Young Entrepreneurs Take First Steps at StartUP Weekend 2018




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  • 2018-11-17 21:56:44
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  “Life-changing 54 hours.” This is how StartUP@Blagoevgrad labeled their biggest Fall semester event, the StartUP Weekend. The 2018 edition featured 10 teams and more than 45 young participants, ranging from high-school students to AUBG alumni.

StartUP Weekend 2018 was a three-day entrepreneurial competition, in which participants gathered in teams to develop promising business ideas. The event took place in the ABF Sports Hall from Nov. 9 to Nov. 11.

Participants pitched ideas on the first day, and after the best ideas were voted, teams were formed. Each team was helped by a specially-assigned mentor, chosen and invited by StartUP@Blagoevgrad. The major work was done on the second day as participants worked from dawn to dusk to perfect their projects. The competition culminated with the teams’ final presentations, held in the Andrey Delchev Auditorium on the last day, Nov. 11.

[caption id="attachment_40058" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]My Wish's team were the first to present their project; Steliyana Yordanova for AUBG Daily My Wish's team were the first to present their project; Steliyana Yordanova for AUBG Daily[/caption] [caption id="attachment_40059" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]Land 'n Rent team members working; Steliyana Yordanova for AUBG Daily Land 'n Rent team members working; Steliyana Yordanova for AUBG Daily[/caption] [caption id="attachment_40060" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]BGuide's team in action; Steliyana Yordanova for AUBG Daily BGuide's team in action; Steliyana Yordanova for AUBG Daily[/caption] [caption id="attachment_40057" align="alignright" width="150"]StartUp Weekend 2018's facilitator; taken from StartUp@Blagoevgrad's Facebook page StartUP Weekend 2018's facilitator; taken from StartUP@Blagoevgrad's Facebook page[/caption] The event’s facilitator was Stoyan Naydenov, who came to help with the organization of the event and was left delighted at the end of the StartUP Weekend. “I’m super-fascinated by Blagoevgrad, by AUBG, the organization was incredible,” said Naydenov. Naydenov, a co-founder of Touch Awesome, which is a product design and development agency based in Bulgaria, shared that he was so invested in the organization of the event because he met the other co-founder of Touch Awesome, Daniel Berov, precisely at a StartUP event in 2013. He was especially impressed with how little time the organizers had to make the event happen. “It’s not normal to organize such an event in one month, typically it takes at least three to do so," said Naydenov. "[StartUP@Blagoevgrad] have succeeded in a single month, and this is incredible, let alone the fact that [StartUP@Blagoevgrad] were also students.” [caption id="attachment_40061" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]A fully-packed Andrey Delchev Auditorium at the final presentations; Steliyana Yordanova for AUBG Daily A fully-packed Andrey Delchev Auditorium at the final presentations; Steliyana Yordanova for AUBG Daily[/caption] [caption id="attachment_40062" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]WATCHO, StartUp Weekend 2018's big winners; Steliyana Yordanova for AUBG Daily WATCHO, StartUP Weekend 2018's big winners; Steliyana Yordanova for AUBG Daily[/caption] A five-member jury determined the winners in a closing ceremony following the presentations. The team that took the first place was WATCHO, which consisted entirely of AUBG alumni: Mladen Manolov, Milena Kuyumdzhieva, Nikola Toshev, and Kiril Zhelyaskov, all of whom graduated with Class '18. WATCHO is an online platform linking J1 students with smaller businesses at popular AUBG spots in the U.S. The idea came from the team members' own struggles with finding a job through the self-arranged programs offered by Work and Travel agencies. The second-place finish, WannaDrive, was presented as a travel-sharing app, similar to Uber, while the bronze medals were given to MultiTainer. MultiTainer is a multifunctional container that can hold entire bottles and keep them at a constant temperature. The event's special prize, given by 180 Degrees Consulting Sofia for the best StartUP with a social cause, went to NovateMe, a team of high-school students from Blagoevgrad. NovateMe is a consultancy agency that would provide free business consultations to StartUPs and aims to incentivize other high-school students to participate in StartUP competitions. [caption id="attachment_40063" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]NovateMe's team leader, Georgi Mutafchiev; Steliyana Yordanova for AUBG Daily NovateMe's team leader, Georgi Mutafchiev; Steliyana Yordanova for AUBG Daily[/caption] NovateMe's team leader, Georgi Mutafchiev, is already well-experienced with the event's format, despite being only 18 years old. Mutafchiev has participated in two HackAUBG hackathons and has organized a similar competition on digital entrepreneurship, DIGIT, in Bansko for two years in a row. He found out about the StartUP Weekend just two days before the event and found it exciting to form a team with his schoolmates in just a day. "Everything really happened spontaneously, and it was really thrilling to form a team in a single day," Mutafchiev said. "It reflected well on me and my teammates as well as it was their first participation in such an event." Mutafchiev was overall impressed by the event's organizers. "It's really hard to motivate young people to participate, and this year there were a lot [of participants]," he remarked. Mutafchiev's experience, for instance, helped him motivate his schoolmates. "I relied on my experience, and I explained to them how interesting, and how cool it was to participate, and now I'm very happy they all are glad they did," he said. If he was to continue his education in AUBG, Mutafchiev said that he'd like to participate as an organizer rather than a competitor, as "it is truly exciting to watch young people come up with bright ideas." Dobrin Stoilov, a fourth-year student and a third-time participant in the StartUP Weekend, in fact found the event so beneficial, that if it were to be organized three, even four times a year, he'd participate every time. "I've already won the Weekend before, last year, but to me, just the participation and the experience you get from it is all that matters," Stoilov said. Mutafchiev similarly to Stoilov believed that participation in itself is what matters the most. "Not only future participants, any young person with an interest in information systems, journalism or entrepreneurship should just take risks," Mutafchiev said, "because if they just sit at home, nobody is going to knock at their door and bring them an award. They should be open-minded, to look for opportunities and those successes, and those successes are so close to them, that the only thing they need to do is participate." Just from coming to AUBG and seeing all of the participants, the event's facilitator, Naydenov, reached the conclusion that, "Bulgaria has a future, a bright one in fact." [caption id="attachment_40056" align="aligncenter" width="668"]StartUp@Blagoevgrad's logo; Steliyana Yordanova for AUBG Daily StartUP@Blagoevgrad's logo; Steliyana Yordanova for AUBG Daily[/caption]