For the first time Techstars is dedicating an entire Startup Weekend to social impact; this time in Barcelona from July 6-8.
Techstars chose Barcelona for its Social Impact edition of Startup Weekend and recognized the Catalan city as “the hub of the collaborative economy.”
Startup Weekend – Barcelona Social Impact edition, as it is officially known, will be held entirely in English and is aimed at technicians, designers, marketing professionals, and business developers.
It will focus on eight specific themes:
- Climate Action
- Energy
- Food and Nutrition
- Responsible Consumption
- Clean Water
- Education, ICT, and Accessibility
- Sustainable Cities and Communities
- Health and Wellbeing
These selected themes reflect the strengths and priorities of Barcelona as the host city. They are also aligned with the targets of the UNLEASH.org hackathon, which will take place in Singapore next June.
Techstars Startup Weekend is a global challenge that takes place in cities all over the world – where entrepreneurs come together and turn an idea into reality within 54 hours.
For the Barcelona social impact event, participants will be able to present their projects that seek to tackle this generation’s most challenging problems while receiving feedback from mentors in the social impact community.
The participants will have to develop a social impact idea as well as devise a feasible business model.
Tickets start at €52.24 and include:
- Access to the full weekend-long event
- Mentoring by all-stars from the social impact and startup communities
- Tasty meals all weekend
- Collaboration with awesome social innovation professionals from throughout Spain
- All-star judge’s panel lead by startup and social innovation leaders
- Membership in the Startup Weekend Community (200K+ alumni)
- A process for taking any idea from concept to creation in a matter of days
Those looking to participate do not have to have a startup idea coming into the event, but they can develop one while there as there will be plenty of inspiration and networking.
“Come and spend the weekend, listen to the ideas being pitched, and see if something piques your interest! The weekend is all about learning about the startup ideation process and learning from each other,” the event promotion reads.
Techstars is looking for new ideas and projects that have not been previously conceived, and they should set out to solve social, educational, financial, environmental, or other issues.
Over the course of the weekend participants will be challenged to create a prototype of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that fits the needs of a target customer.
Those who do their market research and come up with an MVP will have the chance to showcase their businesses in front of judges and potential investors.
Activities crammed into 54 hours include:
- 3 hours: Networking, 60 second idea pitching
- 3 hours: Dream team formation with marketers, designers and developers (aka hustlers, hipsters and hackers)
- 6 hours: Idea sharing and brainstorming
- 9 hours: Market research and idea validation
- 9 hours: Product protyping
- 9 hours: Business model planning
- 3 hours: Presentation
- 12 hours: Team fighting, idea changing, business redirecting… eating, drinking, dancing and merrymaking
Startup Weekend, which is powered by Google for Entrepreneurs, is a non-profit entrepreneurship education event that brings together innovators, marketers, developers and designers.
Founded in 2007 by Andrew Hyde, Startup Weekend is based on a learn-by-doing methodology via fast decision-making, out of the box thinking, and a unique technique.
Update: The date for the event was changed from May 4-6 to July 6-8.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article listed Depot Lab as the venue for the event, but organizers have told Novobrief that this has been changed, and we will report on the new venue as soon as it becomes available.