A featured round up of Startup Weekend number 9

Startup Weekend Blog

Well, Startup Weekend provides that exact opportunity. It’s our mission at Spacecubed to support over 20,000 entrepreneurs, startups and businesses by the year 2025, so when Startup Weekend comes along, we’re in our 'startup' element.

Last weekend, we held the 9th Startup Weekend to take Perth by storm and to say it was big would be an understatement.

Over 100 participants from diverse backgrounds and experiences came together to create, idealise and attempt to solve existing real world problems through engaging with the startup creation process and validating products.

Starting a business is no easy task and can often take months, if not years to get it off the ground. Startup Weekend emulates this process in one fast paced, 54-hour weekend, seeing some of Perth’s brightest thinkers, collaborate and create some innovative concepts. Participants leave the weekend equipped with real time tricks of the trade they would need to get a business off the ground and up and running quickly and comfortably.

14 diverse teams were formed on the Friday and presented their ideas on Sunday night’s final pitch session, with many of them having built a functional product, and with some even generating real revenue which is a massive step for a startup just 54 hours old.

Teams and innovative ideas

The best teams are often comprised of people from all walks of life, with different skill sets, experiences and demographics, and the teams and their ideas were as follows:

• Pro Gamer Academy: Connecting gamers with professional gaming coaches
• My Tour Buddy: Using micro-video content to help travellers learn the local secrets of a destination
• Repport: Providing sentiment analysis of written content for bloggers and content producers
• Get Fished: Helping avid fisherman fish more by connecting them with boat owners
• GiveEasy: Making on-street donations easy through a cashless system
• Beac’n: Using crowdsourced images to help people find which clubs and bars are ‘going off’
• GigTopia: Tackling the problems with Upwork and other freelance platforms through a new freelancer market place
• Happy Robbie: Using Facebook messenger chat bots to help onboard new members to communities
• Ethical Shopper: Helping consumers understand the the ethical supply chain of the products they purchase
• Drastic Plastic: Teaching corporates and schools how to reduce plastic waste
• Bump-Ed: Digital bumper stickers that display e-ink advertising content
• Find Events: Centralisation of Perth business events current found on Eventbrite, Facebook and Meetup
• Cheap Feed: Helping restaurants fill seats by publishing short-term deals
• SpaceFerrit: Empowering the people to share their unused car park spaces

“The idea of Startup Weekend isn’t to create successful businesses, but to equip participants with the key skills they’d need in order to do so in the future,” Spacecubed’s Events Coordinator, Lainey York, said.

“As this was my first Startup Weekend where I was the facilitator and lead organiser, I feel a great sense of pride - I’m astounded by the way the participants tackled the weekend,” Nate Sturke, this year’s organiser said.

A huge thank you to our mentors, judges, sponsors and organisers. And to our Startup Weekenders, thankyou for your attendance and to look out for more events at Spacecubed aiding your professional development and business journey, stay up to date on our spacecubed blog and events page here, or become a member below.