Posted on 19 November 2014
On Friday the 21st November, the University of Wales Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea will play host to a weekend-long competition for budding entrepreneurs to share ideas, form teams, pioneer products and launch new businesses.
As part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, StartUp Weekend Swansea will welcome over 100 developers, designers, marketers, product managers and start-up enthusiasts to the Centre, who will compete for the chance to win a range of prizes.
Global Entrepreneur Week is the world’s largest campaign to promote entrepreneurship. For the second year running, StartUp Weekend will host the entrepreneurs of tomorrow, encouraging and supporting research and innovation in South Wales. This follows last year’s success, in which nine new companies were established, many of which are still successfully trading today.
The event has been made possible thanks to support from University of Wales Trinity Saint David, High Performance Computing (HPC) Wales, Gower College, Swansea University, Institute of Life Science, Swansea County Council, SW Regional Enterprise Hub, Swansea Start, and TechHub Swansea.
During the event, attendees will pitch their business ideas to a judging panel, with teams organically forming around the most popular concepts. There will then be a 54-hour frenzy of business model creation, coding, designing, and market validation. Each team will receive support to develop their ideas by a string of successful entrepreneurs, business mentors and investors.
The competition will culminate with presentations to local entrepreneurial leaders and a judging panel that includes David Buttress, CEO of Just Eat; Oliver Morley, CEO of the DVLA; and Daniel McPherson, a high profile London-based investor.
Prizes including free office space, a laptop, a £500 apple voucher, access to the Xenos business Angel network, IT and computing support, mentoring and access to Wales’ national supercomputing network will be awarded to the successful teams.
For more information and to purchase a ticket for this year's event, please visit: www.swanseastart.com or www.up.co/communities/uk/swansea/startup-weekend/3969