Startup Weekend helps entrepreneurs develop ideas into potential products

Three people founded Apple in 1976. It took Mark Zuckerberg only a few years to turn Facebook into a multi-billion dollar company. In 2012, three college students invented Snapchat in their dorm room.

In the same spirit, 55 aspiring entrepreneurs from the College of Saint Benedict, Saint John's University, St. Cloud State University and the surrounding community came to SJU to participate in St. Cloud's first Startup Weekend Nov. 6-8.

SJU sophomore Sam LaBine and SCSU graduate Kelvin Schutz organized the idea for the St. Cloud area after attending Startup Weekends in the Twin Cities and Fargo, North Dakota. LaBine, an accounting major at SJU, and Schutz pitched the event to the Donald McNeely Center for Entrepreneurship at SJU, which sponsored the event.

The idea of Startup Weekend originated in 2007 in Boulder, Colorado. In 2009, UP Global decided to operate as a nonprofit with the goal of "exposing more people to the transformative power of entrepreneurship," according to the UP Global website. Since then, over 550 cities in 112 countries have hosted Startup Weekends.

A product and a pitch

On Nov. 6, attendees lined up to present their pitches at Pellegrene Auditorium. From the best of these pitches, nine teams were formed to start potential companies. For the next 54 hours, these teams met with potential customers, worked with coaches and mentors and developed their ideas into a Minimum Viable Product. Their ideas were presented to a panel of five judges over the course of five minutes on Nov. 8, who chose the winning product.

This competition was open to anyone in the area, but 10 CSB/SJU students and four alumnae/i participated.

SJU senior Nick Liemandt and CSB sophomore Kim Ficker took the stage first to present their startup idea "Recruit U" on behalf of their group.

"Our value proposition is to reduce the amount of recruiting time and recruiting costs by filtering out the unfit candidates," Liemandt said. By creating one test to streamline the recruiting process, and one algorithm similar to Google analytics to determine price, this potential company hopes to reduce the cost of recruitment. Their pitch took second place overall.

Another potential startup was the collaborative effort of two Johnnies and one SCSU student. SJU sophomores Brandon Thauwald and Jonathan Paquette joined Zachary Gnahn and focused on ways to provide hydroelectric power to underserved communities that reside along rivers. The group said it wanted to make a difference in peoples' lives and do it in a sustainable way.

DibbsOnIt.co, the final team presenting Sunday night was the victor. The team walked away with a marketing package worth $1,500 from DAYTA Marketing in Waite Park, Minnesota, to help get them off on the right foot. The team hoped to provide a quicker, more local way for people to give each other items they no longer wanted.

A beneficial event for entrepreneurs

"I thought Startup Weekend was the most beneficial event I have participated in all year," Ficker said. "You cannot find that environment anywhere else, and that was truly something spectacular to be a part of."

LaBine would like to make this an annual event in the St. Cloud area.

"The event went better than our expectations," LaBine said. "We saw a dramatic transformation in the mindsets of the attendees over the course of the weekend. By Sunday night, people believed they could launch companies and compete in a global market place. That alone made all of the effort extremely gratifying."