After a few meetings, a lot of written mails, and even more phone calls - it finally happened and it was over in just 3 days, but it was definitely worth it. In the last weekend of last month, the 24-26 of April, Exclusiv Catering has hosted our 2015 Startup Weekend Cluj event.
The three working days have started with the presentations of two speakers, Philipp Kandal and Salim Virani, after that, our host Adrian Pica has shared some of his experience at these kind of events. In the same evening, there was the pitching session. 30 ideas were pitched, 12 of them were selected by participants through maximum votes as being the most interesting. Afterwards, twelve teams were organized around them. The supreme battle was for the designers, because they were only six, out of 85 participants that came to this year's edition. Friday evening was lighter, so that everybody had the chance to get to know one another, to find out each and everyone's strengths, so that they would know what the field they would be the most productive at was. Every team has received a business canvas in order to help them structure their ideas for the project.
The most intense day of all three was Saturday. The mentoring sessions were very useful, and every team got to benefit from the knowledge that our mentors had to share with them; they also received some great feedback. Sunday morning most of the teams had already a clear proposition, and some of them had also their final presentation draft. After midday, things got more tensed, because we were all eager to find out who the winners were going to be. Until then, you can have a look at the twelve ideas that were developed during 54 hours of intense work.
Here are the twelve projects, as they were presented in front of the jury:
We had some pretty awesome techie prizes for our Startup Weekend Cluj 2015 edition's winners. Travique, the 1st place winners, got a MacBook Air from Telenav, 3 months of coworking space at Cluj Hub, one hour of mentoring session from The HYVE and a Solar Charger for each team member from PITECH+PLUS. TapSit: won an Apple Watch from Telenav, 3 months of free co-working space at Cluj Hub, tickets for all the team at Techsylvania and Led Lamps from PITECH+PLUS. The 3rd place, Tutora, will get to work for free for three months at Cluj Hub, plus, every team member got a ticket to Techsylvania and Led Lamps from Pitech+Plus.
This year, three of our teams won special prizes, as follows: Mountain Report - two tickets at Pioneers Festival - the biggest Europeean event for startups, a month of free co-working space at Cluj Cowork and tickets to Techsylvania; SnapIt - an invitation to Seed For Tech Investment Program, from Fortech, and Timber.ro - have passed directly into the second phase of the SprintPoint program.
We are very curious to see how these projects are going to evolve, especially since they were crafted with so much love and dedication. We will try to follow up on them and to keep you posted, on our Startup Weekend Cluj blog. To find out more details about the project, or to see more pictures from the event, you can visit our facebook page. And if you like us, or you just have some questions, you can ask them on our mail: cluj@startupweekend.org
We are very proud of the people that were a part of this event, and it was a great honour to meet everyone one of them. Thank you all, Startup Weekend Cluj 2015 team: Adela Chende, Adrian Pica, Anca Suciu, Cătălina Mironescu, Cristina Juc, Cristina Tare, Fele Eniko, Irina Rotaru, Mădălina Grecu, Mircea Vadan, Philipp Kandal, Roxana Oroian, Roxana Rugină, Vlad Ciurca.
by Larisa Hogaș
by Kuki Edina
