Khara Per­sad

Com­bine a vi­ablei­dea with team­work and a strate­gic busi­ness mod­el, and it's pos­si­ble to launch as­tart­up com­pa­ny in just 54 hours. That's ac­cord­ing to Start­up Week­end--an in­ter­ac­tive fo­rum for busi­ness in­no­va­tion­that mar­ries as­pir­ing en­tre­pre­neurs with de­sign­ers, mar­keters and the busi­ness savvy to build a suc­cess­ful small busi­ness­es in just three days.

About 120 start­up en­thu­si­asts came to­geth­eron May 22at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gustine­to share orig­i­nal ideas and form mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary teams, with the in­ten­tion of launch­ing their own com­pa­nies, or at least learn­ing about what it takes to en­ter the world of busi­ness. Would-be en­tre­pre­neurs ea­ger­ly lined up on the first day, wait­ing to pitch their ideas inan open mic ses­sion, with the hope of in­spir­ing oth­ers to buy in­to their vi­sion and join them­for what would be three days of de­vel­op­ing that idea in­to a fea­si­ble en­ter­prise.

"I have al­ways been a tech­ni­cal per­son, but I'm not busi­ness savvy. My ideas are born in a cu­bi­cle and die in a cu­bi­cle," said one par­tic­i­pant George Mu­bi­ta. "I want to mon­e­tise my skills bu­tI nev­er thought I had a way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with peo­ple of the busi­ness world. Now I can chan­nel my ideas and turn them in­to an en­ter­prise."

One or­gan­is­er of the event, Ger­ard Thomas,saidthat help­ing par­tic­i­pants to make that sharp­tran­si­tion from per­son­al idea to cor­po­rate re­al­i­ty was one of the main goals of Start­up Week­end.

"I want all peo­ple here to ex­pe­ri­ence how quick­ly you could build a busi­ness with­in two days. A lot of peo­ple take weeks and months and even years try­ing to build an idea," Thomas said.

From May 22 to 24,par­tic­i­pants had ac­cess to 18 coach­es, who ad­vised them on re­fin­ing their busi­ness mod­els, iden­ti­fy­ing­tar­get mar­kets and de­vel­op­ing sus­tain­ablestrat­e­gy. He said fail­ing is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad thing, if it's done quick­ly and you can move on.

"A lot of peo­ple take too long to build busi­ness ideas, and the faster you fail is the bet­ter chance you have for suc­cess."

Thomas said start­ing a busi­ness does not re­quire hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars, de­spite what many peo­ple may be­lieve. What's more im­por­tant is pas­sion,team­work and ac­cess to men­tor­ship. He added that it's not all about find­ing an idea that could gen­er­ate mon­ey, but about see­ing a prob­lem and help­ing to fix it, which will lead to suc­cess.

"It's about find­ing out and un­der­stand­ing how you can make mon­ey from it."

Small busi­ness­es al­so fu­el the econ­o­my by pro­vid­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties­for busi­ness­es out­side the petro­chem­i­calin­dus­try main­stay, Thomas said.

"This is anop­por­tu­ni­ty to build the econ­o­my­by help­ing small busi­ness­es."

The pro­gramme had the sup­port of theN­ation­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NED­CO). Ad­win Cox, ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er of De­vel­op­ment Sup­port Ser­vices, said NED­CO was will­ing to help with fi­nanc­ing­nov­el ideas com­ing out of the three-day fo­rum.

"Our man­date un­der the Min­istry of Labour is to de­vel­op en­tre­pre­neur­ship in T&T, and we saw this as a key plat­form to get in­volved in. We saw that we could add val­ue, and we want­ed to be a part of it."

Teams made pre­sen­ta­tions on the fi­nal day to a pan­el of five judges who de­lib­er­at­ed on the best three busi­ness pro­to­types. The top three teams were award­ed­non-cash prize pack­ages that were cus­tomised to match their speci­fic­needs. Three star­tups cho­sen as win­ners pitched ideas about a mo­bile phone app for tourists, a video game about mak­ing dou­bles (as in, the dou­bles you eat) and da­ta vi­su­al­i­sa­tion.

Emeke Far­ri­er isone of four co-founders of the win­ning start­up, a com­pa­ny called Gia. He­said the busi­ness will es­tab­lish an en­hanced stan­dard of trav­el for a new gen­er­a­tion of tourists. The com­pa­ny is de­vel­op­ing a mo­bile app that­builds cus­tomiseditin­er­ariesof lo­cal ac­tiv­i­ties for­trav­ellers, based on­per­son­al­pref­er­ences. Far­ri­er, 22, re­cent­ly grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies with an En­gi­neer­ing de­gree, and said the time is now to take these risks in busi­ness.

"There's a sense of free­dom that comes with be­ing an en­tre­pre­neur."

The team that won sec­ond-place win­ners, al­so de­vel­oped a mo­bile app.Dou­bles Ty­coon­isan in­ter­ac­tive game which takes the play­er on a quest to be­come the best dou­bles ven­dor in town. Kris Manohar, one of the game's eight de­vel­op­ers, de­scribed the game as just a start­ing point and said he wants to showthis coun­try's tal­ent to the world.

"We have a lot of peo­ple who love build­ing games, and we are go­ing to show that we can build qual­i­ty prod­ucts."

Dou­bles Ty­coon was built in one day, and with­in its first day of test­ing, Manohar said, there were 115 down­loads from the on­line app­store.

The third-place win­ner was Pub­licMine, a da­ta vi­su­al­i­sa­tion com­pa­ny that plans to tar­get me­dia out­lets and cor­po­rate com­pa­nies, to trans­formtheir large, com­plex datasets in­to­vi­su­al­ly com­pelling and mean­ing­ful in­fo­graph­ics, mo­tion­graph­ics and in­ter­ac­tive web­pages. Pub­licMine is build­ing a free,open da­ta li­brary which the pub­lic can ac­cess, as well as of­fer the op­tion for mem­bers to up­load their own da­ta sets and cre­ate vi­su­al­iza­tions for them­selves us­ingtem­plates.

"Vi­su­als will en­hance any sto­ry with da­ta, which will en­gage your au­di­ence," said one of the team mem­bers Chris­t­ian Theodore.

An econ­o­mist by day, Theodore said he al­ways had a dream of start­ing his own busi­ness and this project fithis skillset per­fect­ly.

"I am very pas­sion­ate about da­ta and vi­su­al­i­sa­tion."

Since Start­up Week­end end­ed, work has con­tin­ued, as sev­er­al teams have cre­at­ed Face­book pages and start­ed de­vel­op­ing their ideas in­to some­thing tan­gi­ble. Dou­bles Ty­coon, for in­stance, al­lowed users to test the game via an app for An­droid phones, and has got­ten some en­cour­ag­in­gre­views. Pub­licMine cre­ate an on­lineposter­to warn dri­vers in the Port-of-Spain area about traf­fic di­ver­sions duringU.S. Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden's vis­it. With­in min­utes the­graph­was get­ting hun­dreds of views and shares on Face­book andTwit­ter.