Saturday Presentations
Presentation Format (Suggested) – All in 4 minutes!
- About the Team Members (Short Bio, Include a Photo of each Individual)
- Problem You are Trying to Solve / Value you are Trying to Bring (Your X Factor, Secret Sauce)
- Demo your Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
- Business Model (How will you make $? Viability to market? Your target market / customer?)
Practice!
Decide who in your team will present. If you are having more than 1, make sure you organize yourselves well in transitioning between members. Remember you only have 4 minutes!
Practice, Practice and Practice! Yes time is tight but allocate time to practice running through the presentation.
Tech Check
Make time to test the laptop that you are presenting in with the projector. Similarly make sure your MVP will run!
Time Limit:
4 minutes of presentation (We are strict, nothing more than 4 minutes, including MVP Demo)
4 minutes of Q&A
#SWCairo Agenda
Thursday: 19/01/2012
- 3:00pm-4:30pm – Registration starts (Prayer & drinks)
- 4:30pm-4:45pm – TIEC Welcome note-Ahmed Laiali-Entrepreneurship support manager at TIEC
- 4:45pm-5:00pm – Mohamed Abduljalil – Nokia Business Development Manager- North Africa and Levant area
- 5:00pm-5:15pm – Dr. Khaled Ismail –Intel Mobile Communications General Manager-Egypt
- 5:15pm-5:35pm – Prayer Time
- 5:35pm-5:50pm – Abdellatif Olama –Co-founder and CEO of Dare’n’Deal
- 5:50pm-6:00pm – SW Facilitator speech
- 6:00pm-7:30pm – Pitches Start
- 7:30pm-8:00pm – Attendees vote for the top ideas
- 8:00pm-8:15pm - Counting votes & announcing top ideas
- 8:15pm-9:30pm – Networking & Teams start forming and discussing ideas.Start to formalize teams and take an inventory of skills. Be honest, and direct about what resources and skills are needed for the weekend
- 8:45 - Heliopolis Bus Departure
- 9:00 - Maadi & Mohandesin Buses Departure
- 9:45pm- End of First Day
Friday: 20/01/2012
- 8:00am – Arrive, simple breakfast & coffee
- 9:00am –11:45am- Teams formed and start working
- 12:00pm-1:00pm – Lunch & Jumaa Prayer
- 1:00pm-8:00pm- Nokia Mobile Lab will be open to Mobile developers
- 1:30pm-2:00pm – Call for needs & skills
- 2:00pm-7:00pm – Mentors help teams one-on-one. They are here to help!
- 6:30pm-7:00pm – Coffee Break
- 7:30pm-8:00pm – Mid weekend check-in, status reports, call for help
- 8:00pm-8:15pm- Mobile developers who went to Nokia will return back to TIEC
- 8:45 - Heliopolis Bus Departure
- 9:00 - Maadi & Mohandesin Buses Departure
- 9:45pm – End of second day.
Saturday: 21/01/2012
- 8:00am-9:00am – Arrive, simple breakfast & coffee
- 9:00am-10:00am – Teams start working and anyone who can help another team with his skill-set can do it
- 10:00am -10:15am – Sebastian Trzcinski-Clément, Developer Relations Lead at MENA, Google
- 12:00pm-12:30pm – Lunch
- 12:30pm-3:00pm – Mentors arrive… ASK QUESTIONS
- 3:00pm-4:00pm – Gut check. Start prepping for presentations
- 4:00pm-4:30pm – Coffe Break
- 4:30pm-7:30pm – FINAL PRESENTATIONS
- 7:30pm-8:00pm – Judging & awards
- 8:00pm-8:30pm – Wrapup
- 8:30pm – Go home!
Buses will transport the attendees back to their pickup points agreed on (Heliopolis club, Lebanon Square and Grand Mall at Maadi)
Get ready for #SWCairo
Here is a quick reminder for what to bring this weekend. We begin working on Thursday night so be ready!
What to bring
- Laptop
- Business cards
- Something to take notes on
- All kind of charges you have
- USB modem(as a backup)
- Don’t forget your camera to capture the exceptional moments
- Lots of creative energy
Pitches
Pitches on Thursday night be in a “pitch-fire” format, which means you will have just 60 seconds to get the audience interested in your idea. You will have no slides or props – just a microphone and a smile. You won’t have time to go over features, so just focus on the core of the idea and make your enthusiasm contagious. Here is the format for pitches that we recommend:
- Who are you and what is your background? (5-10 Seconds)
- What is the problem that you product is solving? Or, begin with a story (10-20 Seconds)
- Explain the product and how it solves the problem (10-20 seconds)
- Who do you need on your team (a developer, marketing, designer?) (5-10 seconds)
- Finally, make up a name for your startup so the facilitator can give it a title
Voting & Forming Teams
After pitches, you will have more time to mingle. If you pitched an idea, this is your time to start recruiting others that are interested in your idea. If you did not pitch, or if you are having trouble finding others to join your team, use this time to seek out those that pitched other ideas that you found interesting.
Next, the crowd votes on their favorite pitches. This is a simply a way to encourage quick team forming. This is by no means an exclusive process and if you pitch an idea and it is not voted as one of the top ideas, you are more than welcome to work on it if you find some other people who want to work on the idea with you. From there we will form teams and these are the startup ideas that will be worked on over the weekend.
#SWCairo Judging Criteria
The Startup Weekend judging criteria is broken up into three sections. Teams are judged according to the following 3 criteria (weighed equally):
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:
- Who is your customer?
- What is your core value proposition?
- What are your key activities?
- What are your revenue streams?
- What is your cost structure?
- Who/what are your key partners/resources?
- What are your distribution channels?
- What is your roll-out strategy?
Tip: Do a Business Model Canvas or a Lean Canvas to help you think through the big picture and think about all the key parts of your business model. You don’t have to present this, but you should know the parts of the model.
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.
Execution
The nitty gritty: what has your team been able to actually build over the weekend? 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. This is what truly matters: investors don’t invest as in ideas so much as teams.
SWCairo#2 will be held at TIEC
We’re proud to announce that the next Cairo’s Startup Weekend will take place at TIEC(Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center) in Smart Village at the period of (19-21) January 2012.
As part of TIEC’s responsibility towards empowering entrepreneurs and inspiring innovation in Egypt bringing the best to the industry and our beloved country, they’re motivated to be one of our Main Sponsors of the event.
We can’t wait to witness the innovative ideas and amazing spirit experienced at Startup Weekend and will roll out the registration form very soon.
To read more about TIEC and its programs, kindly check: http://tiec.gov.eg
note: the date was updated to (19-21) January 2012
