Crwd Gift was the winning venture of Malta’s first ever Startup Weekend, held at SmartCity Malta between 7th and 9th June. Sahha and Dash Thru were the first and second runners-up, respectively.
The weekend was well-attended by talented developers, great designers and keen business minds, who all formed teams and worked tirelessly throughout the weekend on their ideas, before presenting them in front of a panel of esteemed judges on Sunday night. The weekend was the perfect opportunity to test out a business idea, connect with the startup community here in Malta and share expertise and experience with like-minded people.
The winning team will now have the luxury of setting up shop at one of SmartCity Malta’s “Plug & Play” units which is being offered free of charge for a whole two months. Together with a venue to launch their business, Crwd Gift will also receive an array of prizes including, an extensive consultancy session with Systemato, a subscription to Clever Solutions Ltd.’s flagship online accounting software, five free jobs on 8AM and many others.
The winning team competed against seven others, whose ideas ranged from the sustainable conservation of the Maltese chicken and creating an online platform for the organization of movie nights in peoples’ homes, to building a web tool providing intelligent visual financial analytics. Other ideas included a non-commercial startup that turns any smartphone in the world into a helper whenever there is an emergency situation and a web platform allowing content owners to upload audio files, which are then transcribed and made searchable.
Crwd Gift will facilitate and improve gift-buying through crowd sourcing. People facing the popular gift dilemma of not knowing what they should get their friend, relative or acquaintance will have the opportunity to get personal gift ideas with just a few clicks and connect directly with people passionate about making those ideas a reality.
Sahha, a multipurpose app for medical doctors working in Malta providing them with the information they need to use in their everyday work and enhancing their workflow, was voted first runner-up.The second runner-up was Dash Thru, a startup company whose main focus is to offer practical solutions for today's fast-paced lifestyle, by creating convenient and practical solutions to improve existing business processes and daily life activities.
The experience, creativity, resources and prizes offered, ensured the event was a success. Participants also utilized crowdsourcing initiatives like the ‘StartUp at SmartCity’ Facebook group and Linkedin. One Startup Weekend participant, said that the event “was well organised, fun, entertaining and provided room for people to interact and learn from each others' skills.” “Brilliant event, brilliant people and brilliant vibe. I’m sure that by next year the word will spread out more and we would see more amazing projects,” another participant added.
Speaking about Startup Weekend, Abdullatif AlMulla, CEO of SmartCity® said: “We are proud to be hosting this event at SmartCity Malta as entrepreneurship falls within SmartCity Malta’s vision of creating a platform where entrepreneurs can network and grow their business.” “This partnership is a harmonious one with the Startup Weekend community which provides a knowledge support system whilst SmartCity Malta offers state-of-the-art infrastructure to the entrepreneurs, helping them launch their startups,” Mr AlMulla continued.