o What: Startup Weekend Vancouver.
o When: 6:30 p.m. July 24 through July 26.
o Where: Clark College’s Foster Hall, 1933 Fort Vancouver Way.
o Cost: $75 per participant.
o Information and registration: www.up.co/communities/usa/vancouver-wa/startup-weekend/6600
Startup Weekend, a highly popular worldwide phenomenon of bringing together entrepreneurs for 54 hours of intense project launch activity, is coming to Vancouver.
Local entrepreneur and business adviser Dave Barcos will host Clark County’s Startup Weekend on July 24 to 26 at Clark College. While the event is open to people regardless of residence, Barcos said he hopes it will draw Clark County entrepreneurs who live in the shadow of Portland’s vibrant startup community. Longer term, Barcos said he is working with others to develop a business incubator with an accelerator for Clark County’s emerging businesses. With the Startup Weekend, “My large vision is in pulling out people that I know are here,” he said.
Startup Weekends are hands-on events built to provide ideas and support to participants for moving beyond an idea to build a structure and plan for creating a business. The weekend starts Friday with open microphone pitches in which attendees bring their best ideas and try to attract others to join their team. Over Saturday and Sunday, teams focus on customer development, validating ideas, practicing LEAN methodologies and building a viable product. The weekend closes Sunday evening with teams demonstrating their prototypes and receiving feedback from a panel of experts.
Barcos said some funders will attend the event, but the weekend isn’t designed to connect entrepreneurs with financiers. “It’s not about getting funding,” he said. “It’s about the experience of being able to build something in a weekend.”
The event can accommodate up to 75 participants, Barcos said. On average, half of Startup Weekend’s attendees have technical or design backgrounds, the other half have business backgrounds, he said,
Startup Weekend was founded in 2007 in Boulder, Colo., and expanded quickly to cities around the world. It moved to Seattle in 2010, where the nonprofit UP Global was formed to operate the program. The nonprofit structure allowed the organization to obtain a grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a Kansas City, Mo., foundation that supports entrepreneurship. UP Global was recently acquired by the for-profit firm Techstars, a longtime partner of Startup Weekend.
Each year, more than 1,000 Startup Weekend events are held in more than 150 countries worldwide. They’re inexpensive — the Vancouver event costs just $75, a fee that pays for seven meals — and are run by volunteers. Barcos himself is a volunteer, but his passion for assisting entrepreneurs has led him to launch is own Vancouver company, called The Startup Brand, which works with new and fledgling companies on brand and product development.
Barcos, 50, has spent his career in advertising and marketing in agencies that working directly with companies including Nike, Intel, Adidas and Microsoft.
In 2013, he began investing more time with startups on branding and marketing. “The more I got into the startup scene, the more I loved it,” he said. I love the energy of it.”
The Vancouver Startup Weekend will feature Mat Ellis, founder and CEO of Portland-based Cloudability, a provider of cloud cost analytics to enterprises, as the main speaker. The event’s judges are Bill Huseby, owner of Vancouver-based Sigma Design; David Jackson, CEO and co-founder of Portland-based Time & Oak, a maker of whiskey-making tools; and Stephen Green, assistant vice president of Albina Community Bank.
The weekend’s mentor-coaches are Barcos; Paul Burkett, a Vancouver-based serial entrepreneur; Tyler Phillipi, co-organizer of New Tech PDX, a entrepreneur showcase event who is also a serial entrepreneur; and Ryan Fink, founder and CEO of On The Go Platforms.
Barcos is also hoping to attract business and community sponsors for the event, with information available on the Startup Weekend’s website.
Editor’s note: Ryan Fink, CEO and founder of On The Go Platforms, was misidentified in an earlier version of this article.
