Startup Weekend is where entrepreneurs, developers, and designers get together to form new businesses in a 54-hour marathon of inspiration, perspiration, collaboration, and fun! We attract people with all skill levels in a friendly, welcoming, yet challenging environment.

Startup Weekend Wellington August 2013 will be a special event focused on Social Enterprise.  We especially encourage people with an interest in social entrepreneurship to come along, contribute to the conversation, and help build the next wave of community-focused businesses.

What do we mean by social enterprise?  Glad you asked …

Social enterprises are organisations that:

1. Are led by an economic, social, cultural, or environmental mission consistent with a public or community benefit;
2. Trade to fulfil their mission;
3. Derive a substantial portion of their income from trade; and
4. Reinvest the majority of their profit/surplus in the fulfilment of their mission.
   [J Barraket, 2010]

We’ll start this startup weekend with an optional workshop at midday on Friday 16 August, where interested participants will map out the social enterprise space in New Zealand, and discuss areas of possible collaboration.  We’ll break and then reconvene at 6pm, with an icebreaker game and dinner, and then people pitch their business concepts to the crowd. 10-15 concepts will attract viable teams around them. By late Friday night, teams will have sketched out their concepts in some detail and everyone will have roles assigned and an inkling of how they’re going to achieve their goals over the weekend.

Saturday morning is all about market validation – teams will be contacting potential customers and finding out if there’s really a market need for what they’re building. If not, they’ll need to pivot based on the information gleaned by “getting out of the building” and talking to people. Meanwhile, developers and designers will be furiously building products (or mock-ups), and teams will be attracting partners, advisers, and customers. Preparation of final 5-minute presentation will start on Sunday morning, because teams will need to pitch it by dinner time. After that, prizes will be awarded to the best teams.

Where you go from there is up to you. Many exciting businesses have come out of Startup Weekends.

Whether you just want to find out what the world of startups is like in a fun environment or you’re a developer or designer looking for the next big thing or a social entrepreneur l0oking for a team to turn your idea into reality, Startup Weekend is a fantastic way to test your own abilities and connect with great people along the way.

We are offering a very limited number of tickets for $25 before the end of February - register now to secure your place.