Startup Weekend Davao 2 - A Success! :)

Startup Weekend 2 came early this year! 

Last August 9 until August 11, 2013 all roads led to 1.18 Centron Bldg., Quirino St. for the 2nd Startup Weekend Davao event.

For those who don't know what the Startup Weekend is, it's an event which originated from Seattle, Washington in the US where attendees will pitch potential revenue-earning ideas, build teams to develop such ideas, pitch to investors and peers, and launch a startup company based on this idea! Easy peasy, macaroni cheesy!

Let us show you what went down in a photo-heavy post.

Ingenuity's Gik and Baia handled registration with Eli, and two of his Carve staff:

We got this.

Jan helped out some in time-keeping so here he is posing here with the Register Ladies:

An icebreaker game before starting. Yeah, ruthless.

Everyone got into the groove of things and ended up being crazily competitive:

John & Judah joining in on the fray

Ichii from Team Keep Up! and Henjie from Team News Cues battling it out for Rock, Paper War supremacy!

Then it was time to introduce the mentors to the Startup participants.

L-R: Dulce, Tina Amper of techtalks.ph, Pia Bernal of Kickstart Ventures, Jun Jison of Accelerate Desk, Jong Tujan of Neuraltech Innovations, Ray Rubio of Cubepixels, June Millan of Ingenuity, Chris Cubos of Phil. Global Outsourcing, and Sir Bert of ICT Davao

mentors just mentoring around with Judge Judah of Triple I Consulting (rightmost)

then they finally get tired and just sat down to chill out and eat..while still talking nonstop

Pitches were then the next order of business. 

With at least 12 pitches to choose from, the attendees surely had a hard time choosing which ones to vote for and develop. Ultimately, these guys were the hailed as the Chosen Ones -

Stories (which became Plym), Pbenefits, DreamCatcher and Barter Epic (which later on merged and became BarterHound), Keep Up!, Agri and Car Alarm (which later on became Txtfuly)

The participants teamed up and worked on their thang with this in mind:

Hello, second day! Time to command and conquer!!

Everybody's working on their projects and the mentors and organizers staged talks to give them ammunition needed to finish their stuff.

Mentors sat with them and gave good critique to guide them through the project development phase, ironing out the kinks, and running their idea through a fine sieve.

And on the third day before the Hour of Judgement, the teams dry runs their pitches through the panel of mentors, organizers, and kibitzers for more trial by fire refining process. Goal: Pitch Perfection

Ma'am Tins, ang strict naman ng beauty!

While everything was going on, the judges came trickling in from all over and while they weren't still needed at the event, they enjoyed themselves in and around Davao.

The judges with Tom, Sir Bert, Dulce and John

L-R: Ralph Wunsch of Metrodeal, Tom, Sir Bert, Dulce, Atty. Sam Matunog President of ICT Davao, Justin Cooke of Empire Flippers, Judah Hirsch of Triple I, Runar Petursson of Betur, and John

Finally, it was time for the final pitching!

After everyone has presented their 3 days' worth of banana-fueled, multiple meal-punctuated hard work, and quite a heart-stopping judges' deliberation, the winners are:

3rd place - PLYM (Place Your Mark)

college students Ray Saavedra (ADDU), Hitesh Dhanwani (ADDU), Guy Magayano (UIC), and Nap Calub (ADDU) (the one who first thought of the idea)

2nd place - Pbenefits.co

Ma. Linnet B. Viloria, Nick Carpio Mesias, Sheenah Seto, Fernando Azucena, Gretchil Sayon

1st place - Keep Up!

Alex Eneco - Team Keep Up! Lead

Ichii Villaruz, Mary Mynell B. Mariano, Jasper M. Adlaon with Angel, Dulce, and Gay

Congratulations all around for everyone who won! :)

We then ended the event with the traditional super duper group picture galore

Thanks to everyone who came and attended - those who bravely shared their ideas, offered help, organized, mentored, judged, provided our meals and drinks, those who cleaned up, did small stuff, big stuff, doesn't matter! We all are grateful for the combined efforts of everybody on this event. 

See yous, next year guysies!

But before that, we all shall go to Boracay for the Geeks on a Beach conference.

PEACE OUT!

More photos here, here, and here! Click click click! :)