Turn your idea into a working business in a weekend

MEDIA RELEASE
For immediate release
Tuesday 8th May 2012
Auckland, New Zealand

Turn your idea into a working business in a weekend

Auckland’s entrepreneurs will be able to develop their ideas in a weekend startup high intensity event on 15-17th June. Building on the successful international Startup Weekend model, Startup Weekend Auckland gives the Auckland’s innovators the chance to develop business ideas that could fuel the city’s future.

The third Auckland Startup Weekend is being held on Auckland’s North Shore at ecentre. ecentre is looking to enable the winner of the next Startup Weekend to take their business from garage to global. The winning team of the October 2011 Startup Weekend Auckland has come a long way from their 60 second pitch on a Friday night, to pitching in Singapore at DEMO Asia.

Ticket sales are now open via the website http://auckland.startupweekend.org/. Startup Weekends are aimed at entrepreneurs and anyone thinking about business ideas. The process allows people to rapidly build and test ways of bringing the idea to market. Developers, designers, marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts come along to form teams which will work on start-up ideas, building products, and launching. This leads to prizes, publicity and tangible outcomes.

Participants in Startup Weekend get hands on experience with entrepreneurial methodology, meet with like minded people, and have a lot of fun along the way. There have been 468 Startup Weekends around the world so far, with over 45,000 entrepreneurs in attendance. Successful weekends have been held in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch with more planned.

The weekend begins with open mic pitches on Friday, as attendees inspire others to join their team. Over Saturday and Sunday, teams design and develop business plans, prove their concept and streamline their startup vision. They are supported by talented entrepreneurs and experts from several different startup fields. On Sunday evening the teams demo their prototypes, listen to judges’ feedback and win prizes.

Any business ideas are eligible, however the event is strongly tech-oriented because of the ability to generate an early prototype in a short period of time. Therefore prior events have had a high proportion of mobile or web focused startup ideas.

Global sponsors include Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services. Local sponsors include the ecentre, the business innovation centre at Massey University. The international Startup Weekend event is supported by the Kauffman Foundation, the world’s largest foundation devoted to entrepreneurship.

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