What Is Startup Weekend?

What is Startup Weekend?

Startup Weekend is a global network of passionate leaders and entrepreneurs on a mission to inspire, educate, and empower individuals, teams and communities. Come share ideas, form teams, and launch startups.

Startup Weekend Global Site

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Ever wondered what it takes to be an entrepreneur?

The professional and personal challenges, the high and lows, the failures and the success?

Startup Weekend is a global grassroots movement of active and empowered entrepreneurs who are learning the basics of founding startups and launching successful ventures. It is the largest community of passionate entrepreneurs with over 400 past events in 100 countries around the world in 2011.

The non-profit organization is headquartered in Seattle, Washington but Startup Weekend organizers and facilitators can be found in over 200 cities around the world. From Mongolia to South Africa to London to Brazil, people around the globe are coming together for weekend long workshops to pitch ideas, form teams, and start companies.

All Startup Weekend events follow the same basic model: anyone is welcome to pitch their startup idea and receive feedback from their peers. Teams organically form around the top ideas (as determined by popular vote) and then it’s a 54 hour frenzy of business model creation, coding, designing, and market validation. The weekends culminate with presentations in front of local entrepreneurial leaders with another opportunity for critical feedback.

Whether entrepreneurs found companies, find a cofounder, meet someone new, or learn a skill far outside their usual 9-to-5, everyone is guaranteed to leave the event better prepared to navigate the chaotic but fun world of startups. If you want to put yourself in the shoes of an entrepreneur, register now for the best weekend of your life!

Schedule

Friday

Sep 14
  • Registration Starts
  • Dinner & Networking
  • Welcome & Speakers
  • Pitches Start
  • Attendees vote for the top ideas
  • Teams start forming and discussing ideas
  • Start to formalize teams and take an inventory of skills. Be honest, and direct about what resources and skills are needed for the weekend. You may stay and work as late as the venue will allow

Saturday

Sep 15
  • Arrive, simple breakfast & coffee
  • Teams formed and setting up workspace for the weekend
  • Lunch
  • Call for needs & skills
  • Coaches help teams one-on-one. They are here to help!
  • Dinner
  • Mid weekend check-in, status reports, call for help
  • Finished for the day. You may stay and work as late as the venue will allow

Sunday

Sep 16
  • Arrive, simple breakfast & coffee
  • Call for help (this is self motivated, so don’t be shy)
  • Lunch
  • Coaches arrive… ASK QUESTIONS
  • Gut check. Start prepping for presentations
  • Dinner
  • FINAL PRESENTATIONS
  • Judging & awards
  • Wrapup
  • Go home!
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Speakers

Bob Summers

Entrepreneur Cheerleader

Mr. Summers founded 460 Angels, a group of over 30 accredited investors in the Blacksburg/Roanoke region and TechPad, a 6,000 sq.ft. coworking space in downtown Blacksburg serving over a dozen software companies. He is a serial entrepreneur focused on Internet software companies for both consumer and enterprise markets.

Bob has a track record of building scalable software products. Friendeo, iSpQ VideoChat and BuddyVision have reached over 3.5 million customers in 196 countries. Microsoft published his book, The Official Microsoft Netmeeting Book in 1998 and he was the Montgomery County Entrepreneur of the year in 2002. He serves on the boards of the RBTC, VT Entrepreneur Club and TechPad. He enjoys wakeboarding, snow riding, mentoring start-ups and flying.

Bob received an MBA from MIT Sloan, computer engineering degree from Virginia Tech and graduated from TJHSS&T.

Fun fact: Bob spent 14 days hitchhiking down the California coast from San Fran to LA when he was 20. He and his friend Steve hitched a ride in 17 different cars.

Judges

Ashish Jaiman

Director of Startup Strategy at Microsoft   |  

Ashish Jaiman is Director, Startup Strategy with Microsoft. Ashish has more than 16 years of experience designing, developing and selling software. In his role Ashish enables startups, activates them on business, technology, go to market strategy and accelerates the adoption of new (mostly prerelease) technologies and tools.

Ashish is very passionate technologist and a developer by heart who take pride in competing and delivering value on and of Microsoft platform.
Ashish is currently focused on helping software startups to understand, learn and adopt Windows 8, Windows Azure, and Windows Phone and offer them programs like BizSpark to build their software business on Microsoft platform.

Ashish is very passionate about communities and software startups. Before joining Microsoft Ashish helped to create and successfully exit 2 startups.

Ashish can be found online at www.ashishjaiman.com

Mike Provance

Entrepreneur Adviser and President of Growth Kinetics Venture Management Accelerator

Mike Provance studies and builds profitable, scalable entrepreneurial enterprises, and give others the tools to do the same. He helps conduct research, write, and advise entrepreneurs and CEOs of young high-growth businesses on achieving structured, rapid growth.

His efforts focus on the transformation of small ventures into fast-growing, value-creating companies. Having worked with CEOs and management teams of companies from $0 to $50 million in revenue, he has helped them to achieve greater growth from their organizations. His research spans the roles of international strategy, institutional forces, and competitive dynamics on the sustainable growth of entrepreneurial regions and small, high-impact ventures.

He holds a Ph.D. in entrepreneurship and innovation from the George Washington University, an M.B.A. from Smeal College of Business at the Pennsylvania State University, and a B.S. in management science from the Sloan School of Management at MIT.

Jason Gabriel

Vice President - Third Security, LLC

Jason Gabriel is a Vice President at Third Security, LLC, a life sciences focused Venture Capital firm based in Radford, VA, and has over nine years of venture capital and private equity experience working with mainly small businesses and technology startups. Jason works with Third Security’s portfolio companies focusing on the areas of corporate development, financial analysis and budgeting. Prior to joining Third Security, Jason was an internal entrepreneur at a Fortune 500 company where he commercialized a technology services business and negotiated a joint venture with a major media company. Jason began his career as an investment banker.

Jason holds an MBA from the Darden School of Business at UVA, and is a summa cum laude graduate of Millsaps College, in Jackson, Mississippi.

Benjamin Knapp

Director, Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology

R. Benjamin Knapp is the Director of the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT) and Professor of Computer Science at Virginia Tech University. ICAT seeks to promote research and education at the boundaries between art, design, engineering, and science. Knapp also leads the Music, Sensors, and Emotion research group, with researchers in the UK and the US.

He holds twelve patents and is the co-inventor of the BioMuse system, which enables artists to use gesture, cognition, and emotional state to interact with audio and video media. In previous positions, Knapp has served as a Fulbright Senior Specialist at University College, Dublin, and chief technology officer of the Technology Research for Independent Living Centre. As the director of technology at MOTO Development Group in San Francisco, Calif., he managed teams of engineers and designers developing human-computer interaction systems for companies such as Sony, Microsoft, and Logitech.

Jonathan Hagmaier

Chairman & CEO of Interactive Achievement

Jonathan Hagmaier, along with Matt Muller and Mary Hagmaier, founded Interactive Achievement in 2006 to fill the needs for effective tools for teachers and administrators to monitor student progress. He envisioned programs that are proficient and maximize student success.

Jonathan has over sixteen years of experience in public education as a teacher and principal, and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in history/government, as well as, a master’s degree in educational leadership. Jonathan provides insight as both an educator and administrator to ensure that IA reaches its educational goals through both software and service.

Mentors

Doug Juanarena

VP and Site Leader of Rackspace Hosting in Blacksburg

Doug Juanarena is a serial entrepreneur responsible for developing and commercializing a variety of technologies and companies over his career.

Mr. Juanarena was employed at the NASA Langley Research Center in the field of sensor and instrumentation development. In 1978, he left NASA to form Pressure Systems Incorporated focused on commercializing sensing instrumentation based on the technology he developed while at NASA. In January 1996, Mr. Juanarena sold Pressure Systems to The Roxboro Group PLC of Cambridge, England, remaining as President/CEO until July of 2000. In August of 2000, Mr. Juanarena co-founded Luna Technologies in Blacksburg, Virginia serving as its President and CEO. In August of 2005 he founded GenTek Ventures, focused on raising private equity for startups. In November 2010 he joined Rackspace Hosting as VP and site leader for the company’s Blacksburg software development center.

Jennifer O'Daniel

Senior Associate at CIT GAP Funds

Jennifer O’Daniel joined CIT GAP Funds in 2003, and is responsible for sourcing, diligencing and closing of seed and early stage investments.

As part of the investment team, O'Daniel has been part of transactions in over 60 seed and early-stage companies via CIT GAP Funds, which has been recognized by Entrepreneur Magazine's Annual VC100 list since 2006.

O’Daniel currently sits on the board of directors for The Richmond Venture Forum, the board of advisors for Foster.ly, is a mentor for Founder's Institute and the Fort accelerator, and has previously served on the boards of Leadership Fairfax, Northern Virginia Therapeutic Riding Program, Virginia Tech Business Technology Center, MIT Enterprise Forum, and William and Mary's Technology and Business Center.

Art Lucia

Co-Founder of InfernoRed Technology

Art Lucia kicked his entrepreneurial spirit into overdrive in June of 2012 when he joined with Scott Lock and Josh Blanchard to form InfernoRed Technology.

Art is a technologist focused on delivering high value software solutions to clients using Agile methodologies. With over 19 years of custom application solutions delivery, Art leads by example and provides continuous mentoring. As a leader in the technology community, Art has been a speaker at different technology groups for topics such as Scrum, SQL Azure Federations, and Building Games for the Windows Phone using the XNA Framework. Art’s development passions include high quality solutions by applying software codesmithing delivering scalable integration services. Art specializes in C#/.NET development, test driven development, and Agile/Scrum project management. Before InfernoRed Technology, Art was the Extension Center Director for Excella Consulting’s remote service delivery office out of Blacksburg, Virginia. Art is a member of the Blacksburg Rotary Club. Art has been a member on the Virginia Tech Career Services Local Advisory Board, and co-led the Roanoke Blacksburg Technology Council Software Developers Forum during 2010 and 2011.

Anne Giles Clelland

President, Handshake Media, Incorporated

Anne has founded two start-ups, one non-profit company, and her third start-up should be incorporated by the time Startup Weekend begins.

A top product of her first start-up, business news and public relations site Handshake 2.0, celebrated its 4th anniversary in July, 2012, published 1500+ posts in those four years, and has visitors from more than 150 countries. Handshake Media has 6 mobile apps in the iTunes App Store and 3 in Google Play. Her latest start-up’s product is a behavioral health care mobile app.

Her B.A. in history, minor in geology, and M.A. in education are from Virginia Tech. Her M.S. in mental health counseling is from Nova Southeastern University. She enjoys weight training, swimming, biking and running, and competitive table tennis.

Richard Hammer

VP Technology at Interactive Achievement, Inc.

Richard Hammer is an agile enterprise technologist with 25 years in the business. From development to management and strategy. From minion to start-up entrepreneur to global architect. He is experienced with designing, developing, and managing global (multi-lingual) platforms for the desktop, web, and mobile devices. He has worked with businesses, VCs, and Angels in business plan development and analysis, team building, technology mentoring, and architectural due diligence.

Shelley Smith

Senior Partner with VTCLI and COO with COOPERATORY, LLC

Shelley Smith, Senior Partner with VTCLI and COO with COOPERATORY, LLC primary role is to oversee the day‐to‐day operations, as well as, strategically plan, and develop ongoing opportunities for CLI and Cooperatory and their clients. Prior to owning her own executive coaching and consulting firm, Shelley spent several decades in top executive positions within Marriott Corporation, LTD Management, and HMP Properties. Shelley has substantial knowledge and experience in the operations of day‐to‐day businesses. Her expertise includes assessing a stand‐alone unit or multiple units, reviewing key performance drivers and advising the owner, president or CEO on how to deploy their staff and use other resources to operate more efficiently through systems, processes, resource allocation, and talent management.

Shelley’s education includes certifications from Cornell Business School in Ithaca, NY as well as a long list of professional certifications acquired while working for and within Marriott, Hilton, Starwood and Intercontinental Hotels. Her certification in Predictive Index allows her to assist organizational clients with talent management and development, and executive clients with their personal development, team leadership and communication skills.

Stephen Skripak

Associate Dean for Graduate Programs for the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech

Mr. Skripak is Associate Dean of Graduate Programs at Virginia Tech. He previously served as Director of the Small Business Institute and Instructor of Management, and he continues to be among the teaching faculty. He has held a number of key executive positions in Fortune 500 companies during a business career spanning 25 years.

Most recently, he was employed at Capital One Financial Corporation where his roles included Chief Financial Officer - Subprime and Affinity Markets and Vice President - Business Planning. He also served as President - Sara Lee Business Services, Vice President - International Finance for Sara Lee Foods (Europe), and held Chief Financial Officer positions at Hanes Hosiery (here in Winston-Salem), Ball Park Foods, and State Fair Foods, all divisions of Sara Lee Corporation. He also spent eleven years at General Electric Company, graduating from the GE Financial Management Program.

His business experience covers financial services, consumer packaged goods, apparel, and industrial companies, with emphasis in turnaround situations.

Dave King

Senior Software Developer at Rackspace Hosting

Dave King has been programming since being introduced to the computer at the fragile age of 6. In that time he has worked on a wide range of projects including text adventure games, multiplayer space simulations, a charter-school lottery, a battleship damage-control simulator, a security-enforcing Java compiler, and a chess engine. Since 2009, he has worked at Rackspace as a Software Developer, focusing on distributed systems and customer-facing web applications. He is passionate about making changes that deliver high value to the customer while minimizing technical debt.

Dave moved to Blacksburg from State College after graduating Penn State with a PhD. Before that he attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In his free time, Dave enjoys running and road biking, especially up very high mountains.

Todd Brooks

Chief Operating Officer, Trilogy Software

Todd is currently Chief Operating Officer of Trilogy and is responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of the firm’s Automotive, Financial Services and Telecom, Technology & Media business units. Since joining the company in 2006, Todd has held several leadership roles and has been instrumental in the launch of multiple Trilogy products and services, including Trilogy SmartLeads.

Prior to Trilogy, Todd co-founded and managed two technology consulting firms, including eFuel, an early innovator and leader in logistics optimization software for the automotive industry. Earlier in his career, Todd held leadership roles at FedEx and was responsible for managing the technical specifications of new $100M+ MD-11 aircraft deliveries.

Todd earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace and Ocean Engineering from Virginia Tech.

Michele Mayberry

Registered Patent Attorney at New River Valley Intellectual Property Law

Michele Mayberry is the founder of New River Valley Intellectual Property Law located in the CRC. With over 15 years of experience in the field, she counsels clients in obtaining and enforcing IP, including patents, trademarks, and copyrights.

Ms. Mayberry is also an adjunct professor at Virginia Tech, where she teaches an introductory IP law course.

She holds a B.S. in Chemistry from George Mason University and a J.D. from George Washington University.

Ken Maready

Attorney, Hutchison PLLC

Ken is a corporate and intellectual property attorney who has focused on working with startups and technology companies for 15 years. He regularly works with founders in setting up companies and raising seed funds, as well as counseling management teams for technology companies in connection with protecting their intellectual property, entering into strategic transactions, raising capital and selling companies.

He graduated magna cum laude from the Wake Forest University School of Law, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Law Review. Ken is co-chair of the Access to Capital Committee of the Roanoke-Blacksburg Technology Council, and actively involved with activities such as the Pitch and Polish Clinic, the E-Club at Virginia Tech and local angel groups.

Ed Donahue

Technical Evangelist at Microsoft   |  

Ed Donahue works for Microsoft as a Technical Evangelist. She works in the academic space to help students create cool stuff, like phone applications and Xbox games, using Microsoft technologies. She loves to share her passion for technology with others! You can find her online at her blog, creepyed.com

Eddie Amos

Vice President of Software Developer Marketing at Juniper Network

In his current role, Eddie focuses on software strategy, developers and on-line communities.

Prior to this role, Eddie was the Vice President of Developer Marketing and Evangelism. His team was responsible for the marketing, strategy and external evangelism of Junos and the Junos Space Platform. During his tenure, the group launched the Juniper Developer Network and increased the number of active developers by over 500%.

He graduated from Virginia Tech and later received a Masters of Science Degree from American University in Washington, DC. He has completed Executive Management Classes and Programs from Wharton, Kellogg, Columbia and is currently completing his Ph.D in Computer Science.

When not working, Eddie loves helping various nonprofit organizations, spending time with family and friends, writing code, studying or talking about software (to anyone who will listen).

Ryan Leonard

Goldman Sachs

Ryan Leonard works with high-net-worth individuals, families and institutions, as well as their advisors, to identify how the resources and expertise at Goldman Sachs can help them meet their financial, philanthropic, and legacy goals.

He is a member of a Mid-Atlantic-based team of six investment professionals, who manage approximately $2.5 billion of assets for a select number of wealthy families and institutional investors.

Mitchell Martin

Principal - McLean, VA

Mitchell Martin joined the McLean Group in 2010 with the firm’s acquisition of Merrill Advisory Group (MAG), a middle market investment bank focused exclusively on the defense and government services industry which Mr. Martin founded in 2008. His recent transactions include SMSi’s sale to Boeing, Signature Government Solutions’ sale to Sotera, the acquisition of Point One by FedCap, the acquisition of Research and Engineering Design by DA Acquisition Corp, and others. Mr. Martin is regularly quoted as an industry expert in the Washington Post, Washington Business Journal, Defense News, Washington Technology and other industry publications.

Prior to forming MAG, Mr. Martin held financial advisory positions with leading investment banks focused on M&A for defense and government service companies. Previously, he was an Army Captain and commanded an Infantry Company in the Middle East. Mr. Martin is Airborne and Ranger qualified, and currently holds a Top Secret Security Clearance.

Mr. Martin is an Honors Graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. He received his MBA from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his MPA from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Erik CB Olsen

Presentation Coach

Erik CB Olsen is an experienced presenter with a BA in Speech Communication and a PhD in Industrial and Systems Engineering (human factors/ergonomics option) from VT. He is active in the Blacksburg Toastmasters International club, works as a transportation planner for the Town of Blacksburg, and he serves as an adjunct instructor at Virginia Tech teaching methods of effective presentation and slide design.


Erik's varied background ranges from retail sales and writing grant proposals to preparing presentations and organizing special events. Dr. Olsen has prepared or presented hundreds of presentations both with and without electronic slides. He also has also been providing makeover assistance for clients who want to maximize the usability and comprehension of their presentations.

Erik will assist any team or individual with their presentation or pitch, so they can ensure they are presenting a clear message that represents the core of their development, concept, or idea.

Christopher Edwards

Associate at Reitler Law

Chris worked in several large law firms, including Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, focusing primarily on structured finance but also on banking and credit and other corporate transactions, before serving as an Assistant General Counsel in the Bank of America legal department.

He joined Reitler Kailas & Rosenblatt LLC as a corporate associate in 2008 and provides counsel to a variety of companies, from start-ups to publicly-traded entities, in the fields of venture capital, mergers and acquisitions, banking, securities and general corporate law.

Kevin Bloomfield

President and CEO at NetVentures

Kevin co-founded & currently serves as president & CEO of NetVentures. He is responsible for strategy, sales, team development and new market identification.

Outside of NetVentures, Kevin currently sits on the board of directors for the Roanoke Regional Small Business Development Center, is a member of the Corporate Advisory Committee for North Cross School, is an Elder and Executive Committee representative at Second Presbyterian Roanoke.

Organizers
Samuel Toriel
Brian Hazzard
Derick Maggard
John Sechrest
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