Startup Weekend gives hands-on business experience

Experience is the best way to get better in any field, especially entrepreneurship. Startup Weekend on August 4th gives entrepreneurs a hands-on look at building a business.

To learn more about the upcoming event, What’s Working in Washington sat down with Startup Weekend community organizer and alum, John Balkam.

“I went to [Startup Weekend] in 2014 and it was really a transformative experience,” said Balkam. “It helped me understand where to start, and, if I wanted to become an entrepreneur, what the early steps would be.”

Since his attendance, Balkam returned in 2015 to volunteer in organizing the event. Most importantly, the event helped Balkam learn that entrepreneurship is “finding a problem that you want to solve… and going out, and solving that,” he said.

In the same vein, many of Startup Weekend’s upcoming events are focused on not just building a company that makes money, but building one that makes a positive difference. “We’ve run several social impact themed events, the upcoming event in August is going to be a civic impact event. And so the theme on all the ideas that we’re encouraging our attendees to produce, are ideas that solves a big problem,” said Balkam.

“We’re seeing in our community here in D.C., there are a lot of companies, like my current company, EverFi, and other startups cropping up that are also thinking the same way about entrepreneurship,” he said.

Startup Weekend’s events are team-based exercises in acting on quick, interesting business ideas before consulting potential customers, building prototypes and getting advice from established area entrepreneurs.

On the final day, a panel of judges awards prizes to the top performers: those with clear business models with real investment potential. “We have had some startups that actually launched after a Startup Weekend event,” said Balkam.

“It’s that learning experience of working really hard on one business problem, one startup idea, and that’s what keeps me coming back, is that energy that people get in the learning experience throughout the weekend.”

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