We got 70 awesome people joining to innovate the food industry. Awesome!

30 of 70 people pitched an idea and worked on getting a team. In the end we had and still have 7 teams. Wonderful!

1. Healthy Fast Food
2. LOWYE
3. Frutti Fresh
4. Foodic-Midi
5. Flocal
6. Lecker Print
7. Easy Meal Individual

We can’t wait for the final presentations.

Let me proudly announce what you can get, if you are one of the blessed teams, which is selected by our judges.

*please imagine a drumroll here*

Do you like what you see?Let us know!

Looking forward to meet you over the weekend.

Your Startup Weekend Berlin Team

• Business Model
  Can this idea make money? Is there positive customer growth or revenue? Is there a customer acquisition / rollout strategy? Has a revenue model been defined and is it realistic? Is the idea/team ready for capital and execution? Would you invest in this company at this point?
• Customer Validation
  Did the team identify customers (demographic, location etc)? Did the team get out and talk to customers? What is the value proposition to customers? What channels of communication are used? Product/Market fit?
• Technical – Execution
  Is there a functional product (e.g.in the case of an app, did they build one)? Were architecture diagrams and API signatures included? Which services did they integrate with? How much of the product is running on a real server with non-sample data?
• Design – Execution
  Does it have a professional look and feel? Does it deliver a compelling and captivating user experience? Is it memorable? What key insights were gathered over the weekend to go in this creative direction?

The Mondeléz team is well aware of the fact, that there are lot’s of innovative people in the Startup Community work on innovative ideas and products. It’s also pretty obvious that large organizations have to follow their processes not only to ensure high quality products, but also different legal requirements and their own rules to make sure compliance with the values they decided to follow. As happy we can be, that all these rules are set and followed, as hard it is to push innovation and change in a way, which is very common in the startup environment.

On the other hand wherever else you look you will rarely find more competency, insight, and expertise within a corporation like Mondeléz. So the challenge is how these different worlds could pool the advantages they have to move forward and change the world to a better.

And that’s where the Startup Weekend family – and so YOU – comes into play. You ladies and gentlemen from the startup community are the innovators, you are the people who are willing to go down the muddy way of creating new solutions for the world. Our special sponsor – Mondeléz International – is willing to join forces with you and support you in that mission, throwing in almost everything they have. They almost „forced“ us to let them offer a special prize to a Startup Weekend Food Innovation team of their choice. That selected team will get the chance to get access to the corporations broad network – did you ever want to see your newly designed product nicely sorted in the shelves of Metro retailers? – combined with the joined knowledge of Mondeléz’ employees and your motivation to create something new.

We as the Startup Weekend Berlin team are very happy to get the opportunity to organize the world-wide first Food Innovation vertical together with Mondeléz International. We look forward to meet you in Berlin. Let us know, if you have any further questions or recommendations for us.

Your
Startup Weekend Berlin Team

Berlin [at] startupweekend.org

On a local level, we mostly use the money for the 7 meals, snacks, coffee, and drinks we provide over the weekend. Our local sponsors help us to keep the ticket prices at an affordable level, since we have to pay for a lot of other stuff, like the venue, insurances, swag, etc. No Startup Weekend organizer is making money by organizing it. We are all volunteers and do it, because we love everyting around entrepreneurship and want to support the local and global community. In the rare case that an event is profitable, 50 % of that money is used to support events in smaller cities. Cities, which are not able to raise enough money in the local community to pay for an event. The other 50 % is managed by Startup Weekend, Inc. (Seattle, WA) – a registered US Non-Profit-Organization acc. to 501(c)(3) – and can be used by the local organizing team to support the local startup community.

If you have any additional questions, let us know. The local team is here to help!

Well, Startup Weekend Food Innovation is our first attempt ever to open up a Startup Weekend event for a new group of people – the people from the food industry, without locking out the people, who already know and love Startup Weekends. And we talk about food industry in its broadest sense. You don’t have to own a huge corporation to participate. If you have an idea around farming, reworking, or preparing food, or maybe you invent(ed) the next BIG recipe and want to bring it to the shop floors. Or you might have the idea for a mobile app, that supports the consumers with shopping, checking nutritions, etc. Whatever you might bring up is welcome. Surprise us!

Now that you know, what Startup Weekend Food Innovation is all about, let us introduce our special sponsor for this event. Mondeléz International (fka Kraft Foods) partners with us to make sure, that we not only provide you with possible co-founders, but also give you the chance to talk with and learn from experienced veterans from the food industry. On top of that Mondeléz’ President (Switzerland, Austria, Germany) Jürgen Leiße joins us on Sunday as a judge. We have even heard rumors that they talked about inviting a selected team to their HQ in Zurich. Stay tuned….

Hopefully we were able to give you a better idea about the upcoming Startup Weekend Food Innovation. If you have any further questions, just shoot us an email and we will get in touch with you. If you’d like us to call you, please do not forget to add a number.

Cheers,
Your Berlin Startup Weekend Team

Business Model
The heart of it all. If you still haven’t obtained the answers to these simple questions, you have 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?

Customer Validation
Test test: 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 Business Plans are useless in the hands of those who cannot properly execute 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 strengths and skills as a team. This is what truly matters: investors don’t invest in ideas so much as teams.

(edited by Aisha Serres, thank you so much!)

Recently a few people have asked us about the pitching process at Startup Weekend Berlin, so we decided to explain how it works: Friday evening everybody will have the chance to pitch an idea that they would like to work on over the weekend. Every pitch will be limited to one minute long. This keeps the process fast moving and makes it much easier to listen to many ideas. We encourage all attendees to pitch. It’s a great chance and you will probably regret not getting up after the weekend. But you are not required to present an idea. Usually about 50% of the attendees pitch friday night. Maybe you want to present the idea that you are currently working on and you are looking for co-founders or just randomly think of a business idea on your way to swB.  The more ideas we have floating around the better the weekend.

Take a few minutes to think about your pitch. What do you want others to know about your idea after the minute pitch? You should start with telling the audience who you are. Explain your business idea in a few key sentences (In one sentence if you can!). What is the problem that you want to solve? What is your solution to solve that problem? In the end let the attendees know what you need to move forward with you idea (i.e. Designers, Developers, Marketing people, etc.). What kind of skills are required to progress over the weekend? After all the pitches are done, just be open to discussions about your project and start getting together a great team.

Also you are not required to pitch in English if you don’t feel comfortable, but we encourage you to pitch in English because we will have people at the event who don´t speak German! We keep most of the communications about the event in English because we want to be open to our international guests. They make the event more awesome. If you would still like to pitch in German, no problem! We are sure to have somebody to take the time to translate for the attendees that are not fluent in German.

After all ideas are presented the attendees can pick their favorites. Then teams are formed around the ideas – usually around 10 – 15 Teams get formed. This is a very open process. Sometimes people can’t find a team to work with and they still start coding and build a great product to show on Sunday night. Or teams form around ideas that haven’t been picked as the crowds favorites – you see, this is a very open process!

You are very welcome to pitch your startup with your team and work on it over the weekend. Of course we can’t promise that more attendees will join your team, but we have seen teams do this very successfully at past events. All the teams will present their work Sunday night in front of the jury.

We hope that we could answer some of your questions. Just let us know via FB, Twitter or email if you have more.

Hope to see you at swB12,
Your swB12 Team!

(edited by Aisha Serres, thank you so much!)

Startup Weekend is no ordinary event. It’s where like-minded entrepreneurs gather for a weekend of company creation. In 54 hours, you take an initial idea from the Friday night pitches through to a mind- spinning startup company on the Sunday night.

Don’t be mistaken by thinking it’s just for developers!  Its marketing maestros, design gurus, business development wizards, legal geniuses, and the specialist of startups – the jack of all trades coming together as one, creating a harmony that can only be envied by the corporate world.

OK – so that may be slight sales mode, but it truly all about bringing together the knowledge of the local entrepreneur scene, and helping those in need to find their feet in the world of startups.

Friday night is all about networking and the pitches. Those with an idea, and are brave enough to stand in front of 150 strangers give their 1 minute elevator pitch to the crowd. The ideas that people like, and want to work with then get created. From there on, within 48 hours you have to deliver a product and business plan that can stand up to the harsh light of day. Mentors will be on hand throughout the time to help you fine tune the idea that was only conceived 12 hours ago, into a working company with huge potential profits in 36 hours.

Sounds intense? It is!

Sunday night is where the jury panel comes in. Seasoned professionals that have been through the startup mill many times over will scrutinize and find the holes in the plan to evaluate the chances of real world succession.

What’s next? Well, it’s all up to you. Startup Weekend can only help you start your dream. It’s up to you to live it out.

Go on, what are you waiting for? Head over to the ticket section HERE to find out for yourself what it’s all about!