Lagos Startup Week to kick off with over 600 attendees

The Lagos Startup Week is set to begin on 24 September 2016. This free five-day event aims to celebrate everything that makes an entrepreneur or an SME, with over 600 attendees already registered to join. It will consist of presentations and competitions including how to navigate “The New Media Era,” best practices for digital marketing, and much more.

One of the key offerings at this year’s Lagos Startup Week includes a session titled “From University Research to Real World Innovation.” This session will give students and researchers of Tertiary Nigerian institutions the opportunity to pitch their research projects to the investors in attendance.

This Year’s Lagos Startup Week theme is “Be Inspired,” and will seek to do so through many presentations, masterclasses, and competitions.

To be eligible to apply for the pitching competition, applicants need to have Nigerian citizenship and must be enrolled as an undergraduate or postgraduate student at a Nigerian University. Recently graduated students will also be considered.

“This would be an engaging experience for students during Lagos Startup Week. Collaboration and knowledge sharing is vital to increasing our ability to tackle some of the major challenges in society today,” said organising member of Team Lagos Startup Week and partner at KPMG, Olumide Olayinka in a blog post.

There will only be 10 finalists chosen to pitch in front of a panel of judges. The prizes include:

• Free access to a co-working space which is powered by Leadspace
• Access to collaboration tools and cloud-hosting services
• Depending on the project, access to an Innovation Lab
• Access to a network of qualified investors and mentors

Some of the speakers included in the lineup for the startup week are COO of Y Combinator, Qasar Younis; executive secretary of the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund, Akintunde Oyebode; general manager of MEST Nigeria, Uneku Atawodi.

The startup week will also be hosting five masterclasses on how to hack the growth of startups and how to build a successful app. It will also include how to improve user experience and product development, effective customer service, and the business of photography.

Featured image: Satanoid via Flickr