Startup Weekend is not just about building companies; it's about changing lives.
Organizer Ryan Goins says the 54-hour event "offers an amazing chance for people to experience entrepreneurship first hand." Businesses do get started -- Kalamazoo Local Music and e1e2 started during a Kalamazoo Startup Weekend and are continuing to grow. But there's more to it than that.
"It's the way Startup Weekend transforms people's lives that's the most exciting thing," Goins says. "When someone pays $100 to work for an entire weekend, giving up valuable time with family and friends, and then decides to quit their day job on Monday because they rediscovered their passion -- and we see that time and time again -- that's what makes Startup Weekend so amazing."
One Startup Weekend participant who found the weekend life changing is
Drew Kernosky. He attended the second event and worked on 10ant Life, a way of rating apartment complexes.
Kernosky describes what the weekend meant to him, particularly the closing event where each team tells the judges about the business they have created and tries to convince judges to offer them seed money to pursue the idea, saying: "By the end of the pitch, I realized that it wasn't the judges I had to sell, but myself. This event was about realizing that with the right team anything was possible. We didn't win, but you simply don't walk into Startup Weekend and remain unchanged. You might walk away with seed money, you might not. I can guarantee that you will walk away with an experience you will get nowhere else. In 54 hours what can you accomplish?"
Kalamazoo Startup Weekend 3 is set for 6 p.m. Friday, May 4, through Sunday, May 6, at 9 p.m. on the third floor of the Entertainment District. To register, visit the Kalamazoo Startup Weekend
website.
Writer: Kathy Jennings, Second Wave
Source: Ryan Goins, Kalamazoo Startup Weekend
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