It has been my pleasure this weekend to serve as a mentor at the 2013 edition of Startup Weekend Montreal. The event, held at the HEC Montreal business school, allows budding entrepreneurs to pitch ideas and work on startups during an exhilarating 54 hours.
Busbud is proud to help support the local entrepreneurship system and to contribute to this event. Events such as Startup Weekend help foster connections amongst members of our startup community, and hopefully give rise to innovative new products that make the world a better place.
The Startup Weekend organization is a global network of passionate leaders and entrepreneurs on a mission to inspire, educate, and empower individuals, teams and communities. Participants come share ideas, form teams, and launch startups. Created in USA in 2007, there have been more than 672 events organized in more than 320 cities and 90 different countries.
The event in Montreal kicked off Friday with Pitch fire, where every entrepreneur gets 60 seconds to pitch an idea. The best ideas make it through to the next round. On Saturday, the teams brainstormed and started producing early prototypes to implement their idea, even working into the late hours of the night. On Sunday, the teams got their pitches ready for the judges. All of this happens in a fun, fast-paced environment where entrepreneurs work feverishly to get the most done before their final pitch.
To get an even better feel of the event, check out the cool recap video our own Alain Wong had made for the 2012 edition.
That said, for the 2013 edition, the winning team on Sunday night was CrowdMedia, a platform allowing users to sell eye-witness photos to media outlets instantly. Congrats also to runners-up Dashbook and Smartalyzer, as well as all the teams who poured their passion into their pitches.
Thanks again to other local sponsors like Fasken Martineau, BDC, Real Ventures, iNovia Capital, SAJE, CEIM, Google Montreal, Github, Founder Fuel, Growtalks, Anges Quebec, Rho Ventures, Tandem Launch, TP1, F & Co, Execution Labs, Frank and Oak, Startup Academie and others.
A big shout out goes to amazing organizers Julie-Anne Larose, Komary Ly and Marc-Antoine Baril for investing time and energy to make this event happen for our local startup community.
Startup Weekend: you were great, see you next year!