On Friday evening, the event was opened by 20 brave enthusiasts who pitched their idea in front of 130 attendees at the Telekom Innovation Center in Skopje. The overwhelming amount of innovative spirit and the following voting brought forward 11 teams who were encouraged to develop further their ideas in the upcoming days.
While the weekend offered a full agenda of mentoring sessions and opportunities to shake hands with national and international investors, also experienced founders were giving first hand advices on business plan and customer development, target market validation, developing demo or building MVP. Mentors Vele Samak and Mitko Cabevski agreed that this time the participants came even more prepared and determined than last year.
Before the announcement of the winning ideas on Sunday evening, participants had the chance to attend a Q&A session with the special guest. John Biggs, the East Coast Editor of TechCrunch, was very interested to find out more about the Macedonian startup scene and might even visit this summer.
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The Grand Finale
While each participant left the event as a winner, by gaining experience, non-formal learning, and sharing this experience with all the other enthusiasts, only three teams were able to take home the Startup Weekend Skopje award. Team BrunchBox, who is “competing against LinkedIn” were awarded with the first prize for their idea of creating a platform to connect you with nearby professionals for business and brunch. The runner up was Team NowPark.Me, aiming to become the airbnb for parking spots, and the third place went to Team DARY who offers a space where you can create your (photo) story.
Moreover, the freshly established startup accelerator in Macedonia, called Darma, choose its first team to work under their programme at the event: team Doktorot presented a demo version of their app that aims to help orthopedists and specialists to determine deformities, faster and cheaper and more accurate.
For the forth time, a bunch of startup enthusiast proved that many things are possible by focusing on one idea over just one SW Skopje weekend. “One of the best startup weekends I have been so far. Amazing energy!,” said Luka Sučić Business Development and investment Manager at Hub:raum and one of the event’s judges. So, leave on your thinker’s hat and look forward to the fifth edition of Startup Weekend Skopje.
