A group of 110 techies, designers and other creative types will gather in downtown Detroit this weekend to prove their entrepreneurial mettle at the city's fourth Startup Weekend.
Startup Weekend is an idea out of a Seattle non-profit that now hosts events around the world -- a total of 260 in 67 countries last year. Strangers and tech old-timers come together to try to get business startups off the ground in less than three days.
Detroit's fourth event (the first was in 2009) is organized by Brandon Chesnutt.
"Most classes or conferences on startups really focus on the science of it," Chesnutt said. "Startup Weekend focuses on the art form. You talk to experts, but the goal is to build a company."
Participants, who range from a 16-year-old student to serial entrepreneurs, will meet on Friday evening and pitch their ideas. They will then assemble into teams, matching skill-sets and interests to the approved ideas, and race against other groups to make the most progress. After working together Friday night, Saturday and the first half of Sunday, the teams will make short presentations of their business plans to judges and an audience, who will choose the winners.
Detroit's last startup weekend included plans for a mobile game, a GPS tracking system and a professional networking site that uses social media to help people meet face-to-face over lunch.
The event is sponsored by Apigee, Bizdom U, Core3 Solutions, Absopure, Billhighway and Detroit Venture Partners. DVP is providing space at the Madison Building, and Associate Vice President Jake Cohen helped plan the event. He expects people from other venture companies to be present as well, and he thinks the possibility for capital should be both daunting and exciting to the weekend's participants.
"They're not just there out of the goodness of their heart," Cohen said of the VC companies. "A lot of them are looking for a cool idea to invest in."
So far, Detroit's Startup Weekends haven't launched any widely successful companies, at least to Chesnutt's knowledge. But they can be just as useful for networking and kick-starting projects.
"It gets people bit by the [start-up] bug," said Cohen, "and lets them know that even in a weekend's time, they can make real progress on an idea."
And will Detroit Venture Partners, which provides support and funding for local startups, take an interest in any of the ideas presented this weekend?
"We're keeping an eye out for talented people that want to be part of the Detroit start-up revolution," Cohen said.
Curious about Detroit's tech scene? Check out HuffPost Detroit's Top Tech Startups of 2011 below:
Hajj Fleming thinks that his new software platform holds the key to putting his company, gokit.me, in the driver's seat in Detroit's new tech startup race. "Detroit was the Silicon Valley of its day with the automotive industry and Motown" Detroit-based digital entrepreneur Hajj Fleming told Black Enterprise last month, adding that he planned to be part of the city's comeback. The company's website describes gokit as "an online identity platform that allows you to create visually compelling personal homepages that tell your story and share your social network connections in a central location." Hajj told the Network Journal that gokit's goal is to centralize a user's online presence in a way that's more formal than Facebook and more friendly than LinkedIn. "We wanted to create something that wasn't a resume format but was a professional, business-like destination," he said. "We're going to give people the ability to share what we call 'multiple personas' for the different dimensions of who they are in the business realm." Hajj formed gokit in March after attending South by Southwest Interactive, a tech gathering in Austin, Texas. He had just finished a photo shoot at the conference and needed to assemble a press package when the idea struck him to create a system that brings multiple information sources together in a unified platform. The business accelerator NewMe, which assists "under-repesented minorities in the technology industry," chose gokit as one of 10 businesses to participate in its mentorship and training program this past summer. -- David Sands Hajj Fleming thinks that his new software platform holds the key to putting his company, gokit.me, in the driver's seat in Detroit's new tech startup race."Detroit was the Silicon Valley of its day with the automotive industry and Motown" Detroit-based digital entrepreneur Hajj Fleming told Black Enterprise last month, adding that he planned to be part of the city's comeback.
The company's website describes gokit as "an online identity platform that allows you to create visually compelling personal homepages that tell your story and share your social network connections in a central location."
Hajj told the Network Journal that gokit's goal is to centralize a user's online presence in a way that's more formal than Facebook and more friendly than LinkedIn.
"We wanted to create something that wasn't a resume format but was a professional, business-like destination," he said. "We're going to give people the ability to share what we call 'multiple personas' for the different dimensions of who they are in the business realm."
Hajj formed gokit in March after attending South by Southwest Interactive, a tech gathering in Austin, Texas. He had just finished a photo shoot at the conference and needed to assemble a press package when the idea struck him to create a system that brings multiple information sources together in a unified platform.
The business accelerator NewMe, which assists "under-repesented minorities in the technology industry," chose gokit as one of 10 businesses to participate in its mentorship and training program this past summer.
-- David Sands
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gokit
Hajj Fleming thinks that his new software platform holds the key to putting his company, gokit.me, in the driver's seat in Detroit's new tech startup race. "Detroit was the Silicon Valley of its day with the automotive industry and Motown" Detroit-based digital entrepreneur Hajj Fleming told Black Enterprise last month, adding that he planned to be part of the city's comeback. The company's website describes gokit as "an online identity platform that allows you to create visually compelling personal homepages that tell your story and share your social network connections in a central location." Hajj told the Network Journal that gokit's goal is to centralize a user's online presence in a way that's more formal than Facebook and more friendly than LinkedIn. "We wanted to create something that wasn't a resume format but was a professional, business-like destination," he said. "We're going to give people the ability to share what we call 'multiple personas' for the different dimensions of who they are in the business realm." Hajj formed gokit in March after attending South by Southwest Interactive, a tech gathering in Austin, Texas. He had just finished a photo shoot at the conference and needed to assemble a press package when the idea struck him to create a system that brings multiple information sources together in a unified platform. The business accelerator NewMe, which assists "under-repesented minorities in the technology industry," chose gokit as one of 10 businesses to participate in its mentorship and training program this past summer. -- David SandsRelated on HuffPost:
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