Nassau, Bahamas, January 29-31, 2016 – Seven Pitches. Seven Partners. One Weekend. 54 Hours. 14 Innovative Ideas … This was Startup Weekend Nassau!
This inspiring journey began with meaningful and supportive collaboration between Shift the Culture, Techstars, the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, UP Global, Global Shapers Community Nassau, Startup Bahamas, the Inter-American Development Bank and Compete Caribbean.
Fourteen 30 second presentations soon became seven and out of those seven, Ryder, a mobile-based ride-sharing app designed for local transportation, emerged as the overall winner.
Startup Weekend is a global network of passionate leaders and entrepreneurs on a mission to inspire, educate, and empower individuals, teams and communities. It is a dynamic forum to share ideas, form teams and launch startups.
Startup weekends are focused on bringing developers, marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts together to share ideas and launch new startups. Beginning with open pitches on Friday, attendees in dozens of cities hone in on the most promising concepts with teams focusing on customer development, idea validation and creating a viable product. By Sunday evening, teams demo their prototypes and receive valuable feedback from a panel of experts while competing for prizes that help speed them to launch.
Nassau’s seven finalists were: Ryder, a mobile-based ride-sharing app designed for local transportation; R3new which aims to turn garbage/waste into art and goods to sell; Peak Time which is a social media app for digital binge-watching parties during your favorite TV shows; Swerve, a recreational go-karting facility; VacationView, a tourist destinations site that focuses on locations that offer a more authentic Bahamian experience; Bahamas Spark a Smile, a site with the goal of increasing happiness factor by highlighting favorable random encounters and New Providence City, a fast-paced municipal development catered to technology and lower government regulations. In second and third places were R3new and Peak time. The top three will each receive a free month of ‘Theory Exchange’ co-working Space plus free services by ‘Startup Bahamas’ business services.
Travis Miller, Facilitator of Startup Weekend, Nassau had this to say: “Startup Weekend was a hit! The teams had an amazing time and learned so much on how to execute their ideas. It was an honor to collaborate with each other in this fashion. It was almost surreal being able to collaborate and share ideas within such a creative Bahamian environment at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB). We are so glad that we are finally starting to see the growth of an entrepreneurial community with a Bahamian narrative here in Nassau and we couldn’t have had a more creative and inspiring space in which to work than the NAGB.”
Meanwhile, more than 50 cities around the world are hosting Startup Weekend events. There is currently representation in over 100 cities in over 25 countries for Startup Weekend which is focused on educating over 15,000 entrepreneurs and launching over 560 new startup ventures.
