and active director with numerous companies… public and private.

Specialties
Mentoring and coaching of entrepreneurs. Investing in early stage companies. Structuring and negotiating financial and strategic transactions. Resolving conflict and bringing diverse objectives into alignment.

Valeska O'Leary-Whitney

VP of User Experience - Azigo   |  LinkedIn

Valeska has designed web apps since 2004. She focuses in understanding people and how they interact with things in physical and digital spaces in order to design interfaces that work for them. She has deep empathy for people. You can tell she loves what she does. She studied web technologies, graphics and web design, information architecture, and human factors at Bentley, WPI, Clark University, but she claims having learned mostly while in the field, observing people in their natural environments, and from her community of practice and colleagues at work. She speaks computer, and is obsessed with helping computers speak human.

Phil Darnowsky

Co-Founder and CTO - H Engage   |  LinkedIn

Phil is a veteran of multiple startups on both coasts and overseas, working (almost) exclusively in Rails since 2006. Since February 2011 he's been the CTO and a co-founder of @hengage. He's forgotten more computer languages than you will ever learn and also likes to study natural languages. His favorite number is 37.

David Zhou

Co-Founder & CEO - ePowerhouse

David has been a serial entrepreneur since 2009, went through the 1st batch of MassChallenge Finalists and have since founded ePowerhouse, the MIT-supported online platform that makes entrepreneurship easier by building clusters of online startup communities. He is a mentor and advisor of multiple organizations and startups, speaker at different colleges to inspire student entrepreneurs, and an established connector for startups. David is a robotics engineer by education, but is much better as a visionary leader and a hardcore entrepreneur!

Fady Saad

Co-Founder & CMO - ePowerhouse

Fady is the strategist behind ePowerhouse's business model, go-to-market strategy, and customers acquisitions. Fady is a System Design & Management Fellow at MIT focusing on designing and modeling startups as cybernetic systems, and understanding the effect of entrepreneurship ecosystems on startups' viability. Before joining MIT, Fady was a Lead Account Manager for Nokia Siemens Networks in North Africa and Europe where he led and managed multimillion-euro acquisitions and bids with oil and gas, railway, and real estate customers. Fady, led the merger between Siemens Com and Nokia Networks in Egypt by designing and implementing a change management initiative for 700+ employees.


Sergio P Ferreira

Co-Founder - SubBids.com

Sergio has run a small family concrete subcontractor business for over 20 years, making it one of the leading concrete companies in the New England Construction Industry. After going to a Startup Weekend Boston 2012, and winning the event with a solution to help all subcontractors in his industry he found himself in a Tech startup called Subbids.com. That event led him to organizing this event in Providence in order to give someone else the opportunity to do the same, start a company in 54 hours. This event does work and tells you that you don’t have to be in the tech in order to get a startup going just have a real solution to a real problem, and lots of passion to make it work.

Kristina Momchilova

Marketing Professional

Kristina got her Masters in Global Entrepreneurship from Babson and has done consulting for startups in Asia, Europe and the US. While working for one of Boston Globe’s top 100 most innovative companies for 2012, Kristina has previously perfected her pitching skills at competitions like Babson Rocket Pitch, MIT 100K, WPI Venture forum, Webinno, and Ultra Light Start up.

Sheldon Borkin

Chief Scientist & VP - Progress Software   |  LinkedIn

Sheldon is leading both technology and business development efforts for mobile, real-time predictive analytics, and cloud services at Progress Software. He has done three startups in both Cambridge and Silicon Valley resulting in two IPOs (WebMD & Bachman) and one acquisition. Sheldon is a Ph.D. graduate of MIT and was a coach at the last Boston Startup Weekend.

Yevy Spivak

Director of Product Development - BetterLesson

Yevy began his startup journey in 1998 while studying computer science at Tufts University. He spent the next 12 years sharpening his skills while splitting time between Boston area startups and corporate consulting stints. Now in his third year of service at BetterLesson, Yevy is motivated by the company's socially conscious mission and the enthusiasm of his coworkers. Outside of work Yevy enjoys table tennis and live local music.

Alan Hamlyn

CTO - MarketMeSuite   |  LinkedIn

I love building great apps, and using the latest technologies in the smartest ways. Feel free to drop me a tweet @wuup.

Daniel Ritzenthaler

Senior web designer UX/UI - HubSpot   |  LinkedIn

Dan graduated with a Bachelor or Arts degree in 2002. Within a few years he became a Design Director for a marketing agency and has worked with companies like Cold Stone Creamery, Microsoft, Motorola, Walmart, and Yahoo! Since then, he's lived in New Zealand for a year and has spent the last four years working with a lot of great start-ups in Phoenix, Arizona and Boston, Massachusetts. He specializes in making interfaces simple and clear with a lot of sketches, wireframes, HTML prototypes, and a little behavioral psychology.

Media Sponsors
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Organizers
Ethan Bagley
C. Todd Lombardo
Hao Chen
Josh Bob
Franck Nouyrigat
Divya Sasidharan
Crystal Germond
Blog
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And the winner is…

by juanfiguera

Congratulations to all the participants for an awesome Startup Weekend!  We hope you learned a lot and made valuable connections [...]

Presentation Lineup

by juanfiguera

CrossCampus BeOnTi.me MyGeode ActivePepper VipKings MapTunes Senseii IncognitoCare Parq.it Ottr EmpowerID Catodo Whoizit Spea.cc League of Actions ClipboardCloud Subbids.com Note: [...]

This Weekend’s Ventures!

by juanfiguera

IncognitoCare:  Anonymous psychiatric care. CrossCampus:  Enhance 911 for campus security BeOnTi.me:  Make it there and always be on time ClipboardCloud:  [...]

Judging Criteria

by Josh Bob

The universal Startup Weekend judging criteria are broken up into three sections. Teams are judged according to the following 3 [...]

Upcoming Events
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Jul 10-Jul 12 2013
Jul 26-Jul 28 2013
Past Events
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Mar 8-10 2013
Nov 9-11 2012