Second annual Startup Weekend to be held in Yankton

Yankton will be hosting its second annual “Startup Weekend” this weekend – an event aimed at building business, honing marketing skills and making professional contacts. The event will be held at Kolberg-Pioneer, Inc., a Yankton equipment manufacturer.

Startup Weekend is aimed at people who have a business idea. People can bring their idea to Startup Weekend and receive help and guidance as they develop a business plan – all in 54 hours. 

Brittany LaCroix, events and promotions coordinator for the city of Yankton, said participants have a full weekend ahead of them.

“On Friday night, (participants) come and pitch ideas, and the overall group picks the best few to develop,” she said. “Then, all day Saturday is dedicated to creating logos, coming up with a name, going out into the community to do market research and other stuff like that.”

There will be officials present at the event to evaluate participants’ business ideas. The judges will be businesspeople and entrepreneurs.

“We have four to five judges from around the area. They are all from different areas of expertise – someone who specializes in legal finance, someone who already runs a startup and other types of business people,” LaCroix said. “We try to get judges who are knowledgeable in all different aspects of business.”

On Sunday night the teams will have five minutes to pitch their idea, and then judges will ask questions.

The business ideas themselves should be somewhat fully-formed before being presented to the judges.

“For example, if you’re pitching an app, you want to have it up and running,” LaCroix said. “If you’re pitching a service, you want to have a website that explains everything. If your idea is a product, you’ll want to have a mockup of that product ready.”

Volunteer organizer Ben Hanten said it’s key to have more than just a vague idea to present to the judges.

“It doesn’t need to be a finished product, but it needs to demonstrate some functionality,” he said. “We don’t want someone to just put up slides and show us what they want to build, we want to see what you could do in a weekend.”

Mollie Grey, a finalist at last year’s competition, pitched a co-working space that’s now a running business called Sandbox. She got the judge’s attention by proving that her co-working space could help draw young entrepreneurs to Yankton.

“Yankton has a huge drive to bring new business to town. Yankton is making moves to support entrepreneurs, small businesses and young people who want to do something different,” she said. “The judges felt that Sandbox could bring young entrepreneurs into the community.”

LaCroix said there’s no way of knowing what kind of ideas will be presented this year.

“The exciting thing is that we have no idea what we’ll see next,” LaCroix said.

Part of what brings the diversity of ideas is the variety of participants – anyone and anyone is invited.

“We’ve got a lot of students coming, some engineers and our youngest participant this year will be 12 years old,” Hanten said.

Grey’s advice for Startup Weekend participants is to be brave when pitching a new idea.

“Do not be afraid. I don’t like getting up in front of people and speaking, it’s not something I like to do. I don’t like to feel vulnerable and do something scary with the risk of putting out a stupid idea,” Grey said. “But don’t think your idea is stupid. A co-working space is brand new to Yankton, nobody knew what it was. In Minneapolis, there are about a hundred of them.”

Although this event seems to have everything a young entrepreneur could want, from free food to networking opportunities, Hanten said there’s one thing missing this year.

“No students from USD have signed up yet,” Hanten said. “We had a lot of participants from USD last year, and our winning team was made up of USD grads. But this year, we don’t have any students from the U. I’d like to see USD represented this year.”

Tickets to the event cost between $60 and $80, depending on the type. USD students can still sign up to have their ideas critiqued and developed at Startup Weekend, and can receive a discount on the tickets with the promo code “STUDENT.”