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

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Rackham Graduate School


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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!

Schedule

Friday

Feb 1
  • Registration start and food is served
  • Welcome presentation in auditorium, pitchfire session
  • Mingling and voting process
  • Teams form, work on ideas begins
  • Participants leave

Saturday

Feb 2
  • Arrive, breakfast & coffee
  • Q&A session with mentors in auditorium
  • Teams continue work
  • Lunch
  • Dinner
  • Stress relief activity
  • Participants leave

Sunday

Feb 3
  • Arrive, breakfast & coffee
  • Call for help (this is self motivated, so don’t be shy)
  • Lunch
  • FINAL PRESENTATIONS
  • Judges meet in conference room
  • Winners announced
  • Dinner
  • Begin Super Bowl livestream (tenative)
  • Go home!
Blog
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The Winners!

by swannarbor

Hi everyone!  Thanks to everyone who made this event a success! Here is a list of the winning teams and [...]

Final Team Roster

by swannarbor

Here are the teams and what they are building this weekend at Startup Weekend Ann Arbor 2013. This will be [...]

Two Days Left!

by swannarbor

Hey everyone! We have come to the final few days before Startup Weekend Ann Arbor and we hope you are [...]

Get ready!

by swannarbor

Hey everyone! The weekend we have all been waiting for is right around the corner! We want to provide you with [...]

Register Now!

by swannarbor

Tickets are available now and selling quickly so hurry to make sure you get yours! Student tickets are $35 and [...]

Drum Roll Please…

by swannarbor

A big congratulation to our winning teams! Top 2 teams: 1. Rap Roulette Prizes: 2 sponsored tickets from the University [...]

End of Day 2

by swannarbor

As we reach the end of Day 2 here at SWAnnArbor, I can’t believe all that has happened here in [...]

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Speakers

Erik Torenberg

CEO, Co-founder, rapt.fm

Erik is the CEO + Co-founder of rapt.fm. Otherwise, he writes, reads, raps, and builds relationships.

Dug Song

Founder, Duo Security

Dug is co-founder & CEO at Duo Security, a mobile authentication and security company solving the biggest problem in computer security today: account takeover and online fraud. Duo is based in Ann Arbor, MI and backed by Google Ventures, True Ventures, Radar Partners, and Resonant Venture Partners.

He was previously VP Engineering at Zattoo, Europe's premier Internet TV provider which he helped grow 10x to 5 million subscribers in 24 months.

Dug spent 7 years as co-founder & Chief Security Architect at Arbor Networks, protecting over 70% of the world's Tier-1 service providers and achieving $120M+ in annual revenue before its acquisition by Danaher.

Before Arbor, Dug built the first commercial network anomaly detection system (acquired by NFR / Check Point), and managed security in the world's largest production Kerberos environment.

Dug's contributions to the security community include popular open source security, distributed filesystem, and operating system projects, and co-founding the USENIX Workshop On Offensive Technologies.

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Judges

Maria LaLonde

Recruiting and Development Leader, Bizdom   |  

Maria LaLonde is the Recruiting and Development Leader for Bizdom, a startup accelerator that helps entrepreneurs launch, fund and grow innovative web and tech-based startups in Detroit and Cleveland. Bizdom is a nonprofit that was founded by Dan Gilbert, founder and chairman of Quicken Loans, majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, and general partner at Detroit Venture Partners.

Maria’s role at Bizdom is to raise awareness about Bizdom in the community and vet candidates for our accelerator. She also advocates for the startup community, mentors and connects
entrepreneurs to available resources. Maria is a serial entrepreneur that has founded businesses in the recruiting, automotive and real estate industries. She has a BA in Communication from Michigan State University and started her career with Enterprise Rent-A-Car, where she managed branch offices and oversaw the recruiting process for 35 branch offices. Maria is a native Detroiter and is passionate about creating a vibrant and thriving startup community in Detroit and Michigan.

Jonathon Triest

Managing Partner, Ludlow Ventures Fund

Jonathon Triest is currently the managing partner for Ludlow Ventures Fund One and Two. In 2011, Jonathon was awarded the Crain's Detroit Business Award for 20 in their 20's. That same year, he co-founded Funded By Night, a vehicle to help internet startups launch and get discovered. Previously, Triest served as creative director for New York's Discovery Productions. In 2005, he launched the Atlanta-Based Triest Group, a mid-level advertising firm. In addition to his role at Ludlow, Triest is a mentor at The Brandery, a board member of the Trico Foundation, and a board member of Venture for America.

David Bloom

Venture Catalyst and Coach, Factotem   |  LinkedInGoogle+

David Bloom is a serial startup-guy in Software/Mobile/SaaS Consumer Electronics, Big Data/Analytics, and Life Science/Medical Devices.  He coaches startups on Business Canvas and Customer Development, Translational Research/Commercialization, Revenue Generation, and Networking.  In 1995, David co-founded the Factotem Constellation, a diverse team of business acceleration professionals who engage with entrepreneurs and investors on product development, business development, and diligence projects.

David chairs the Ann Arbor Marketing Roundtable and the Annual Collaboration for Entrepreneurship Consultants' Corridor, and he is a Director of the a2geeks charitable foundation.  David won the Innovation Michigan Award for Business Strategy, the Accelerate Michigan Innovation Competition for Medical Device, and he was Ann Arbor SPARK's Mentor of the Year.  David judges company pitches for the U-M Ross Business School and for the American Technology Awards. This is David's third Startup Weekend.

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Coaches

Jason Raznick

Founder, Benzinga

Jason Raznick is the founder of Benzinga and is a passionate entrepreneur. He founded two successful Internet companies prior to Benzinga.com and its subsidiary, Marketfy.com. Raznick has been quoted throughout the media in places such as CNBC, Fox Business, NPR and The Wall Street Journal.

Benzinga is a financial media and data provider based out of Detroit and currently serves over 3 million investors in over 125 countries every month. Benzinga provides original, accurate, and timely global content to the financial industry. Benzinga also builds real-time data tools and applications to give traders and readers an edge that was once only available to the very elite.

In 2012, Raznick was featured on Crain’s prestigious 40 under 40 list. Raznick also received the JVS’ Rising Entrepreneur of the Year award.

Raznick is excited to move his business forward nationally by recruiting entrepreneurs and developers in the Metro Detroit area to help launch future products and services.

Steve Schwartz

Founder, Alfa Jango

Steve graduated from Kettering University as a Mechanical and Electrical Engineer. He founded his first company as a freshman in college, selling used car parts. In 2007, he co-founded RateMyStudentRental, selling private-label software to colleges and universities to help improve off-campus housing. Then in 2008, he founded LeadNuke, which generates B2B sales leads by monitoring online conversations. He is now managing member at Alfa Jango Software, partnering with and building web applications for startups.

Jon Gagnon

Vice President/General Manager, Oomba.com

Jon Gagnon has been in the game industry for over 10 years, starting his career at Microsoft on the first Xbox. Jon has a degree in Applied Arts of 3D Animation from Digipen Institute of Technology. His most recent published game is UNO Roboto from Mattel. He has participated at early stage tech startups since 2009, is particularly excited about mobile games, and is currently VP/GM at Oomba.com

Sonali Vijayavargiya

Founder and Managing Director, Augment Ventures

Sonali launched Augment Ventures in January of 2011, and brings in over sixteen years of experience in Project Finance, Investment Banking and Venture Investing. She works closely with early stage companies, nurturing and developing them from proof of concept to final IPO or strategic sale. She has advised entrepreneurs and technologists in a number of different industries: Alternative Energy, Information Technology, Automotive and Life Sciences. Her perceptive insight into technologies and business models for early stage companies has helped shape commercial success for her clients. Sonali’s global work experience has given her a keen eye for leveraging economic and regional efficiencies to develop profitable cross border alliances among companies operating in different sectors.

Prior to Augment Ventures, in 2005, Sonali founded Augment Capital LLC, a venture advisory practice, where she provided strategic advice to many seed and early stage companies in CleanTech and Information Technology. Through Augment Capital, she successfully helped her clients position their start-ups to secure over $20 million dollars in funding. These companies have further raised an additional $60 million in follow-on funding through national and international venture funds. Some of her successful clients include: Accuri Cytometers, AMI, Danotek Motion Technologies, Global Energy Conversion and NRG Dynamix.

Prior to forming Augment in 2005, Sonali worked in Mumbai with organizations such as Industrial Development Bank of India, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Edelweiss Capital where she raised over $100 million for her clients and advised start-up companies from incorporation to fund raising to successful listing.

She holds an M.B.A. from the Symbiosis Institute of Business Management and a Bachelor of Science in Statistics from Fergusson College both in Pune, India. She is a recipient of Leaders and Innovators award by Grant Thornton (2008), Corp! Entrepreneur of Distinction Award (2011) and Top 10 Michigan Business Women awarded by The Greater Detroit chapter of National Association of Women Business Owners (2012). Currently, she serves as an advisor to Frankel Fund, a pre-seed fund run students at University of Michigan Ross Business School.

Hassan Hodges

Director of Digital Innovation, MLive Group

Hassan Hodges is the Director of Digital Innovation for the MLive Media Group. MLive.com is the #1 news and information website in Michigan. Hassan is responsible for identifying and developing business models and products on both the content and advertising sides of the business.
Before joining MLive in 2012, he spent the previous 3 years building out AnnArbor.com, where he handled design and technology of the site. Shortly after launching in 2009, AnnArbor.com began to rank as the top newspaper website in the United States with the greatest local market reach.
While he focuses on the business and technology side of the media industry today, Hassan studied geography at Rutgers University and is trained as a cartographer. He has a strong background in design and photography and spent his first 5 years in the media business making maps and infographics.

Zach Steindler

Co-Founder, Olark

Zach graduated from the University of Michigan in 2007 with a Bachelors of Science in Computer Engineering. In 2005, he began work with Zattoo as a Startup Developer, Europe's premier Internet TV provider. Here, Zach's passions as a developer allowed him to advance and join Zattoo's Core Team in 2007. In 2008, he co-founded coffeehouse coders, a meetup group dedicated to banging out code, swapping code snippets, bouncing around ideas, and talking about the latest and greatest in software. Soon after, Zach co-founded Olark, a service which brings hassle-free live chat to your website to track leads, drive sales, and provide top-tier support. Zach is currently the Chief Olarchitect at Olark. Formally launched in August of 2009, Olark received angel funding (including Y-Combinator), and now has offices Palo Alto, California and Ann Arbor, MI.

Benjamin Blackmer

Co-Founder, Are You A Human

Ben is an Ann Arbor native and Ross MBA grad of '12. While at Ross, Ben co-founded Are You a Human (areyouahuman.com), a Detroit-based Internet technology company that aims to improve the human verification process online. The company has developed a technology that uses short, simple games to prove that users online are human, rather than the twisted text challenges known as CAPTCHA. These games, known as PlayThru's, have been installed on 5000+ sites, and served over 41MM games. Before returning to Ann Arbor, he completed a bachelor of music at New York University in jazz piano performance, economics, and French, as well as master of arts in French Studies. He was digital media strategist and consultant for various companies in Chicago and North Carolina.

Moses Lee

Co-Founder, Seelio

Moses Lee is CEO & Cofounder of Seelio, an online portfolio network that empowers college students to showcase their projects and experiences to discovery opportunity.
He is also a faculty member at the Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Michigan (UM) where he teaches the Entrepreneurial Practicum course and Intro to Social Entrepreneurship.

Previously, Moses directed TechArb, the UM student startup accelerator. He was also a Manager at the William Davidson Institute and the Managing Editor of NextBillion.net. In 2007, Moses co-founded www.globalens.com, an e-commerce website for higher educational material at the University of Michigan, and also started the social venture fund, Rain Capital.

David Landau

Managing Director, ScaleFire Group

David Landau specializes in leadership development, sales training and innovation consulting, and has founded 5 companies in Southeast Michigan. He is the founder of the 17-member ScaleFire Group, a strategic and tactical consulting firm that builds divisions and entire companies in the tech, digital, and life sciences industries.

David served as interim managing director of Benzinga, an innovative news and financial analysis service that focuses on global markets. His marketing and operations company, Elysium Enterprises, grew 300% in the last two years, creating over 30 local jobs. His passion for helping fellow entrepreneurs drove him to serve as a coach in Great Lakes Entrepreneur Quest. Having studied in a condensed program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, David is a Zen practitioner, martial artist and gallery-represented painter who aims to live and breathe the innovative Silicon Valley Vibe.

When working with startups, David aims to ensure a culture of execution drives the business forward. He helps build systems and processes to maintain organization while prioritizing secure sources of automated, scalable cashflow. As an artist, David brings creativity and design thinking to every project and conversation. Intensely passionate about personal growth, David aims to practice transformational leadership and executive coaching to help people become their best selves, especially when mindfulness is required in the face of crisis or success.

Adrian Fortino

Vice President, First Step Fund

Adrian currently is a Vice President at the First Step Fund. First Step Fund is a seed and an early stage investment fund focused on technology and high growth companies in Southeast Michigan. He is responsible for all aspects of investments with an emphasis on high tech and clean tech startups.

Adrian’s entrepreneurial experience includes launching three technology start-ups (Co-founder of Shepherd Intelligent Systems, SideCar and FlockTAG) where he developed the business models, raised over $3 million from angels and VCs, led product development and launch in national markets.

At Ann Arbor Spark Pre-Seed Fund, Adrian helped with all activities of the fund, including mentoring startup CEOs, screening investments, conducting initial due diligence, leading these to successful closings.

Adrian spent eight years of his career as an engineering manager for Ricardo Inc. a publicly traded global provider of engineering solutions and clean technology with facilities in North America, Europe and Asia.

Adrian holds a BSE in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan and an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

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