What Is Startup Weekend?

What is Startup Weekend?

Startup Weekend is a global network of passionate leaders and entrepreneurs on a mission to inspire, educate, and empower individuals, teams and communities. Come share ideas, form teams, and launch startups.

Startup Weekend Global Site

Past event…

Event Ended

Ever wondered what it takes to be an entrepreneur?

The professional and personal challenges, the high and lows, the failures and the success?

Startup Weekend is a global grassroots movement of active and empowered entrepreneurs who are learning the basics of founding startups and launching successful ventures. It is the largest community of passionate entrepreneurs with over 400 past events in 100 countries around the world in 2011.

The non-profit organization is headquartered in Seattle, Washington but Startup Weekend organizers and facilitators can be found in over 200 cities around the world. From Mongolia to South Africa to London to Brazil, people around the globe are coming together for weekend long workshops to pitch ideas, form teams, and start companies.

All Startup Weekend events follow the same basic model: anyone is welcome to pitch their startup idea and receive feedback from their peers. Teams organically form around the top ideas (as determined by popular vote) and then it’s a 54 hour frenzy of business model creation, coding, designing, and market validation. The weekends culminate with presentations in front of local entrepreneurial leaders with another opportunity for critical feedback.

Whether entrepreneurs found companies, find a cofounder, meet someone new, or learn a skill far outside their usual 9-to-5, everyone is guaranteed to leave the event better prepared to navigate the chaotic but fun world of startups. If you want to put yourself in the shoes of an entrepreneur, register now for the best weekend of your life!

Schedule

Friday

May 31
  • Registration Starts
  • Dinner & Networking
  • Welcome & Speakers
  • Pitches Start
  • Attendees vote for the top ideas
  • Teams start forming and discussing ideas
  • Start to formalize teams and take an inventory of skills. Be honest, and direct about what resources and skills are needed for the weekend. You may stay and work as late as the venue will allow

Saturday

Jun 1
  • Arrive, simple breakfast & coffee
  • Teams formed and setting up workspace for the weekend
  • Lunch
  • Call for needs & skills
  • Coaches help teams one-on-one. They are here to help!
  • Dinner
  • Mid weekend check-in, status reports, call for help
  • Finished for the day. You may stay and work as late as the venue will allow

Sunday

Jun 2
  • Arrive, simple breakfast & coffee
  • Call for help (this is self motivated, so don’t be shy)
  • Lunch
  • Coaches arrive… ASK QUESTIONS
  • Gut check. Start prepping for presentations
  • Dinner
  • FINAL PRESENTATIONS
  • Judging & awards
  • Wrapup
  • Go home!
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Judges

Douglas Griffith (USA)

USAID CEED II   |  LinkedIn

Doug Griffith is the chief of party of the Moldova Competitiveness Enhancement and Enterprise Development II (CEED II) Project, implemented by Chemonics International Inc. Previously, he served as Chemonics’ business development director for Europe and Eurasia, Chief of Party of the Moldova CEED project, and a project director overseeing economic development projects in Armenia, Mali, Nepal, and Romania. He has also designed competitiveness initiatives in Armenia, Kosovo, and Romania and conducted agribusiness sector assessments in Albania, Central Asia, Kosovo, Romania, and South Africa. Prior to joining Chemonics, he worked for mortgage companies in Minneapolis, Minnesota and served for two years in the Peace Corps in the Republic of Niger, in West Africa, as a food security volunteer.

Mickael Faure (France)

Orange Moldova   |  LinkedIn

Mickael Faure is Marketing and Communication Director at Orange Moldova and President of Orange Moldova Foundation. He is working for Orange Group since 1998, has more than 12 years of professional experience in Marketing & International Support. Held long-term operational positions based in
Orange Affiliates (Orange Madagascar, Personal Argentina, Orange Botswana and currently Orange Moldova). In-depth knows the African, Middle Eastern and Spanish-speaking markets (46 missions in 19 countries).

Grigore Raileanu (Moldova)

Noction   |  LinkedIn

Grigore Raileanu is a 9+year serial entrepreneur, founder of an infrastructure management company, managed hosting provider, and a company developing network optimization products. He enjoys the challenge of creating, building strong teams and developing business models.

Rostyslav Chayka (Ukraina)

Founder and CEO at GameDev Conference   |  LinkedIn

Having 10 years of experience in education of IT professionals, Rostyslav is the founder of several educational and development Ukrainian project as GameDev Conference and Lviv StartUp Club. During last 4 last years Rostyslav was involved in training and direct consulting of startup teams. He has the general overview of Ukrainian startup scene and is editor in chief, writing analytics for www.startupline.com.ua. He is experienced in building scalable business models and marketing system for startups. His main goal is to grow western Ukrainian startup ecosystem and help startups be successful at global market. He is eager to share his knowledge with startups from Moldova

Roman Stirbu (Moldova)

Simpals   |  LinkedIn

Director of Internet Development Department at Simpals. Roman is an expert in the field of project management in IT projects - he created and developed high-load Internet projects using the following technologies – ASP.NET, Memcached, Hadoop/Hive/Hbase, Mongodb, Sphinx, Nginx. Roman also is the initiator creator of Agile Moldova Community. Can explain to startupers which technologies to use to implement their projects.

Emanuel Martonca (Romania)

ThinSlices   |  LinkedIn

Having 12 years of experience in marketing (product manager, customer experience, marketing director), Emanuel is now the manager of ThinSlices, a mobile development company building technology products, located in Romania. He is directly responsible for marketing, sales, HR and internal processes. His professional path includes 4 years at Dexia Bank in Brussels as a payment project leader and then senior customer experience expert.

Vitalie Esanu (Moldova)

Evisoft/CodeGoo   |  LinkedIn

IT-businessman. One of the most successful software developers in Moldova. Creator of the SpamBully (spam filter), SearchToolbar (till Google Toolbar), BlogUpp! (service to exchange links and banners), CodeGoo (application for iPhone), Privesc.eu (online-ТV). Each project that was launched is created with the help of techniques that sometimes are in the development stage. Will try to discover the secrets towards using advanced technologies.

Coaches

Anton Perkin (Moldova)

ITA / DeveloperMD   |  LinkedIn

Anton is the President of Association of IT specialists of Moldova (ITA) which represent interests of Moldavian IT professionals. Being on this position he is focused on organizing different events (such as Hackathons and Offlines for IT specialists) and supporting IT startups. Also he is founder of the DeveloperMD Community - the fast growing group of developers, QA engineers and system architects. As a technical specialist, Anton has 7-year experience as a web-programmer and project manager. For now the projects he developed are used in health care, governmental, educational, real estate, journalistic, entertainment and sport fields in Moldova and USA. Also he took part in many Government related projects building projects and online services for Moldova Road Police and Ministry of Home Affairs.
Besides that, Anton is CEO and co-founder at FusionWorks, an IT solutions company.

Andrey Aydov (Moldova)

QSystems   |  LinkedIn

Founder and CEO of QSystems, he knows how the strategy 'build a successful company and sell it' can work for you. QSystems is specialized in development and promotion of software products for financial organizations. Today these products are used by over 100 banks in Europe, Asia and Africa. Partners: Microsoft, CoinStar, American Express, China Union Pay, SWIFT.

Roman Stirbu (Moldova)

Simpals   |  LinkedIn

Director of Internet Development Department at Simpals. Roman is an expert in the field of project management in IT projects - he created and developed high-load Internet projects using the following technologies – ASP.NET, Memcached, Hadoop/Hive/Hbase, Mongodb, Sphinx, Nginx. Roman also is the initiator creator of Agile Moldova Community. Can explain to startupers which technologies to use to implement their projects.

Ilie Ghiciuc (Romania)

ThinSlices   |  LinkedIn

11 years of experience in IT (project manager, business analyst, entrepreneur), now co-founder and manager at ThinSlices, a mobile development company, building technology products that someday will be used by millions of customers. He also has been part of the Romanian-Dutch company Code40 Development (now MAXCODE) as both CEO and Partner since the start of the company till now. He also had the role of an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Computer Science, Iasi, Romania. His is working hard to prove that with the right team and the right mindset, it can be done.

Emanuel Martonca (Romania)

ThinSlices   |  LinkedIn

Having 12 years of experience in marketing (product manager, customer experience, marketing director), Emanuel is now the manager of ThinSlices, a mobile development company building technology products, located in Romania. He is directly responsible for marketing, sales, HR and internal processes. His professional path includes 4 years at Dexia Bank in Brussels as a payment project leader and then senior customer experience expert.

Alexander Minza (Moldova)

Dimac Ventures   |  LinkedIn

Alexander is a partner and co-founder of Dimac Ventures - privately held company fueled by venture investments and focused on igniting ideas, gathering teams of passionate developers around them and building great products. Currently, the team focuses on the development of several projects in the startup phase oriented to the large Internet audiences in Russia & CIS.

Rostyslav Chayka (Ukraina)

Founder and CEO at GameDev Conference   |  LinkedIn

Having 10 years of experience in education of IT professionals, Rostyslav is the founder of several educational and development Ukrainian project as GameDev Conference and Lviv StartUp Club. During last 4 last years Rostyslav was involved in training and direct consulting of startup teams. He has the general overview of Ukrainian startup scene and is editor in chief, writing analytics for www.startupline.com.ua. He is experienced in building scalable business models and marketing system for startups. His main goal is to grow western Ukrainian startup ecosystem and help startups be successful at global market. He is eager to share his knowledge with startups from Moldova

Ruslan Savchyshyn (Ukraina)

Director & Founder of MagneticOne   |  LinkedIn

Being once a startup , Ruslan is now an outstanding professional, an idea generator that does not allow anyone to stem the tide of progress. His high standards, both to himself and to each employee, allowed the company to achieve impressive success – this year MagneticOne celebrates 10 years. Ruslan is actively involved not only in entrepreneurial activities, but also in creating and supporting IT community organizations

Andrew Shuleansky (Moldova)

Crorkservice   |  LinkedIn

Andrew is the CBDO at Crorkservice (SEO). His previous job was development director of “999 Market” Ltd. He did internships in such companies as BMW, Bayern, Phillips. Andrew has working experience in Kiev, Moscow, and Bucharest. He was also actively involved in attracting investments. His main activities are development strategies and business analytics.
Cooperation with him will be interesting to those startupers who are able to ask right questions and want to get “the fishing rod” and not “the fish”.

Alexandru Pitel (Moldova)

Orange   |  

Alexandru Pitel is Multimedia Marketing Coordinator at Orange Moldova, being Project and Product Manager for content and applications products. Having 4 years of experience in multimedia marketing he was responsible for managing different special projects like Euro 2012, Champions League, iPhone 4S and tablets offers.

Pavel Zingan (Moldova)

Zingan.com   |  

Director of Zingan.com, more than 10 years of experience in internet – media. Owner of allmoldova.com, allfun.md, alllady.md and alltravel.md internet portals. Currently, Zingan.com provides internet promotion for over 1000 Moldovan companies.

Lev Samsonov (Rusia)

Global TechInnovations   |  LinkedIn

Development Manager of the investment company Global TechInnovations

He is experienced in Sales&Marketing , consulting in raising investment capital in pre-seed/seed/venture stages of business, mentoring startups and emerging businesses. Global TechInnovations (GTI) is a company specializing in investment consulting for early-stage innovation projects and specific acceleration programs for early-stage private investors and institutions. In the past year, its clients raised over $10M from venture funds in the Russian Federation. Some of the clients are: Car-Fin ($400 000 investment from the venture fund Prostor Capital and the Moscow Fund for Development of Venture Investment), ClipClock ($2,5 mln investment from the venture fund Runa Capital), Strana.Travel ($3 mln investment from the Krasnodar Venture Fund under the administration of “SBERINVEST”Asset Management). In GTI portfolio there are transactions from the Skolkovo Fund and the Russian Venture Company. For further information please visit the website: http://globaltechin.com/

Organizers
Stavros Messinis
Tatiana Durlestean
Nicolai Mihailiuc
Viorica Bordei
Ana Volosinovici
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Pre-Event preparation

by swmoldova

Hey guys, at tonights pre-event I asked those participating to do a little homework in preparation. If you follow these [...]

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