Further to the success of the Startup Weekend at its premises earlier this year, SmartCity Malta will now be hosting a follow-up training and coaching programme („Startup Weekend NEXT”) over the period 12th October – 16th November.
The not-for-profit Startup Weekend event held last June entailed a weekend-long, hands-on, fun experience where current and aspiring entrepreneurs had the opportunity to find out if their business ideas were viable, whilst getting the full startup experience themselves. A jury assessed a number of pitched business ideas, with the top 3 being Crwd Gift, Dash Thru and Sahha.
NEXT is now intended to help these teams and other budding entrepreneurs become better prepared to build successful startups by providing experiential and action-oriented entrepreneurial education. One of the specific objectives of the NEXT programme is to get the teams ready to pitch for seed capital. To this end, the programme will be followed by a Berlin Roadshow for the teams proving ready to meet the equity providers. This is planned to take place during the week of 18-24th of November when the Global Entrepreneurship Week will be celebrated and Berlin would be packed with startup related events, meet-ups and hackatons.
NEXT is a five-week ‘pre-accelerator’ programme designed for early startups, rooted in Steve Blank’s Customer Development methodology and driven by mentors and unique video content from successful startup founders. The programme will teach local entrepreneurs how to challenge their business assumptions, understand customers, and validate products. Attending a NEXT programme can therefore help founders raise their Entrepreneurial Quotient and increase their opportunity for success with their startup.
Speaking about NEXT, the CEO of SmartCity Malta, Anthony Tabone said, “Our vision at SmartCity Malta is to provide as much support as possible to startup ideas and see them flourish. This is why we are happy to have hosted Startup Weekend last June and why we are honoured to be partnering up once again with the Startup Weekend community to help organise NEXT. The programme will no doubt be another successful event where startup teams will learn how eaxctly to develop their business ideas thanks to excellent entrepreneurial education.”
The Maltese edition of NEXT is open to all interested startup teams, both those who formed during the June Startup Weekend and new ones. NEXT is designed for companies in the first phase of conducting customer discovery - which is testing a problem and assessing its importance. Through the collaboration with SmartCity Malta, this programme will be one of 21 worldwide editions this fall, among the ones like Silicon Valley, Melbourne or London.
If you are looking for an opportunity to come out more prepared to speak about your company, to deal with critical feedback and to answer the tough questions from potential employees, partners and investors, give NEXT a try. All in all, you'll be more prepared to succeed - and that's what NEXT is about: "Getting you ready for whatever's NEXT." Are you up for the challenge? Learn more at http://www.swnext.co/events/malta-next and join Dash Thru and Sahha who already enrolled!