Need a crash course in creating a business? Check out Startup Weekend Johannesburg

Startup Weekends are getting quite popular in Africa. Give groups of people 50 or so hours, an idea and set them to task creating a business — easy peasy.

Well maybe not. The folks at Startup Weekend Johannesburg have faith though, their event in its third year is coming back to the city of gold. The basics of the event is to together entrepreneurs, designers, developers and startup enthusiasts to participate in 54 hours of taking innovative business ideas from concept to launch.

According to the organisers of Startup Weekend Joburg, the 16 August event will see a host of local CEOs, founders, and startup veterans on hand to provide expertise and give talks on their experiences in the fast-paced world of startups.

“This is going to be a great weekend for the startup community in Joburg,” says Justin Coetsee, one of the local volunteer organisers. “It’s great to see established and experienced entrepreneurs give of their time to support the local community. Equally overwhelming is the fantastic response from both local and international companies keen to provide sponsorship to ensure the success of the event and to help grow the community.”

How it works

The basic format for a startup weekend goes like this: people pitch their ideas then teams are formed around the chosen ideas. Then it’s up to the teams to utilise the experts on hand for the rest of the weekend to strategize, build and launch their business. Then they are judged by a panel of judges and awarded prizes.

“In less than 54 hours teams move rapidly from the idea phase to the prototype phase. It’s quite amazing to see that while executing on an idea, teams are also working on business models for their ideas.” said Tyler Reed, another of the volunteer organisers. “The energy and passion that can be found at a Startup Weekend event is contagious, you never know what might happen when you mix really talented people with great ideas.”

The team behind the weekend, says it feels that this is an event to inspire tech entrepreneurs to come up with innovative ideas and hopefully build workable businesses. The team has managed to secure the support from some tech heavyweights, including Qualcomm, Microsoft, BlackBerry and Google to host a Tech Bootcamp prior to the main event.

“The intention of the Tech Bootcamp is to give the entrepreneurs the skills and the technology tools to quickly and easily, with close to zero hard costs, launch their ideas,” says the team.

Startup Weekend Johanessburg runs from Friday 16 August at 5:30 PM to Sunday 18 August at 9:00 PM at Microsoft Campus in Johannesburg.

The Tech Bootcamp will run from Friday 2 August at 12:00pm to Saturday 3 August at 5:00pm at JoziHub.