This weekend was the first edition of Startup Weekend Jura, taking place in a crazy location: a wellness center! Around 50 people were participating to this event and not less than 23 ideas were presented on Friday night to the crew (just 60 seconds to tell what’s your idea, why you think there’s a great potential and who you’d like to recruit to work with you during the weekend!). After this pitch session, speakers had to get investors to finance their idea (each participants had dollars to spend on the 3 projects he likes most). Finally, 8 projects were selected and project leaders had to convince other participants to join the team… and 48 hours later, they had to pitch the project to a jury…
But stop explaining what a Startup Weekend is, here are the projects!
PickSell: a service to push your handcrafts products (think on Jura-made honey!) on Amazon, Ebay and all other market places in a 2 clic-process: scan your barcode, choose the price and… sell it! Biggest challenges are probably to scale the distribution and certify the quality of sold product.
HoReCast digitalizes the goods (beverages) ordering process of restaurants, hostels 
and cafes and will provide worthful real-time analytics to the beverages producer (which will be able to know exactly how many and where bottles were ordered). The most difficult thing is to overcome the chicken-an-egg problem (have sufficient end-customers to sell analytics).
Velorux provides a unique tool to rent a place in a network of securized bikes shelters: 
with your single ID, you’ll be able to rent a place everywhere. Biggest challenge is… to convince sufficient bikes shelters to gain the network effect.
Evalea is an online market place to exchange your clothes. Imagine that you’ve bought 
a dress, and realize back at home that it’s the wrong size. With evalea, you can post your item and try to find someone eager to have it… who has to propose you another item to exchange the product. The startup is assuming that most of trades will happen locally. Interesting concept which seems similar to what already exist… but concept of pure exchange is new!
ret2.me is the best way to get your lost object back. With this service, you can generate 
a unique code to stick on all your valuable objects. The person who finds your item will then go on ret2.me and tell where the object was discovered. You’ll be notified and simply choose on a clic process to have your object back. Great and simple concept, which has the advantage to help you recover easily the objects that matter for you!
Prana Sustainable Water is capturing waste water and recycling this locally, avoiding 
transport. Prana tries to trade water as a commodity and to provide a water foot print, for a better world and to enhance companies’ reputation. Laudable idea, but what’s about the risk to increase price of water for people who cannot afford it? Maybe I’ve not caught the idea in a whole.
9-99 would like to reinvent the iPad for elderly people. Or at least help them to have a 
simple and easy-to-use application to gather all the communication with their family. Motto is to help disconnected people interact with their descendance. Old people are more and more connected, what’s about the long term goal?
XOXO story transform you in a super dad or mom, helping you to become an inspired 
story-teller and build a personalized story for your kids. Main differentiation is to help you buy personalized stories, not books. Compelling idea for all parents who struggle to invent new stories for your kids.
And the winner is… ret2.me! Choosing the winner was hard for the jury, which awarded the second place to XoXo Story and the 3rd rank to Evalea. Special congratulations to ret2.me and Evalea, who found the idea Friday night AND were able to present a working prototype on Sunday night! And to XoXo for the explaining animation. Great hackers there ;-)!
This first edition was a success and I’m pretty happy with the energy and creativity felt in the room. Great atmosphere, good vibes… that’s all we need to start projects!
Congratulations to all people for the wonderful weekend spent there… And see you next year for the second edition!