South Wales will this month play host to a weekend-long competition for budding entrepreneurs to share ideas, form teams, pioneer products and launch new businesses.
As part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, on Friday 21st November, StartUp Weekend Swansea will welcome over 100 developers, designers, marketers, product managers and start-up enthusiasts, who will compete for the chance to win a range of prizes.
Global Entrepreneur Week is the world’s largest campaign to promote entrepreneurship. For the second year running, StartUp Weekend will host the entrepreneurs of tomorrow encouraging and supporting research and innovation in South Wales.
The competition follows last year’s success, in which nine new companies were established, five of which are still successfully trading today.
Held at the Dylan Thomas Centre, attendees will pitch their business ideas to a judging panel, with teams organically forming around the most popular concepts. There will then be a 54-hour frenzy of business model creation, coding, designing, and market validation. Each team will receive support to develop their ideas by a string of successful entrepreneurs, business mentors and investors.
The competition will culminate with presentations to local entrepreneurial leaders and a judging panel that includes David Buttress, CEO of Just Eat; Oliver Morley, CEO of the DVLA; and Daniel McPherson, a high profile London-based investor.
Prizes including free office space, a laptop, a £500 apple voucher, access to the Xenos business Angel network, IT and computing support, mentoring and access to Wales’ national supercomputing network will be awarded to the successful teams.
Last year’s winning team, In My School, created a smartphone app which connects parents and schools. The runners up, Johnny On the Spot, developed a surfing app to log images of waves against weather patterns and Adlet, an online ad platform, went on to scoop the Women’s Circle in a Global StartUp Battle, sponsored by Coca-Cola.
Professor Rod Thomas, Training and Outreach Mentor at High Performance Computing (HPC) Wales said:
“We are absolutely delighted to take part again this year in an event that continues to spur on the creation of even more unique and innovative businesses in Wales.”
Adam Curtis, Co-founder of TechHub Swansea, added:
“We are calling on all budding entrepreneurs to register for this year’s StartUp event. This is a unique opportunity to form a new business and get access to the technology and support required to gain a real head start.”
The event has been made possible thanks to support from the Gower College, Swansea University, Institute of Life Science, Swansea County Council, University of Wales Trinity St David, SW Regional Enterprise Hub, Swansea Start, TechHub Swansea and High Performance Computing (HPC) Wales.
An attendee from last year’s event said:
“It’s been challenging, but I’ve learnt more than I have in two months of University this weekend. It’s given me so many opportunities and I’ve met so many inspiring people.”