Startup Weekend MU Winning Teams Announced

We are excited to announce our weekend prize winners!

1st place: NomNom, a mobile app that allows smartphone users to donate to food pantries while they shop.
2nd place: InfoVote, a mobile app that provides users with unbiased local and national candidate and election information.
3rd place: DainvestIT, a mobile app that breaks down barriers to entry for small-scale investors and promotes saving.
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Congratulations to all the Startup Weekend MU teams for their dedication and passion this weekend.

Pitching: the basics

Here’s how it works. Pitching happens on Friday night and is completely optional. Feel free to come with or without an idea, but be sure to be attentive and take notes throughout the process. While it’s your opportunity to share your idea with the group and recruit team members, it’s also your opportunity to see what other ideas are out there. Be on the lookout for concepts you would be interested in developing throughout the course of the weekend. At the end of Pitchfire, popular vote will decide which concepts will move forward, and teams will be formed to develop those concepts.

Have a killer business or product idea? Pitch your idea to the Startup Weekend group to get others excited about your idea too. You will only have 60 seconds to pitch, so focus on making every second count. We recommend allocating your time as follows:

5-10s Who are you?

10-20s What’s the problem?

10-20s What’s your solution?

5-10s Who do you need?

In our experience, the best pitches are practiced pitches. Take time to think about the most essential information for your audience to know. For a little extra help, check out the HBS Elevator Pitch Builder.

Name your idea. If you choose to pitch, you will be asked to name your concept and provide that name to our recording team sometime during your 60s. Branding your idea will help others remember your concept when it’s time for preliminary voting and team formation.

Best of luck!

Judging Criteria

Startup Weekend teams are judged on three, equally-weighted criteria:

1. Business Model. 
The heart of it all. If you haven’t got answers to these questions, you’ve spent too much time on frills & features and need to get back to the basics:
   1. Who is your customer?
   2. What is your core value proposition?
   3. What are your key activities?
   4. What are your revenue streams?
   5. What is your cost structure?
   6. Who/what are your key partners/resources?
   7. What are your distribution channels?
   8. What is your roll-out strategy?
2. Customer Validation. 
Have you taken the proper steps to ensure that the people who matter (your future customers) support and reinforce your assumptions? Think of Customer Validation as ‘evidence’ to back up the core structure of your ‘theory’ (your Business Model). The more feedback you gather (quantity), the more this feedback comes from your specific target market (quality), and the more you’re able to actually integrate this feedback into the Business Model and product development (execution), the better.
3. Execution
. The nitty gritty: what has your team been able to actually build over the weekend? Have you identified the key features of your minimally viable concept? Have you created a mock-up or a working prototype of your product? Even the strongest of Business Plans are useless in the hands of those who can’t properly execute on them. Getting as far as possible in the development of your product/prototype not only helps give Judges a tangible vision of what the final product could be, but proves your strength and skills as a team.