The Cyberinfrastructure Building at IU Bloomington will serve as center stage for three days of concepts, creativity — and quite possibly the seeds of a new startup company — as Startup Weekend starts at 6:30 p.m. Friday and runs until 9 p.m. Sunday.
Innovate Indiana serves as a signature sponsor for the 54-hour event, which offers designers, developers and budding entrepreneurs from IU, Bloomington and the surrounding area to bring innovative business ideas to life.
Friday starts with a pitch series in which teams form around the most promising ideas based on an audience vote. Over the next two days, each team develops a business model, attempts to devise a minimally viable product, validate market opportunity and — on Sunday evening — presents their project in a winner-take-all pitch competition.
The scheduled keynote speaker for the event will be Samuel Sveen, creator of Uel Zing Coffee. Event judges will include:
- Christy Page, president, Bloomington VisionTech;
- Lynn Coyne, president, Bloomington Economic Development Corp.
- Travis Brown, director of strategic initiatives and entrepreneurship, IU School of Informatics and Computing;
Additional sponsors include the Bloomington Urban Enterprise Association, the City of Bloomington, the Gayle & Bill Cook Center for Entrepreneurship, Ferguson Law, Hanapin Marketing, Blue Burro, the Bloomington Economic Development Corp., SproutBox, City of Bloomington Utilities, Uel Zing Coffee, IU’s Center for Intellectual Property Research, Bloomington Bagel Co. and Pizza X.
IU’s Cyberstructure Building is at 2709 E. 10th St. For tickets or more information, read here.