CSU East Bay plans to host their first “Startup Weekend” in May 2015, according to Jerry Chang, the university’s previous student body president.
The event brings groups of technological entrepreneurs together to brainstorm a single business idea that is then executed through a business plan the group creates, all in the course of a weekend, said Chang, who mentioned it’s all in the planning stages.
Previous Startup Weekends have generated such mobile applications as Foodspotting, an app that allows the user to host pictures of food and see reviews and Stylebrity, a Facebook app allowing the user to tag fashion products they previously purchased.
“I’ve talked to organizers of Startup Weekend and worked with supporters of the event, and built up the resources necessary to bring it to East Bay and make it successful at this university as we continue to plan for the event,” said Chang.
Andrew Hyde, a blogger from Boulder, Colo. came up with the startup weekend concept in 2007.
“I love design, and the fact that the ideas created, can spread across the world,” Hyde said in a travel blog.
Hyde created Startup Weekend as a nonprofit organization in Colorado. Not long after, the organization was moved to Seattle at the end of 2007 and has since launched worldwide.
Groups of people pitched their ideas to their peers and formed groups to build the business plans already presented. Groups created business models and also designed, tested and marketed business designs to ensure that the product or system fulfilled user’s needs.
“The participants worked through meals and rarely took breaks,” said Chang, who added that he may have slept for eight hours during that entire weekend.
Chang said this is not meant to be just a little project on campus, but a full partnership between the university and communities and the process will take a year to organize.
At the planned May event, students, staff and faculty will be taught to work together while learning to help each other and collaborate on bigger projects between departments in the near future, said Chang.
Chang’s team of six worked on a mobile app called Superheroes Everywhere, an app that turns the user into a superhero after having helped a citizen in need.
Chang says he thinks it’s time to bring Startup Weekend to East Bay and that he is just the person to bring it.
“I’ve been talking about it with some people at the university since November,” said Chang. “Last year when [the student government] was building the industry job panels, I was trying to evaluate what other programs we could bring to East Bay from industry job panels.”
The international event now involves over 100,000 entrepreneurs across more than 400 cities in over 100 countries, and has created over 8,190 business plans. Current sponsors of Startup Weekend include companies like Google, Microsoft, and The Kauffman Foundation, the world’s largest foundation devoted to entrepreneurship according to its web page.
Chang participated in a Startup event at San Luis Obispo this past January that attracted 100 participants.
“I want students to start thinking about how they can apply their knowledge, their passion and their experience to actually solving real world problems, and having the initiative to do so,” Chang said.
