Can Cork outmatch Dublin for start-up spirit?
Cork’s celebrated start-up spirit is about to be put to the test as UP Global’s Start-up Weekend hits the city next week between 14 and 16 August.
The event comes hot on the heels of the successful Start-up Weekend in Dublin recently where 11 teams of 90 people formed over 54 hours pitched in front of an audience of 200 people.
Five out of the 11 pitches were made by female founders.
Start-up Weekend is part of UP Global, the biggest entrepreneurship movement in the world with more than 2,000 events per year taking place in 600+ cities globally.
It’s a 54-hour-long event designed to make you live in the skin of an entrepreneur for a weekend.
This year’s Start-up Weekend takes place at City Hall in Cork and is organised by Robbie Skuse, Donal Cahalane, David Hardwicke, Maeve Goggin and Jago Gibbons, with a series of mentors coming in from right across Cork and the wider Irish tech mentor community.
Start-up Weekend Cork is supported this year by Bank of Ireland, TeamWork, IT@Cork and Cork City Council.
From idea to product in one weekend
Kicking off Friday night, those who have an idea about a business they want to set up pitch in front of the other attendees.
Attendees select which idea they want to work on and form teams.
Teams go through brainstorming, business plan development and basic prototype creation helped by numerous industry mentors.
On Sunday, all teams present their ideas in front of a larger audience and a sharp-looking, sharp-minded jury.
“That’s right, you go from an idea to an actual functioning start-up in hours,” explained Gene Murphy, organiser of the Start-up Weekend movement in Ireland and entrepreneur-in-residence at Bank of Ireland.
“There won’t be much sleep but you’ll meet people you don’t bump into on a regular Friday night in the pub – from business, marketing and software backgrounds to data scientists to coding enthusiasts.”
Video from Cork Student Start-up Weekend in April
