Startup Weekend In Hamburg 22nd/23rd September

An idea for a Startup Weekend got huge amount of support in the German sphere in a short time and will happen in Hamburg on September 22nd / 23rd. The goal is to bootstrap a business idea in just one weekend. If this succeeds, the organizers would like to expand this to other German cities as well as other European places.

When Cem Basman asked on his blog Sprechblase if someone would be interested in a Startup Weekend in Hamburg, he probably did not expect such a strong reaction.

After 24 hours, over hundred people had stated their interest in participating, through mail, comments and blog entries of their own.

Startup Weekend is supposed to be a private Bootstrap Network for entrepreneurs and interested participants, with the goal to start a new venture in one weekend. Business ideas are supposed to be fit for this short amount of work time and every participant is a possible stakeholder. A framework for processes as well as a legal container will be provided. This experiment should result in practical experience as well as a lot of fun.

Cem is not the usual 20 year old entrepreneur you would might expect:

I am a serial entrepreneur and specialist as a “Professional IT Service Provider” who develops, organizes and delivers nationwide and internationally professional IT services operations for large enterprises or markets. My focus is on IT infrastructure services.

With his background of project experience it is no wonder that he is interested more in facilitating:

Startup Weekend is also a concept of crowdsourcing. I am strong believer in the power of people - I am a child of the early post 68 years. People are the most valuable asset we have. People are the source of ideas and talents. Organizing the crowd to foster these ideas and talents to grow into useful enterprises and organizations is a important task.

Startup Weekend is something in between Burning Man and a Barcamp, something in between Woodstock and Jugend Forscht (a science contest for schools). Or something very different. Let’s Rock! Let’s Roll! Laissez bon temps roulez!

The differences to an event like Seedcamp are obvious, for example Seedcamp demands that the winners come to London for three months to make use of the network, and Startup Weekend does not even know yet how to efficiently organize the stakeholders. If you already know what your idea is and know where you are going, an initiative like Seedcamp is the right place to be.

But at least in Germany, where the idea of entrepreneurship is not really engrained in society, many interested people have never had the chance to play with the idea of being an entrepreneur, to get an idea what it takes to build / bootstrap a business. And even if they are entrepreneurs by heart, there is not much of a playground to experiment with your first experiences.

Though more Barcamp in style, Startup Weekend is similar to Seedcamp in the way that a lot of experienced professionals will attend and make this a weekend worth participating. I use the comparison to Barcamp on purpose, as Barcamps in Germany are very successful; and in many ways have become a starting point for a lot of conversations and networking between teens and people in their thirties.

But not everybody is happy about too much startup mentality at a Barcamp (a critique of the recent Barcamp Hamburg), so events more dedicated to startup / business are surely welcome. Co-organizer Jörg Battermann is also organizer of a Startup Camp in November (upcoming link)

In order to decide which idea - weather commercial or not - should be worked on that weekend, Cem has announced a “Beauty Contest & Death Match”: A maximum of 20 ideas will be presented in 3 minutes and has to answer the following questions:

1. What is the business?
2. Which problem will it solve?
3. Where does the money come from?
4. What is special?
5. Who are you?

The two top voted ideas then will do another 15 minutes of presentation including questions, and after 120 minutes there is going to be a winning idea.

For information the team will use the newly started blog and for running event invitations as well as information to directly interested participants there is a group on Germany’s leading social business platform Xing. The upcoming entry can be found here.

But it does not stop with just one weekend:

Startup Weekend is a success if we have real fun at the weekend, a proven business creation blue print at the end and a atmosphere which encourages and enables people with ideas to create their businesses. If this is successful I would like to spread this concept all over the nation and Europe to build up a real factory for startups!

Company Index: Seedcamp