Startup Weekend Zimbabwe kicks off with several competitive ideas

Zimbabwe’s first ever Startup Weekend kicked off at Hypercube Hub earlier this evening with a slew of ideas being pitched by the several participants who had come in from all over the country.

In the adrenaline-filled competitive atmosphere 11 ideas were voted through to the next round which continues tomorrow and ends with the winning team being announced on Sunday.

Following the same format used for every other Startup Weekend held all over the world the first stage of “fire pitches ” saw each participant making a one minute elevator pitch in front of everyone present. The whole audience was then given  a chance to vote for the pitches that they felt were more impressive.  The finalists were given a second opportunity to go through their ideas so as to attract team members.

Rather than restrict it to the usual 10 finalists, the mentors selected an eleventh pitch which was an allusion to how tightly contested the first round turned out to be.

Ideas pitched by the 11 finalists cut across several areas including agriculture, public transportation, sports betting, queue management, medical aid service delivery, collaborative online education as well idea to mentorship linkages.

Each of the 11 finalists have formed a team that will work together throughout the weekend to develop their idea into a minimal viable product complete with a business model. The idea is to carry out essential startup tasks which include designing, coding, market validation and business model creation within the Startup Weekend’s 54 hour time frame.