Startup Weekend

Posted by Startup Weekend Crew

Below a guest post by Panagiotis Karampelas, IT Programs Director at Hellenic American University with scholarship offers for the participants to the event.

November 27-29, 2009

Dear Athens Startup Weekend participants,

On behalf of Hellenic American University, let me first say how glad we are to have provided academic support for the very successful Athens Startup Weekend. It was exciting to see your enthusiasm and listen to the creative ideas that you brought with you, and we admired the hard work you did during the weekend to develop these ideas into feasible projects.

We want to acknowledge this creativity and effort and support you further in developing your idea and your potential as professionals in the field. We are thus offering all participants scholarships for study at Hellenic American University. 

All participants are entitled to a scholarship covering 30% of tuition fees for the IT degree programs or 20% of fees for the Business degree programs.

Participants on the winning teams are eligible for scholarships that cover 70% of tuition for any University program.

Hellenic American University offers the following academic programs:

Graduate Programs

• PhD in Applied Linguistics
• Master in Business Administration (MBA)
• Professional MBA (PMBA)
• Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics (MAAL)
• Master of Arts in Translation (MAT)
• Master of Arts in Conference Interpretation (MACI)
• Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT)

Undergraduate Programs

• Bachelor of Science in Business Administration Program (BSBA)
• Bachelor of Science in Information Technology Program (BSIT)
• Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature (BAELL)
• Bachelor in Music (BM)
• Bachelor of Science in Psychology (BSPSY)

If you would like to apply for the scholarship, please contact Ms. Marilena Poniraki at our admissions office (210 3680943) or send an email to university@hau.gr mentioning your name, team/idea worked and Athens Startup Weekend or come in person to our offices at Kaplanon 12, a short walk from the Panepistimio metro station.

Note that you need to meet all the admissions criteria for program you will apply to. You can find a list of these criteria on our website:

For PhD Admissions Criteria:

•  http://www.hau.edu.gr/pages/PhD_Admission.htm

For Graduate Admissions Criteria

• http://www.hau.edu.gr/pages/Graduate_Admission.htm

For Undergraduate Admissions Criteria

• http://www.hau.edu.gr/pages/Undergraduate_Programs_Admission.htm

Sincerely,

Panagiotis Karampelas

IT Programs Director

Hellenic American University, 12 Kaplanon St., 10680 Athens, Greece

Website: http://www.hau.edu.gr, E-mail: university@hau.gr, Telephone: +302103680950

Posted by Startup Weekend Crew

1. Co-Working Athens – www.colab.gr

Setting up a co-working space in Athens. A place for freelancers, work-at-home professionals, entrepreneurs to share working space & build a community but still work independently.

2. 6Dimension Project: augmented reality for tour guides

An augmented reality application on smartphones for visitors of museums, archeological sites and other cultural or touristic venues. 

3. The Hammer.

Auctions on facebook with glamorous products at ultra low prices.  Brag to your friends for the cool item you bought really cheap!

4. Barter.gr

The goal is to create a website where anyone can exchange services or things or whatever!  E.g physics lessons for massage

5. Newspeek

Newspeek is a mobile application that provides the user with news from the web in a more mobile friendly way than solutions available. The user will be invited to enter her feeds of preference, then their content is presented in a very appealing way.

6. BetCafe

Online betting community with advanced social tools.

7. Shopping Deals 2.0

Deals and offers aggregator that presents the content in Digg like fashion, offering users the option to up vote certain deals.  Deals and offers could be any kind of stores such as computer stores, clothing, shoes, home appliances, theatres, gas, services etc.

8. Online Educational Portal

The project is an online educational portal for high school and university students and professors. It will be a on line location with information on education aggregating what is currently dispersed over the internet. The portal will be easy to navigate thanks to the themed categories by type of audience ( student,  professors). The content will be partially written by us and the rest will be dynamically aggregated from relevant sites

9. Gamers’ Corner- Fantasy Hotel

Fantasy Hotel is an online PC board game based on one old game called “Hotel” made in 1987.The main idea is new boar game with new buildings, new pawns  and with the old rules (plus some new ) in order to make it more evolved. Tomorrow we hope to show a demo a demo version of the game.

10. Custom Clothing On-line Shopping

Custom Tailoring – Ordering clothing that fits on you, i.e. custom sized/made clothing made for your size.

11. Private Cloud Computing

The project is of an investigative nature with regards to private cloud computing infrastructure. Public clouds, like Amazon´s EC2, are not a suitable option for everyone due to either their performance or their reliability.

12. iHeartShops

Twitter location-based app that enables you to create shopping events with your friends and accept offers and tips in tweets (near real-time) by vendors according to your location and shopping list. You can access this info via web, or mobile devices. You can gain points for re-tweeting and badges for checking-in that equal special discounts by the vendors.                                             

13. Event Information with Tags

A robust Cloud Solution that will use Microsoft Tagging Services and will deliver effectively valuable event information to mobile users providing additional cloud content about an event that they are interested in.

Posted by lydia

Posted by lydia

Over the weekend we have arranged for special guests to come over for a few hours and help out with your startup needs.

Saturday November 28

11am- 3pm: Developers will be coming in to help out with buggs and glitches

3pm- 6pm: Business, Marketing and PR managers will provide answers on the business side of things

Sunday November 29

12pm-4pm: VC, Legal and Accounting Guests

Below our guest list for the weekend be prepared to make the most out of their knowledge.

We want to thank our guests  for accepting our invitation and joining us at Startup Weekend Athens 2!!

Posted by lydia

Below please find a Business Plan structure prepared by Hellenic American University.

This can be a tool when putting together your final presentation.

AthensStartUPWeekend_BusinessPlanStructure

You can also find below a list with books recommended by HAU and a software that can help in business plan development.

Books:

Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape- by Henry W Chesbrough

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Open-Business-Models-Innovation-Landscape/dp/1422104273/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258981099&sr=8-1

The 24 Hour Business Plan, by Ron Johnson

http://www.amazon.co.uk/24-Hour-Business-Plan/dp/0712677798/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258981140&sr=8-1

Value Migration: How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition, by Adrian J Slywotzky

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Value-Migration-Think-Several-Competition/dp/0875846327/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258981185&sr=8-1

 New Venture Creation: Entrepreneurship for the 21st Century – 7th Edition, by Jeffry A Timmons, Stephen Spinelli

http://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Venture-Creation-Entrepreneurship-Century/dp/0071254382/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258981237&sr=8-1

 Software:

 Palo Alto Business Plan Pro Premier Edition Version 11.0 (PC), by Palo Alto Software

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Palo-Alto-Business-Premier-Version/dp/B000ZYDQM0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1258981161&sr=8-1

Posted by lydia

If it is your first Startup Weekend you may be wondering how the weekend is structured.

Below a glimpse of how a weekend plays out!

Posted by Fotis Draganidis

If you are looking for business ideas that you could leverage in Startup Weekend Athens II, or if you are interested in what other startups are into, here is a collection of information that could help.  

1. 999 business ideas from Seth Godin’s Alternative MBA [link]
2. 22 best EU startups @ Seedcamp [link]
3. 5 startups that won the Microsoft Innovation Award in Teched09 [link]
4. Y combinator startups [link]
5. Microsoft Mobile Innovation Award UK [link]
6. 33 finalists of Accenture Innovation Awards (partially translation needed) [link]
7. Techcrunch 2009 winners [link]

 Below you can find some information regarding startups in random verticals. Please send us more information on any other vertical you may have good knowledge of, so that we can enrich the list.

Music Industry                     

   5 music startups to watch out in 2009 [link]

   The sorry state of music startups by Techcrunch [link]

   Lessons from the music industry [link]

Location Based Services     

  Top Ten LBS Startups to watch (2008): [link]

Mobile Web                                  

  Mobile Web 2.0 (2007 but still interesting): [link]

Web                                                   

  19 web startups to watch [link]

Please notice that in Startup Weekend Athens we want to foster the creativity of the teams and by no means direct it towards any point. We hope that you find this information useful as food for thought around entrepreneurship and startups. Besides, an idea or startup that has been awarded or praised, does not necessarily bring business success in the future.

So, find the business opportunity, be creative, develop your elevator pitch and suprise us @ SUW Athens!

Posted by Lydia Morazzani

Startup Weekend is a 54 hour startup event that provides networking, resources and incentives for individuals and teams to go from idea to launch. The Athens Startup Weekend II takes place in the Microsoft Innovation Center, Vasilissis Sofias 103, from 27-29 November 2009, hosted for the second time after the success of last years’ Athens Startup Weekend I.

What’s in it for you?

• You will get inspired by ideas or promote your own,
• Meet developers/designers/IT pros/entrepreneurs and form teams,
• Get real-time help from business pros/academics/consultants
• An opportunity to kick start your new startup.

What do we need from you?

• Be open about your ideas,
• Bring your own laptop,
• Be open to meet and collaborate with future friends and
• Be prepared to work hard.

The tickets are free. Please don’t abuse that privilege because space is limited. Booking a spot and not showing up takes away the opportunity from someone else- a friend or fellow member of your own community- who wishes to participate in your place. That’s bad startup karma. However, if you’re sure you will make it, don’t delay.

Get your ticket here .

Stay tuned as the agenda, the partners and more information will be provided soon.

Posted by Startup Weekend Crew