Vote for Startup Weekend New Haven Winners, Shuga Trak, to Win Global Startup Battle

Startup Weekend New Haven was an awesome event and now it’s time for New Haven to win the Global Startup Battle, a competition of all 57 Startup Weekends held during Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Global Startup Battle voting begins tomorrow, Tuesday November 22nd at 12 PM PST at http://globalstartupbattle.com.

The winners of Startup Weekend New Haven, Shuga Trak, have posted a short video about their startup, and it’s up to us, the New Haven community to get behind them and show our support.

56 other cities will be voting for their Startup Weekend winners – and the winner wins bragging rights for the next year.  There are also some incredible prizes which will help Shuga Trak in their launch process.

Voting can be done in one of two ways, directly though the Globalstartupbattle.com website using a Facebook login or on Facebook at Facebook.com/startupweekend.

Voting ends Monday November 28th at 11 PM PST!   Please get online and vote for Shuga Trak, every last vote counts!

Startup Weekend Recap

Thanks to everyone who made Startup Weekend New Haven a success! And congratulations to our winners:

1. Shuga Trak (Team Members: John Fitzpatrick, James McFarland, Cliff Hayashida, Marianne Pantalon, Michael Pantalon, David Rhodes, Diego Scataglini, & Harvey Zar) – A new way for teens and parents to manage diabetes
2. MeritBooster.com (Team Members: Keshav Patel & Rajesh Patel) - A platform for youth excellence (also the “Team Choice” award winners!)
3. SociaBO (Team Members: Brian Lynn, Brad Armstrong, & Philip Gager) - A dating app which leverages groups of friends to make connections

We had 80 participants register before we closed registration (from all over Connecticut, but also NY, MA, RI, VA, OH), sponsors, speakers (Miles, Candace and John were excellent), mentors, judges, and volunteers.

Our 14 teams demo’ed in front of a packed house at Bentara – our audience was an estimated 140 people.

For those of you who were waitlisted, stay tuned. Because whether you were able to participate or not, if you want to keep the momentum going, join us on Dec. 13th at 9am for our Startup Reunion at the Grove. Through the Facebook group and live events, we’ll be getting out resources, photos/videos, and keeping the support and community going.

For those who participated (or judged, spoke, mentored or volunteered), please join us on the Facebook group for Startup Weekend (http://www.facebook.com/groups/WhiteboardStartupCommunity).

See you December 13th!

Startup Weekend New Haven Friday Night Highlights

The first Startup Weekend New Haven started with a bang:
- Organizer Derek Koch kicked off the session,
- Garrett Sheehan of UI and Anne Haynes of EDC New Haven welcomed the crowd to New Haven, and
- Miles Lasater got us started with a great talk on getting your idea off the ground.

Then Jennifer Cabala, Startup Weekend facilitator (also of Startup Foundation), got the teams started with an icebreaker, and then some pitching. Thirty pitches were given, and out of them fourteen teams were born!

We’re proud to introduce you to our SW New Haven teams:
- Diabetes Data
- eVentures
- Kindly
- LudaPro
- Medical Luxury
- MeritBooster
- Non-Profit Makeover
- QuStir
- RecordRemedy
- SimpleLMS.org
- Sociabo
- SocialPlan.it
- TownSquares
- Worldview

We’ll be updating you with more about these businesses, their ideas, and what you might see on our Sunday night Demo Day competition.

Good luck, teams!

Startup Weekend New Haven Is Sold Out!

We’ve received a tremendous amount of interest and support for Startup Weekend New Haven and we’re excited to get to work tonight!

Unfortunately, because of the amount of interest, tickets are now sold out, both to participate in the weekend, and for Demo Day on Sunday. If you didn’t get a chance to participate in this weekend’s events, please drop us a line, and we’ll keep you in the loop.

Our goal is to keep the momentum and spirit of Startup Weekend alive with continued community events, workshops, and of course the next Startup Weekend.

Thank you for your continued support, it is going to be an awesome event!

Pitching & Forming Teams

The pitching process will be fully explained on Friday night, but here are a few key points to know:

o Pitches should be no more than 60 seconds
o You only have one chance to pitch, so pitch your best idea
o No PowerPoints will be used – just your voice

Each pitch idea will be given a title and written on a piece paper. All of the pitches will be taped to the wall on one side of the room. After all of the pitches have been given, we move onto the voting.

Each attendee will be given 3 post-it notes to use as their ‘votes’. Those sticky-note votes will be stuck on the 3 ideas you would like to vote for. Feel free to use all 3 on one idea… you can even vote for your own idea. The number of people on a team will be based on the number of votes on an idea as well as the number of participants at the event.