Entrepreneurs Create Start-ups

Start-Up Weekend NB took over the Ville this past weekend as sixty aspiring entrepreneurs took over the old school house. Start-Up Weekend is a weekend-long competition where entrepreneurs come to either pitch an idea for a Start-Up business or help another build their idea.

The weekend kicked off on Friday with 25 of the entrepreneurs pitching their ideas for a potential startup.

These entrepreneurs came from all walks of life, and perhaps the most notable was team leader 8-year-old Blake Bell, who wanted to develop a charitable app called “Stocking”.

“The app is about giving stuff in your stocking and you go and check out people’s wish list and see what they want and buy it for them and the problem is we need to pay people for their shipping,” said Bell.

After each entrepreneur pitched, they put up posters about their ideas and the next stage, voting, began. Each attendee had three sticky notes and could use them to cast their votes for their favorite ideas. In order to move on an idea had to get six votes, only 15 ideas moved on.

After voting it was then up to the team leaders to attract teams of people with various skills to assist them in the development of their idea, each idea had to have five people to move on. Only 10 were able to move on.

Each team then entered the thick of it Saturday, as the day saw many of the teams redefining or completely remaking their ideas. This process was aided by input from Mayor Mike O’Brien of Fredericton, as well as the volunteer mentors and organizers that ran the event, including Joanna Killen, an organizer.

“I’m honestly so thrilled to be a part of this because I don’t come from Fredericton, I come from Saint John New Brunswick and traditionally our province has been very divided over cities and things like that and I just love that we’re finally really going out and saying how can we all work together as a province and help support startups,” Killen said.

Sunday was the day of polishing and finishing touches as all teams prepared for the finale, to build a presentation to put before three ceos from Fredericton. Each team practiced their presentations before a small tribunal of mentors who aided the development of their ideas and gave constructive criticism about their ideas. It was then, at the end of the 54-hour-long weekend, that each team presented their start-ups. Some of the start-ups radically different from the original. Three winners were declared, Archeologix in third place with a First Nation artifact preservation idea, Quick Aid in second place with an ER wait time reducing app, and Reconnect taking home the prize, with a city infrastructure app.