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Bloomington Startup Weekend
From Bloomingpedia
February 8th through February 10th, 2008, a group of people will get together and attempt to create an entire company over the course of 54 hours in the Bloomington Startup Weekend. They will start by brainstorming and pitching concepts for a company product, arriving at a single idea by the end of the first evening. Saturday and Sunday are dedicated to putting that idea into practice, with a live launch of the company by Sunday evening. The new startup company can be a website, an application, or some other form of product or service.
How it Works
For three days in early February, a projected 70 people will gather at City Hall at Showers in downtown Bloomington to create a new startup business from scratch. The founders will share in the ownership of the company, earning those shares by contributing to the conception, development and launch of a new product or service.
The 54-hour event runs from Friday, February 8 at 5p Eastern until Sunday, February 10 at 11p. Registration will open in mid-January. Each participant is asked to pay a "buy-in" fee of $20. A limited number of scholarships will be awarded based on need and available resources.
History
The Bloomington Startup Weekend is one of a series of similar weekends taking place around the country due to the efforts of an umbrella company just called Startup Weekend. Bloomington is the second scheduled weekend of 2008, following the January 25th through January 27th event in Seattle, and the fifteenth Startup Weekend since the idea was conceived in July, 2007. The School of Informatics is the driving force behind the Bloomington edition of the weekend, particularly graduate student Kevin Makice.
The first weekend was created by Andrew Hyde for Boulder, Colorado with 72 local programmers, business experts, venture capitalists, marketing gurus, lawyers, designers and others contributing to the launch of VoSnap. New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, and West Lafayette are among the cities hosting Startup Weekend events.
- VoSnap | Boulder (July 6-8, 2007)
- LobbyThem | Toronto (September 14-16, 2007)
- Edelbild | Hamburg, Germany (September 21-23, 2007)
- FavorEats | New York, NY (September 21-23, 2007)
- TipDish | Houston (September 28-30, 2007)
- ScrollTalk | West Lafayette (October 12-14th, 2007)
- DeskHappy | Boston (October 19-21, 2007)
- Hola Neighbor! | Washington, D.C. (October 26-28, 2007)
- WorkPerch | Chapel Hill, N.C. (November 2-4, 2007)
- SkribIt | Atlanta (November 9-11, 2007)
- Help Hookup | San Francisco (November 16-18, 2007)
- aLittleBitBetter | London (November 30-December 2, 2007)
- Frenemies | Los Angeles (December 14-16, 2007)
- Seattle (January 25-27, 2008)
- Bloomington (February 8-10, 2008)
Every weekend has a facilitator that is approved by Startup Weekend, LLC.
Each weekend has it’s own legal team who will look for the best way to incorporate the company. The most common structure gives the founders from the weekend 100% of an LLC that owns 50% of the resulting S-Corp. Startup Weekend, LLC will receive 5% of the company, with the rest going to the corporation to develop the business. The fate of the company is determined by the founders, who can opt to continue to work weekends, hand over control to a few people, or even sell the company on eBay.
Founders earn between 2 and 7 shares of stock (1 share Friday Night, 2 shares Saturday, and 2 shares Sunday). Participants should plan to attend all three days of the weekend.
