What’s it all about?
If you’re intrigued by entrepreneurship, then Startup Weekend is likely a great fit for you. Our community is a dynamic mix of creative and business minds—half from tech and design, and half from roles like marketing and finance. No matter your background and expertise, if you’re passionate about innovation and open to new ideas, you’ll fit right in. Plus, we pride ourselves on gender balance, with an even split between male and female participants.
Aside from organizers, coaches, and speakers, we expect all participants to commit to the full three-day journey. This ensures not only the continuity of the event’s dynamic (“less talk, more action”) but also minimizes distractions for the teams in progress. However, if you’re solely interested in witnessing the final pitches, many Startup Weekend events offer the option to register specifically for the Sunday presentations.
You don’t need to arrive with a team in tow. Teams naturally form during the course of the weekend, emphasizing the collaborative spirit that is central to Startup Weekend.
While it’s not a requirement to pitch an idea, we strongly encourage you to seize the opportunity. Whether you’ve been nurturing an idea for years or come up with something spur-of-the-moment during the event, pitching offers invaluable experience and hones your public speaking skills.
Come prepared with a high level of energy to sustain you through the weekend. Don’t forget to bring your essentials and your laptop to ensure you’re fully equipped for the journey ahead.
Start by crystallizing the idea you’d like to pitch. Conduct some preliminary research to fully grasp the problem you aim to solve, enabling you to articulate it effectively to others. Rehearse your 1-minute pitch to ensure it’s clear, concise, and compelling—you’ll need to persuade fellow attendees to join your team.
And don’t forget, everything’s better with good company. Consider bringing a friend along to enhance your Startup Weekend experience!
For pricing and ticketing details, please refer to the link for the respective event.
Our affordability is made possible through the pro-bono contributions of our organizers, facilitators, coaches, and judges. Additionally, our generous sponsors help subsidize the costs, making the event accessible to a wider audience.
What happens at Startup Weekend?
Friday: Kickstart Your Vision
The evening begins with casual networking and a light dinner. Following a quick ice-breaker and a brief orientation, the “Pitchfire” session takes center stage. Here, aspiring entrepreneurs have 1 minute to pitch their ideas—no slides or props, just you and a microphone. Once the pitches conclude, attendees cast their votes for the most compelling ideas. The highest-voted concepts are chosen for development over the weekend. The day wraps up as you join your chosen team, brainstorm, and set the stage for the days ahead.
Saturday: Dive into Development
The day starts with morning coffee and a light breakfast, fueling you for a day of focused work. Teams dive into their projects, taking short breaks for meals and brief educational sessions. Throughout the day, expert coaches circulate among the teams, offering targeted advice and guidance.
Sunday: The Final Stretch
The last day kicks off with another round of morning refreshments. Teams continue to refine their projects until mid-afternoon, at which point it’s time to finalize both the product/prototype and the presentation. The evening culminates in the final pitch session, where each team has 5 minutes to present, followed by 3 minutes of Q&A with the judges. Feedback is provided, and the teams are celebrated.
We’re open to all kinds of ideas—whether they’re for-profit ventures, social enterprises, or nonprofit organizations. The sky’s the limit, so think big! While many ideas tend to be tech-centric, given the condensed timeframe of the event, we highly recommend that even non-tech ideas aim for a tangible deliverable to be completed by Sunday.
The opportunity to pitch multiple ideas may vary based on the number of ideas presented and the event’s schedule. To maximize your impact, prioritize your ideas. Lead with your strongest concept as your first pitch.
No. Startup Weekend is designed to be an optimal environment for nurturing new ideas from scratch over a concentrated period. A cornerstone of the experience—and a vital takeaway for participants—is the ethos of full collaboration, commitment, and collective ownership. Introducing existing businesses into this dynamic tends to dilute this spirit and creates an uneven playing field, detracting from the event’s core purpose of fostering ground-level innovation.
The short answer: Realistically, you can’t fully protect your idea. If you’re particularly concerned, you can present a broad outline during your pitch without divulging key details.
The longer perspective: Worrying about idea theft is generally counterproductive. Unless your idea is a groundbreaking innovation that’s easy to implement and completely novel, the benefits of receiving wide-ranging feedback and assembling a motivated team through collective ownership far outweigh the slim chances of someone stealing your idea. In reality, most of the ideas pitched at any given Startup Weekend have been presented before—often multiple times. This doesn’t mean your idea lacks merit; rather, it emphasizes that successful execution and team passion are what truly set you apart. As the saying goes, “Ideas can be stolen, but no one can steal execution or passion.”
The objective of Friday’s voting and crowdsourcing isn’t to eliminate ideas but to spotlight those with the most traction and potential. This process also aims to form a manageable number of well-rounded teams, each enriched by diverse skills and backgrounds. If your idea doesn’t make the cut but you’ve successfully rallied a team of three or more around it, you’re more than welcome to continue working on it throughout the weekend. Should you choose this route, please inform the event organizer to keep them in the loop.
The team collectively makes this decision. Startup Weekend itself doesn’t facilitate the signing of any legal documents, and while mentors with legal expertise may be available for general guidance, they are not authorized to provide specific legal advice. Our experience shows that teams who focus on building a tangible product before diving into ownership discussions tend to be more productive and successful. It’s beneficial to clarify individual expectations upfront, but we recommend not getting bogged down in legalities until there’s something concrete to claim ownership of.
While there are no hard-and-fast rules about what your team must accomplish by Sunday, your efforts will be most impactful if aligned with the judging criteria:
– Customer Validation: Have you validated your business concept?
– Execution and Design: What have you created?
– Business Model: Is there a sustainable plan for the future?
When it comes to your final presentation, various formats are commonly used, including but not limited to:
– Wireframes
– Mobile App Mock-ups or Skeletons
– Slide Decks
– Videos (e.g., product demonstrations)
– Live Product Demos (even if they are mock-ups)
The goal is to demonstrate progress and potential, showcasing what you’ve learned and built over the weekend.
While competition isn’t the core focus of Startup Weekend, it does play a role. Our priority is always to foster a positive, collaborative atmosphere, and if competitive elements ever clash with this objective, we opt for the latter. That said, we believe that a sense of friendly competition adds value for all participants and more closely mirrors the challenges and pressures encountered in the startup world. It serves as a realistic test, offering ‘real-world’ feedback and obstacles that contribute to a more authentic entrepreneurial experience.
What’s next?
The decision to carry on with your project after the event is entirely yours to make. Roughly 10% of Startup Weekend participants choose to continue developing their ideas with some or all of their original team members. Whether you proceed or not, the experience and connections you gain during the weekend are invaluable assets for your entrepreneurial journey.
We’re thrilled to hear you love Startup Weekend as much as we do! The event thrives on community involvement, and there are plenty of opportunities for you to contribute, especially if you’re driven by the right motives: fostering communities and catalyzing startups. From event organization to coaching and judging, all roles are pro-bono and crucial to sustaining the startup ecosystem.
To take the next step, reach out directly to the event organizers or drop us an email at welcome@startupweekend.ch for more information.
Fantastic! We’re always eager to collaborate with organizations that share our enthusiasm for bolstering the Swiss startup landscape. Whether you’re interested in event-specific or national-level sponsorship, we offer a range of opportunities to get involved. This includes location, food, and beverage sponsorships as well.
To explore partnership possibilities, please reach out to the event organizers directly or send us an email at welcome@startupweekend.ch for more details.