The idea of be­ing an en­tre­pre­neur has been glam­or­ised for much of the last decade. Most times, what is seen is the end re­sult–a suc­cess­ful busi­ness–but the ef­fort, sac­ri­fices and fail­ures along the way of­ten go un­no­ticed. Shin­ing a light on what be­ing an en­tre­pre­neur is re­al­ly about is Launch Rock­it; a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion and com­mu­ni­ty of pas­sion­ate en­tre­pre­neurs fo­cused on de­vel­op­ing suc­cess­ful busi­ness­es.

Every year for the past three years, Launch Rock­it has been the main or­gan­is­er of Start­Up Week­end T&T (SWTT). Over the course of one week­end (54 hours to be ex­act) and for a fee of $500, as­pir­ing en­tre­pre­neurs are brought to­geth­er to work on turn­ing their ideas in­to a po­ten­tial busi­ness. This year, the event took place from June 17-19.

At the end, pitch­es are made, ideas are judged and re­la­tion­ships formed that serve as fu­el to keep the en­tre­pre­neur­ial flame burn­ing.

For the past three years, more than 500 lo­cals have been par­tic­i­pants of SWTT. These par­tic­i­pants–from all across T&T and from dif­fer­ing cul­tures and back­grounds–spend one in­tense week­end hud­dled to­geth­er de­vel­op­ing in­no­v­a­tive busi­ness ideas.

Ger­ard Thomas, founder of Launch Rock­it, said he be­lieves that SWTT has been a gift to the lo­cal en­tre­pre­neur­ial land­scape.

Speak­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) O'Meara cam­pus, the site of this year's en­tre­pre­neur­ial marathon event, Thomas said: "We need­ed an en­tre­pre­neur­ial event to bring the com­mu­ni­ty to­geth­er and to show peo­ple that it's not just about think­ing up ideas and writ­ing fan­cy busi­ness plans but about get­ting your hands dirty and get­ting start­ed on build­ing a po­ten­tial busi­ness." Thomas not­ed that SWTT's slo­gan is what dri­ves every as­pect of their ap­proach to turn­ing ideas in­to po­ten­tial busi­ness­es.

"SWTT slo­gan is: No Talk and All Ac­tion and through our com­pa­ny, we are com­mit­ted to help­ing en­tre­pre­neurs de­vel­op bet­ter busi­ness­es faster."

Ques­tioned about the types of busi­ness ideas that have come out of SWTT, Thomas point­ed out that a vast cross-sec­tion of in­no­v­a­tive ideas had been de­vel­oped dur­ing the 54-hour event.

"Every SWTT is dif­fer­ent. We've seen all types of amaz­ing ideas with re­al po­ten­tial de­vel­oped here. We've seen a lot of apps, but we al­so see peo­ple who have so­cial ven­tures that are try­ing to in­cor­po­rate tech­nol­o­gy. We've seen peo­ple with agri-busi­ness who want to use tech­nol­o­gy and we've even seen peo­ple de­vel­op­ing new ideas and con­cepts for ways to do tourism."

Thomas said what tends to sur­prise most par­tic­i­pants is the sheer vol­ume of work that they are able to ac­com­plish in the rel­a­tive­ly short pe­ri­od of time. He said: "Most par­tic­i­pants un­der­es­ti­mate how much they could have got done in a week­end. They al­so didn't re­alise the num­ber of con­nec­tions they could make in such a short space of time that could re­al­ly forge long-term busi­ness re­la­tion­ships."

Thomas, how­ev­er, was quick to men­tion that SWTT is not sole­ly fo­cused on tech­nol­o­gy busi­ness­es. "SWTT is not on­ly about tech busi­ness­es. It's for any type of busi­ness that is in­no­v­a­tive in its ap­proach to solv­ing prob­lems or cre­at­ing new ways of do­ing things."

Asked if any SWTT busi­ness ideas had gone on to find re­al-world suc­cess, Thomas said that though nec­es­sary, more than just one week­end at SWTT was re­quired to trans­late an idea in­to a suc­cess­ful en­ter­prise.

"Mov­ing from idea to busi­ness suc­cess takes a while. Af­ter the adren­a­line rush of SWTT dies down and the re­al­i­ties of life set­tle back in, many ideas fall by the way­side. That be­ing said, Launch Rock­it con­tin­ues to work with oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions such as Youth Busi­ness T&T (YBTT), to give the start­up ideas and would-be en­tre­pre­neurs the boost they need to con­tin­ue mov­ing for­ward and to keep pur­su­ing their dreams of build­ing a busi­ness."

On the top­ic of fund­ing start­up ideas, Thomas stat­ed that was not the pri­or­i­ty of SWTT, adding that SWTT was about cre­at­ing the spark.

"We're re­al­ly fo­cused on ideas gen­er­a­tion, re­fine­ment and col­lab­o­ra­tion over the course of the week­end. Fund­ing is not re­al­ly a pri­or­i­ty since these are just ideas that re­quire more sup­port in oth­er ar­eas to see whether they can ac­tu­al­ly be vi­able prod­ucts and ac­tu­al­ly gen­er­ate rev­enue. That be­ing said, we (Launch Rock­it) work with YBTT to pro­vide the nec­es­sary tools and sup­port to po­ten­tial en­tre­pre­neurs to test their ideas, de­vel­op their busi­ness mod­els and once that has been suc­cess­ful­ly done, a more de­tailed con­ver­sa­tion about fund­ing can take place."

Thomas did point out that, to date, his or­gan­i­sa­tion has as­sist­ed four start-up com­pa­nies in ac­cess­ing gov­ern­ment fund­ing for their re­spec­tive busi­ness­es.

Busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment

Ac­cord­ing to Thomas, not enough is be­ing done, both in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor, to fos­ter a more en­tre­pre­neur­ial en­vi­ron­ment in T&T.

"Our lo­cal en­vi­ron­ment is not en­abling enough when it comes to build­ing an en­tre­pre­neur­ial cul­ture in T&T. There are too many bu­reau­crat­ic process­es and or­gan­i­sa­tions that hin­der en­tre­pre­neurs from con­nect­ing with each oth­er, shar­ing ideas and mov­ing at the pace that the mod­ern busi­ness world has grown ac­cus­tomed to."

Thomas sug­gest­ed that how state en­ti­ties them­selves are con­fig­ured is part of the prob­lem.

"We need the gov­ern­ment or­gan­i­sa­tions to be there to sup­port in­no­v­a­tive busi­ness ideas. We think they have a ma­jor role to play. Sad­ly, how­ev­er, we don't have enough ac­tu­al en­tre­pre­neurs run­ning those or­gan­i­sa­tions and in po­si­tions that have the great­est im­pact."

He added that a men­tal shift in how en­tre­pre­neur­ship is per­ceived is a must if state agen­cies are to pro­vide the kind of as­sis­tance en­tre­pre­neurs re­quire to­day.

Ac­cord­ing to Thomas, state agen­cies tend to ap­proach en­tre­pre­neur­ship as an aca­d­e­m­ic ex­er­cise and of­ten times lack the ur­gency and re­al-world in­sight that is re­quired in help­ing en­tre­pre­neurs get things done.

He ad­vo­cat­ed a fresh ap­proach to com­mu­ni­cat­ing with bud­ding en­tre­pre­neurs as the first step in shift­ing the way they ap­proach en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

Thomas stat­ed that en­tre­pre­neurs them­selves need to take the prover­bial "bull-by-the-horn" and be more ac­tive par­tic­i­pants in chart­ing their own suc­cess.

"It's not on­ly our state or­gan­i­sa­tions that needs to do work. The en­tre­pre­neurs need to do work in re­al­ly learn­ing and ap­ply­ing skills and tech­niques from more ad­vanced so­ci­eties that have mas­tered the art of build­ing suc­cess­ful busi­ness­es."

Turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the pri­vate sec­tor, Thomas be­lieves that for the long-term vi­a­bil­i­ty of their com­pa­nies, pri­vate sec­tor play­ers should take a keen in­ter­est in the lo­cal en­tre­pre­neur­ial move­ment.

"If these com­pa­nies plan on be­ing around for the next 50 to 100 years, they need to get in­volved and pay at­ten­tion to the en­tre­pre­neur­ial land­scape as it ex­ists to­day."

Go­ing fur­ther, he added that in­no­v­a­tive ideas can be ei­ther ben­e­fi­cial or de­struc­tive to es­tab­lished busi­ness­es de­pend­ing on how they treat with cre­ative en­tre­pre­neurs to­day.

"En­tre­pre­neurs tend to be the dis­rup­tors that have caused change across ma­jor in­dus­tries through­out the world. Fi­nance, tech­nol­o­gy, man­u­fac­tur­ing and me­dia have all been af­fect­ed by dis­rup­tive en­tre­pre­neur­ial ideas in one way or an­oth­er. This trend is not go­ing to re­verse. So, re­al­ly, the pri­vate sec­tor has to pay keen at­ten­tion to en­tre­pre­neurs whether it be by adopt­ing in­no­v­a­tive ideas to make their com­pa­nies bet­ter, or work­ing along­side them to build them in­to suc­cess­es in their own right," said Thomas.

About Start­Up Week­end

Start­up Week­end is a glob­al grass­roots move­ment of ac­tive and em­pow­ered en­tre­pre­neurs who are learn­ing the ba­sics of found­ing star­tups and launch­ing suc­cess­ful ven­tures. It is the world's largest com­mu­ni­ty of pas­sion­ate en­tre­pre­neurs, with events in over 100 coun­tries and 600 cities around the world.

All Start­up Week­ends events fol­low the same ba­sic mod­el: Any­one is wel­come to pitch their start­up idea and to re­ceive feed­back from their peers.

Teams or­gan­i­cal­ly form around the top ideas and then it is 54 hours of busi­ness mod­el cre­ation, de­sign­ing and mar­ket val­i­da­tion. The week­ends cul­mi­nate with pre­sen­ta­tions in front of lo­cal en­tre­pre­neur­ial lead­ers with an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty for crit­i­cal feed­back.