This year again, Startup Weekend is coming back to Biel/Bienne, the biggest bilingual city of Switzerland. And again, I’m deeply involved in the organisation, as Biel/Bienne is kind of my home city.
You may have heard that Startup Weekend Lausanne just happened, on EPFL campus. Startup Weekend Biel/Bienne is different. Less students, more people active as manager, developers, business men, designers… and a unique atmosphere just in regards of the language spoken! As a coach, I’ve been interacting with a team first in German, then in English to finally speak French. And vice-versa. Everyone kind of spoke its own language and does its best to understand the other ones. And it works!
But if you’re new here, you may think: What is Startup Weekend? Startup Weekend is a 54-hour event for developers, designers and entrepreneurs to hack on their latest idea. Participants are able to present their own concept (rather than dreaming it alone, at home!) and form a team around it or join forces with someone else. Over the weekend, SW participants are putting the foundations of a business case, designing a
nd building a product prototype, testing their assumptions with potential customers (for instance, going to the train station 5 minutes away or in a shopping center… where you can find people who have 2 minutes to help you to test your basic assumptions). On Sunday night, entrepreneurs pitch the results of the weekend intensive work to a panel of investors and serial entrepreneurs.
What’s more, over the weekend, participants will have access to experienced experts and mentors to help bringing ideas to life. This year, we have again a very strong panel of experienced entrepreneurs, who will be coaching and challenging the participants.
- if you have an idea that you want to work on during the weekend, prepare yourself to be able to present it in 60 seconds and to convince other participants to invest (virtual money – we don’t speak about bitcoin here, however ;-)!) in your project.
- if you don’t have a startup idea… no worries. As long as you want to put your ideas, creativity, insights and skills at the disposal of other people (because you’ll be joining a team – no space for freeriders here)… simply GREAT! And It may happen that you even find an idea popping up in your head during the pitch session….
Anyone who is interested by launching a new project is welcome! If you’ve been thinking about an idea for months, but need a final push to make it happen (or at least to test it), if you are looking for ways to form a great team, or if you are simply excited to get involved with a startup at its conceptualisation, this weekend is for YOU!
Startup Weekend is an intensive weekend, where you can taste the startup life and challenges without having to leave your job, where you can have a look of how it looks like to launch a new venture (without any risk!).
Register as soon as you can to Startup Weekend Biel/Bienne, happening at Swiss Innovation Park Biel/Bienne (previously INNOCAMPUS) on March 18-20th!