Global Startup Weekend Women Brisbane 2019
75 women came together to work on their business ideas.
River City Labs hosted one of Australia’s largest startup events for women over the weekend. More than 90 people attended and 75 participants came together ( the youngest participant was 14 years old ) to work on their ideas at Global Startup Weekend Women Brisbane. Twenty-five ideas were pitched resulting in 11 teams formed.
Global Startup Weekend Women is an annual event part of a global community that executes simultaneous Startup Weekend Women events around the world in 18 countries. The event brings together like-minded women who are in business or hoping to start a business.
This year, River City Labs welcomed former CEO Peta Ellis as the facilitator for Global Startup Weekend Women Brisbane 2019.
Peta Ellis said, "The Brisbane SWWBNE event was by far the most impactful one we have hosted to date, the reason being that we had more than 70% new founders, a passionate group of women tackling key problems collectively faced, including women's financial independence and empowerment, climate change impacting our everyday lives and a variety of communications tools addressing the collective issue of social disconnect in our highly digital business and online social and private lives. Businesses of the future are born at events like this, and it is a numbers game so the more we host the greater momentum for change we can create."
Throughout the event, teams had access to mentors and founders to help them during the planning, implementation and marketing phase.
The weekend culminated with 11 teams presenting their final pitches in front of a panel of judges.
Judges:
Professor Rowena Barrett - Executive Director QUT Entrepreneurship
Baden U’ren - Director of Bond University Commercialisation Centre
Chris Raethke - Co-founder and CEO at Notive
Ale Wiecek - Founder and Chief Empathy Officer at SqrOne
Team Speckio took 1st place with their winning idea on transforming teams into tribes via an agnostic platform that draws in data from psychometric platforms. The platform aims to assist organisations in creating highly effective teams.
Team leader and founder of Speckio, Christina said, “I went to Startup Weekend Women because I wanted to challenge myself by trying something far outside my comfort zone. I didn't know anyone beforehand and I wasn't sure what to expect, but I knew I'd be surrounded by like-minded women!
I had an idea I'm passionate about, and a tonne of nerves! I didn't expect anyone to be interested in my idea but I thought I'd give it a go just for the experience of pitching in front of a crowd. In the end, I got to work alongside an incredible tribe who each taught me so much - not to mention the guidance we absorbed from the amazing RCL mentors. I couldn't be prouder of what our team achieved across the weekend - from validating the problem to crafting a business model and even executing a working demo during the final pitch.
I'll be building on what we achieved at GSWWBNE and excitingly already have my first pilot customer - an organisation with 180+ staff who are keen to contribute to the development of the product. Speckio exists to turn teams into tribes, and I'm so energised to continue living this vision beyond the weekend”.
Christina will fly to Singapore and compete in the world finals for Global Startup Weekend Women.
Final placings for Global Startup Weekend Women Brisbane 2019
1st place - Speckio
2nd place - Alario
3rd place - NextUp
4th place - Journeyify
End Press Release.
Global Startup Weekend Women Brisbane 2019 Album
About River City Labs
River City Labs fosters the growth of startup companies wanting to solve big problems. We provide resources to empower, support and connect entrepreneurs. Central to everything we do is a focus on collaboration and connection.
Since 2012 over 700 entrepreneurs have called RCL home. Through our events program we have welcomed more than 29,000 guests into our community by hosting over 1000 events aimed at supporting founders on their entrepreneurship journey.
River City Labs powers a range of programs, events and engagement opportunities, enabling our corporate partners to innovate differently and embed their teams within the startup community.