Proposal: StartupWeek during GEW2009
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Ismail Dhorat
Apr 29, 2009, 3:48:28 AM4/29/09
to technolog...@googlegroups.com, Chris Spavin
Dear All,
I have been working on a model of encouraging entrepreneurship amongst university graduates, as in SA most graduates look to joining the corporate environment first before starting a business.
The idea is to hold a startup week, during global entrepreneurship week 2009 (unleashingideas.org)
The week will mostly be aimed at University students & graduates to be hosted at one of the universities. The event will bring together technologists, developers, marketers and company representatives into a room. The week will start off with a networking event, followed by a short talk and pitches.
Pitches are basically ideas for businesses or products where a demo can be developed within a short space of time (IT /Web Products), pitches will be open to anyone
Pitches can also include problems or challenges that companies are facing where technology or an innovative solution is required.
After the pitch, attendee's can self organize and choose which projects they would like to be involved in. Specific objectives will be set for the end of the week being:
1. Proof of Concept / Beta product , A demo of the product needs to be conducted
2. An elevator pitch for the product
3. Some form of branding & message
4. A mini business plan (Max 10 pages, very basic)
5. A short 5 min presentation
At the end of the week, all teams will present their products and they can then choose to continue working on it, register it as a business etc.
Sponsors need to be found to offer a prize for 1-3 winning products
VC's could be invited for the final day to sit in on the pitches.
A facilitator will be made available throughout the week. Each team will be assigned a 'Mentor' for that week, an experience entrepreneur who can guide them or respond to questions, the mentor does not have to physically be there throughout the week however they should be available online / chat. and maybe hold regular meetings.
Each morning all teams will get together for a group session, where teams can discuss some of the programming , design, marketing or branding challenges they are facing.
An expert panel will be made available to the teams. The expert panel will include specialists & Academia to respond to queries during the morning group sessions. Examples include, Technical specialist , Marketing professionals, Engineers etc.
Teams will be physically located in one place, and they can use thier own laptops. However i would like to open this up to even people who cannot afford laptops. So some amount of PC's would be needed. Development servers, and frameworks,software etc can be downloaded in advance to save on time.
Sponsors for this can be found...
So what needs to be done? We need to get together a core group of people to work on this.....
If you are interested, mail me or respond to this and we can take it from there.
Regards,
Ismail
I have been working on a model of encouraging entrepreneurship amongst university graduates, as in SA most graduates look to joining the corporate environment first before starting a business.
The idea is to hold a startup week, during global entrepreneurship week 2009 (unleashingideas.org)
The week will mostly be aimed at University students & graduates to be hosted at one of the universities. The event will bring together technologists, developers, marketers and company representatives into a room. The week will start off with a networking event, followed by a short talk and pitches.
Pitches are basically ideas for businesses or products where a demo can be developed within a short space of time (IT /Web Products), pitches will be open to anyone
Pitches can also include problems or challenges that companies are facing where technology or an innovative solution is required.
After the pitch, attendee's can self organize and choose which projects they would like to be involved in. Specific objectives will be set for the end of the week being:
1. Proof of Concept / Beta product , A demo of the product needs to be conducted
2. An elevator pitch for the product
3. Some form of branding & message
4. A mini business plan (Max 10 pages, very basic)
5. A short 5 min presentation
At the end of the week, all teams will present their products and they can then choose to continue working on it, register it as a business etc.
Sponsors need to be found to offer a prize for 1-3 winning products
VC's could be invited for the final day to sit in on the pitches.
A facilitator will be made available throughout the week. Each team will be assigned a 'Mentor' for that week, an experience entrepreneur who can guide them or respond to questions, the mentor does not have to physically be there throughout the week however they should be available online / chat. and maybe hold regular meetings.
Each morning all teams will get together for a group session, where teams can discuss some of the programming , design, marketing or branding challenges they are facing.
An expert panel will be made available to the teams. The expert panel will include specialists & Academia to respond to queries during the morning group sessions. Examples include, Technical specialist , Marketing professionals, Engineers etc.
Teams will be physically located in one place, and they can use thier own laptops. However i would like to open this up to even people who cannot afford laptops. So some amount of PC's would be needed. Development servers, and frameworks,software etc can be downloaded in advance to save on time.
Sponsors for this can be found...
So what needs to be done? We need to get together a core group of people to work on this.....
If you are interested, mail me or respond to this and we can take it from there.
Regards,
Ismail
John Mugerwa
Apr 30, 2009, 2:52:46 AM4/30/09
to technolog...@googlegroups.com
hullo
ismail
This is Mugerwa john of Makerere university kampala,uganda and a post graduate student offering a master of science in soil science and iam intrested in participating.
Thanks
Best regards
John --- On Wed, 4/29/09, Ismail Dhorat <idhorat@gmail..com> wrote: |
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