Startup Week is a week long celebration of entrepreneurship and community. Longmont will host its second Startup Week June 6-12.  The concept of Startup Week was born from Startup Weekend, an idea of Andrew Hyde’s (then at Techstars) in Boulder in 2007.  The idea was to get entrepreneurs together to launch a startup in 54 hours and then pitch the idea to an audience. It is intended for early stage startups. Learn more here.  The idea grew as more companies contacted him to have their own Startup Weekend.

Marc Nager of UP Global launched Startup Week as a non-profit, intensive program of entrepreneurship and community. The phenomenon has spread to over 40 cities all across the globe now.

Startup Week is a great networking event bringing together entrepreneurs, community leaders, stakeholders and community members in an intensive week of educational talks. It is a tremendous  volunteer effort and the volunteers in Longmont do an amazing job! Last year I participated in a panel on women entrepreneurs and this year I’ll be doing one on one mentoring to help others just starting.  Startup Week in Longmont is a unique experience that reflects the particular businesses in our city, as every Startup Week is. This way you could actually travel to all the Startup Weeks across the country and never get the same thing.
Do you have Startup Week in your city? To learn more about how you can bring one to your city see http://startupweek.co/. To see what is happening in Longmont visit http://www.longmontstartupweek.com/.