Almost 25 participants took part in the Startup Weekend Biel from Friday evening to Sunday. The participants came from Biel, Bern, Zurich and even from France to spend 48 hours learning how to turn an idea into a business model and to pitch the business idea in front of a renowned jury : Bärbel Selm (CEO Stiftung für technologische Innovation STI), Urs Guggenbühl (Headcoach be-advanced), Stephan Hirt (Head of Business Unit at RUAG) and Nico Kunz (Founder at iazzu).
The first prize went to kawaha. The team wants to develop a novel kind of coffee machine and gets an entry ticket to the be-advanced Startup Challenge program. The secound prize went to smart opticien: a gamification solution to diagnose sight problems for children. And the third prize went to J2A security: a novel way to secure sensible data in any cloud.
Of course all participants won, namely knowledge, experience and a valuable network. Thanks to dedicated coaches, they learned how to use the Business Model Canvas.
Congrats to all the participants and to the winners!
The Experience Talk by Ronja Müller-Brun, founder of Stimit, was met with great interest, Ronja talked openly about her ups and downs, about financing problems and investor successes as well as the cooperation with SIPBB. Thank you very much for this inspiring talk.
A big thank you goes to the numerous sponsors:
- Gold Sponsor: RUAG
- Silver Sponsors: BEKB, Migros Kulturprozent, Rollomatic SA, Worldline
- Bronze Sponsor: Sterki Bau
- Other Sponsors: be-advanced, Techstars, Aare Bier, Nurissa, SwissDevJobs
And also many thanks to the huge effort of the coaches, jury members, the Facilitator Réginald Bien-Aimé and the students of Berner Fachhochschule BFH, who helped us to organize this Startup Weekend!!