Business Incubator Turns Startup Dreams into Reality Lydia Carey - The News
go to original January 5, 2013

Business incubator turns dreams into reality. (The News)

MEXICO CITY – Over 80 nervous participants packed the Universidad Centro presentation room on a Friday night in November hoping for a chance to pitch their next great idea at Startup Weekend Mexico 2013, as a crowd of students, professionals and onlookers waited to hear them.

Although not well-known by the general public, Startup Weekends are part of a new wave of professionals looking to revolutionize technology and the world. Whether participants are looking for technical skills, a business plan or just cold hard cash, they can often find it at a Startup Weekend a 54 hour marathon in which designers, entrepreneurs, developers and business experts meet to build businesses from scratch and compete for funding. This year’s Mexico City event, whose theme was sustainable technology, was just one of many Startup Weekends worldwide honoring Global Entrepreneurship Week, from Nov. 12 to 18.

Andrew Hyde launched the Start-up Weekend project in 2007 in Boulder, Colorado, and since then his brainchild has blossomed into a non-profit with 26 employees, hundreds of local organizers and offices in the United States, London and Mexico. The organization is sponsored by entrepreneurship heavyweights like Microsoft, Google and the Kauffman Foundation.

The weekends brings together initiates and veteran entrepreneurs who share their collective insight and provide mutual support throughout the process.

“For me (the Startup Weekend) is about inspiring sustainable thinking and learning about entrepreneurship,” said Steven Zwerink right before the presenters took the stage. Originally from Holland, Steve is a guest speaker and mentor invited to foster creativity.

It all began with “pitchfire,” a barrage of one minute presentations that must include the problem participants are hoping to solve with their new technology or platform, how the project will work, what kind of team members they need and the idea’s name. Over 40 speakers pitched their ideas, which ranged from a website to track water usage to a green business punch card, in a kind of organized chaos. Some ideas were already in the development phase, and at least one of the them was only 20 minutes old. After the presentations, all the participants voted for their favorites and formed teams. Over the next few days, software developers, designers and business experts molded basic concepts into a solid proposals complete with a marketing strategy and business plan.

“It’s important that ideas for sustainable technologies have a solid economic foundation,” Oscar Velasquez, one of the organizers, tells the group. “Lots of people want to do something good for the earth, but all of those things must by financially sustainable.”

Velasquez, owner of Jardín de Innovación, co-founded this year’s event with the Founder Institute and other local sponsors.

He said that the weekend is about “learning how to build a team and deal with teams in crisis,” to bring together people with diverse skills and a common passion for innovation. Jardin de Innovación, a business accelerator Valasquez started this year, offers entrepreneurs a range of workshops, mentors, professional services and funding resources, all geared to advancing their businesses. Technology can help social entrepreneurs and non-profit organizations by streamlining their products and services and giving them the flexibility to work faster, better and more efficiently, Velasquez said.

By Saturday morning, more than 40 pitches had been whittled down to 9 ideas that had teams working on design, function, and marketing details. Their meetings, called “workings” in start-up speak, were punctuated by cigarette breaks, pep talks and the occasional breakdown.

“It was really intense for one weekend,” said Violeta Pazaram, member of the Color Boys team, a clothes recycling venture. “Yesterday when we were all working out our ideas, it was too much, and I had to take a break in order to get back to work, but afterwards it was great.”

By Sunday night the teams were exhausted and excited, ready for final presentations. Projects would be judged on their viability, impact, operation and business model by CEOs, green architects, social entrepreneurs and university professors. Sunday’s presentations were more professional and thought-out than Friday’s, although presenters still had the jitters and when their powerpoints or presentations and adgets failed them, were often at a loss for words.

The weekend’s winner was Alejandro Cruz’s Wikicleta, a smartphone app that allows cyclists to track their mileage, search for safe biking routes throughout the city and get listings of bike-friendly businesses and shops. Brands that want to reach out to this niche market can advertise on the app, or use it to give away prizes and offer deals on merchandise. While Wikicleta may not solve the world’s energy crisis, it could make life easier for cyclists in Mexico City.

Wikicleta’s team won two days of business bootcamp, where experts help further define their product, three months of free office space and a scholarship to attend the Founder Institute Mexico City 2012/2013 Program.

Many start-up ideas don’t make it past the weekend, but that’s beside the point. Stefan Bielski, a start-up advisor and part of the Chula Verdura team working on a project to sell rooftop gardening kits to city-dwellers, said investors don’t buy ideas.

“Investors bet on the jockey, not the horse. A good team is better than a good idea, because with a good team you can accomplish anything.”

Team-building is what draws people to start-up weekends – idea people with no technical skills need impassioned software designers. The business savvy are looking for their next big project. The weekend facilitates networking that would normally take months or years to accomplish within an ordinary community of friends and colleagues and is “a low-risk way to test out an idea and get real feedback,” Bielski said.

Startup Weekend’s mantra of “no talk, all action” is misleading; there is actually a lot of talk involved in the process, but exactly what nascent businesses need – and the lack of which is often the reason for their failure. The weekends get participants excited about the reality of their idea, not just their hypothesis. It makes you want to start something.

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