This weekend saw the first ever Startup Weekend Women in Düsseldorf, Germany and I had the honor and pleasure to be invited to coach the participants.
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The Very First Startup Weekend Maastricht is an EPIC success!
This weekend saw the very fist Startup Weekend Maastricht – and what an EPIC weekend it was! This time around I was invited as a coach to help the participants flex their entrepreneurial muscle and help out my wonderful friends on the organizing team with supporting the regional ecosystem
The hands are doing the talking: The thin vs the broad side of the wedge
Visit their Facebook page for many more great photos and videos from the EPIC weekend that was Startup Weekend Maastricht!
Sjoerd Jansen, a participant on the winning team, wrote a post-event blog post. Here are some quotes:
Introducing the free & open Lean Launchpad Düsseldorf
So I recently retired from facilitating and organizing Startup Weekend and Startup Next.
But fear not. I’m not going away and I’m not about to stop caring about entrepreneurial education for startup founders in our region. On the contrary, I’m ramping up my efforts.
That’s why I have chosen to offer the Lean Launchpad (LLP), the world’s premier pre-accelerator program from Stanford, Berkeley and hundreds of other universities and used by numerous F500 companies, FOR FREE to early-stage startups.
I’m retiring from organizing and facilitating Startup Weekend & Startup Next
I’m officially retiring from facilitating and organizing Startup Weekends and Startup Next, effective immediately. (You can still invite me as a coach, though).
Waving goodbye (SW Tourism Tehran, Iran 2015)
So long and thanks for all the EPIC awesomeness. I’m forever grateful for the experience and the people I’ve met on my journeys and the chance to have an impact on entrepreneurship and inspire individuals worldwide. It has certainly added more than a 10x meaning and value to my life.
Note: For those of you who don’t know, Organizers and Facilitators of Startup Weekend work on an entirely voluntary basis – aka for FREE. Keep that in mind the next time you are participating at a Startup Weekend or when you’re organizing a Startup Weekend with a facilitator shipped in from out of town.
So why am I retiring now?
Pirate Summit 2015
MC’ing the startup pitches @ Pirate Summit 2015. 02 September 2015, Cologne, Germany. Image ©Dan Taylor/Heisenberg Media
And thus, Cologne’s own Pirate Summit is history for this year. And what a spectacular event it was – once again! This marks the 5 year anniversary and the same number of summits I’ve attended.
This year I wasn’t pitching anything myself, but MC’ing the startup pitches on the first day instead, I opened with the exact same hack I debuted pitching my own startup from the same stage in 2011.
Back then as now, I made everybody stand up and introduce themselves to a stranger next to them, explain who they are and what they expected to get out of the event.