Startup Weekend Toledo Coming September 14-16th Further Validates Ohio’s Startup Ecosystem

By now most everyone who visits nibletz.com knows exactly what an officially sanctioned Startup Weekend is. As a refresher though, Startup Weekend is a 54 hour hackathon event where entrepreneurs, developers, designers and local business mentors gather to build companies in one weekend. The officially branded “Startup Weekend” events are organized in partnership with Startup Weekend based in Seattle. The organization has put on nearly 500 events worldwide.

Startup Weekend is headed to Toledo in just a couple of weeks. This will be the first officially sanctioned Startup Weekend event in Toledo however the state of Ohio is no stranger to the concept. Startup Weekends have already occurred in Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland.

Since Toledo is new to the Startup Weekend concept, the organizers are holding an orientation style event on September 6th. The mixer will be held at Seed Coworking 25 South Saint Clair Street in downtown Toledo from 5:30-7:30. Interested entrepreneurs, designers, and developers should attend this event to comingle with other like minded individuals and meet the local organizers.

The local Toledo organizers are: Dr. Sonny S. Ariss, Lindsey Danforth, Joe Minock, Keith Instone, Gene Powell, Timothy Van Tuinen, Stuart Bertsch and Sabah Sufi. All of the organizers have ties to Toledos flourishing startup ecosystem.

For those of you not familiar with the format of a Startup Weekend event, all the action will start at 5:30pm with registration. After that there will be an onsite welcome, mixer and dinner.

The fun begins with the Friday night pitches. During these pitches any paid registrant can pitch any startup business idea in 60 seconds or less. After all of those who wanted to pitch have pitched the crowd votes on which ideas will actually be developed over the weekend.

Once the teams are picked they break off into their own areas to start talking about and working on their projects. Saturday will also be spent working on their startups and will include help from local coaches (mentors). Saturday is also the day that most Startup Weekend startups take it to the streets or the phones for customer validation. By Saturday evening most teams have a wireframe of some sort set up for whatever their business is.

Toledo’s got a bunch of great coaches including our friend Brandy Alexander-Wimberly the founder and CEO of group buying startup Buyvite. Justin Blanchard, the founder and CEO of Givt is also a mentor and coach as are Steve Schwartz, founder at Alfa Jango, and Gene Powell, the president of Spoke.

Sunday the startups tweak their final presentations, finish their ideas and then pitch at the end of the night to the panel of judges.  The judges in Toledo are; Brian Hock of Simple Hydration and Brian Hock Design (from Cincinnati); Dr. Sonny Ariss, Chairman of the Department of Management and a Fellow of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology Commercialization in the College of Business and Innovation at The University of Toledo; Stephen Y Nose, Founder and CEO of SYN Associates and Dr. Gene Poor, Director of the Entrepreneur Program at BGSU.

Toledo’s Startup Weekend looks like it’s going to be a great event.

Linkage

Register for Startup Weekend Toledo Here

Here’s more information on their pre-event mixer

Check out our Startup Weekend Coverage here, including great pitch videos from Fridays and Sundays.

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