Startup Weekend aiming to promote entrepreneurship

The second ever Startup Weekend concluded last Sunday. The first inaugural edition was held in Jaffna over four months ago. This time round over 100 participants gathered at Trace Expert City, Colombo.

Startup Weekend is a global initiative that aims to promote entrepreneurship by empowering participants with the necessary skills to succeed in building their very own Startups, over the course of the three-day event. Participants are introduced to mentors who have successful companies, while also giving advice on the pitfalls of starting a new business.  Simultaneously similar events were being held in cities in Europe, South American and beyond.

The event kicked off with speeches by Sachundra Samararatne, Program Manager for ICTA, sharing his experiences of the IT industry in Sri Lanka. “There have been many events such as this one in Sri Lanka including Seed Stars, every company, government organisation orNGO are looking at Startups. We have made a significant change to the eco-system of this country. You, who are gathered here, shall pitch ideas that shall change the entire landscape of Sri Lanka. The IT industry shall be the number one export by 2020.”

Following brief speeches by chairman of DIMO Ranjith Pandithage, on the founding of the company and another inspirational talk by Shahani Markus the founder of Emojot. American Andrew Hyde founder of Startup Weekend then took to the stage to explain the motivation behind the driving force for events such as this one.Andrew is an entrepreneur and community builder who currently works for TechStars, a non-profit foundation that improves diversity in technology entrepreneurship by providing opportunities for underrepresented entrepreneurs through grants, scholarships and mentoring programs. This is the 79^th country he has visited and Colombo is the 99^th Startup Weekend he has attended. “I believe in community, community drives us forward. It’s not about getting an idea it’s about networking. ” Said Andrew to a room full of budding entrepreneurs.

After a brief exercise using random words to create a company, then subsequently pitching an idea based on the company created with the random words participants where invited to pitch ideas of their own. This could range from companies that they have thought about in length or which they had a small notion of a company, yet did not know how to drive the product forward. Andrew explains that it is easier to identify a problem within your community then devise a company from scratch.

The Start Up ideas ranged from an app to share recipes, an app that identifies where women are most likely to be harassed in the street to create a safer journey home, wedding management software, a coding boot camp for students and in all 30 ideas where pitched. Of these 30 all the participants shall vote on the best ideas they shall be whittled down to around 10-15.

Over the course of the next two days the companies devised went threw the process of feasibility, cost, design and execution. On Sunday a panel of judges assessed the Startups and chose the app Pepper Spray to win the competition. The app creates a heat map, whereby users report corruption and other crimes to inform a wider audience on the hotspots in a particular area code.

Text and pictures Dilantha Dassanayake