Kyle
They don’t have a Startup America affiliation yet and they haven’t had a formal 3 day 54 hour startup weekend, however Birmingham Alabama has a growing startup scene. Birmingham has an active startup Twitter account called StartupBirmingham and they have a startup day coming on April 24th.
The all day event will be held at Birmingham’s WorkPlay theater and the organizers are calling the event the Startup Summit. The organizers are Jonathan Sides the CFO of Daxlo and Tony Summerville the founder of his own startup called Rarestep which makes Fleetio a web based solution for fleet management.
As with all great startup events Sides and Summerville have enlisted the help of some of the top entrepreneurs in Birmingham’s startup ecosystem as well as community business leaders. More than 100 startup founders and entrepreneurs will attend the event. Sides and Summerville promise in addition to the content, lectures and panels there will be several networking coffee breaks, a networking lunch and an after event party where startup founders can network with each other. As we know that’s an integral part to any startup event.
More after the break
“The goal is to inspire, and have it be less about just tactical advice and more about giving people the sense of the attitude it takes to be a successful entrepreneur,” Summerville told al.com.
Birmingham already has various startup workshops available through Main Street Birmingham and the Innovation depot. Sides wanted the Startup Summit to be about founders helping other founders.
The two founders of the Startup Summit had an application process to get into the event. They had to stop at 170 and turned away many as they prepared for the big day. They didn’t want the event to get over saturated and at the same time they wanted to make sure that those attending the event would get everything they could out of it.
Summerville told al.com:“The No. 1 reason we did an application was we wanted to make sure we got a good mix of people who were there for the right reasons. It is a free event and is something that is going to be fun to sit through, but it’s just as important for the local ecosystem for people not only to hear the messages but also it’s the audience connections that we want to facilitate, too. People could potentially meet a cofounder there. You never know what connections made at an (event) could become the co-founders of the next great company.”
Are you an entrepreneur or a startup founder in Birmingham? If you missed out on registering for Startup Summit make sure you check out some of these great Birmingham resources:
Mainstreet Birmingham- a business resource and community resource for any stage company in Birmingham
She-Network: (Smart, Hyperconnected, Engaged) women in Birmingham Alabama, they host monthly mixers and events.
Sparkbox Coworking– a coworking space located at Innovation Depot
source: al.com
