Could a Start-Up Competition Help Haiti?

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By LORA KOLODNY 

Could a nation still lacking basic resources and infrastructure and still reeling from a devastating earthquake benefit from entrepreneurial education and cash grants for small businesses? Startup Weekend, a nonprofit organization based in Seattle, thinks so.

Since 2007, Startup Weekend has been orchestrating gatherings of entrepreneurs, application developers, marketers and designers who, over 54 hours in 3 days, pitch their business ideas, self-select, break into teams, and then work to build what they hope will become successful technology start-ups. Each Startup

Weekend culminates with a business competition, where participants and invited panelists vote for the best overall start-up to receive a prize. So far, according to Marc Nager and Clint Nelsen, the organization’s directors, Startup Weekend has held 83 events in 62 cities, and those events have begin 290 ventures.

Several companies hatched at these events are now operational, a few with full-time employees, including: Mugasha, an electronic dance music site based in Portland; Skribit, an Atlanta-based tool that helps bloggers gather story suggestions from their readers; Foodspotting, an online food guide based in San Francisco that emphasizes local dishes and user-contributed photographs; and SnapImpact, a Boulder, Colo.,-based site and iPhone app that matches volunteers to charities and projects.

But Startup Weekend has never held an event in a developing nation, let alone an area recovering from a natural disaster. Attempts to organize a Startup Weekend in Nigeria in 2008 failed because the group  lacked a network in the country to help secure a venue, promote the event, and recruit participants.

Nonetheless, Mr. Nager and Mr. Nelsen intend to hold Startup Weekend: Haiti in the fall, following the rainy season. To do so, they will have to raise sponsorship funds here and forge partnerships there with experts and organizations including schools and government offices. They face a steep challenge and need to learn a great deal about economic development, said Andrew Hyde, founder of Startup Weekend, “but sometimes big challenges are best met by people unfamiliar with the obstacles.”

So far, Mr. Nager and Mr. Nelsen have obtained one corporate sponsor, Microsoft BizSpark, a division of the software giant that offers free software and support to start-ups. BizSpark donated a venue for a fundraiser at the SXSW conference in Austin next month. Mr. Nelsen hopes the event will lock in at least $8,000 in donations and maybe more.

Startup Weekend will also seek donations online, using the services of San Francisco-based Piryx, a fund-raising platform that has worked extensively with politicians and nonprofit groups. In fact, it was Tom Serres, chief executive of Piryx, who suggested holding a Startup Weekend in Haiti.

Acknowledging their own lack of experience, Mr. Nager and Mr. Nelsen say they don’t know who will show up for the event in Haiti. They hope to recruit a mix of aid workers and residents with business ideas. “Whether people have ideas for farmers markets and Internet cafes, or high-tech, medical and logistics businesses, we want to help them get started and let them know we can continue to support them financially and with advice,” said Shaherose Charania, who is chief executive of Women 2.0 (another entrepreneurial support venture) and who has volunteered to serve as a coach.

Everyone is hopeful, but not everyone is convinced. “They might succeed if they do their research,” said Melissa Carrier, executive director at the center for social value creation with the University of Maryland. “But there is a strong risk that Haiti may not be ready to absorb this kind of economic development by the fall. Basic needs of the citizens may still be so under-met that there won’t be capacity to even think about business creation and jobs.”

Startup Weekend promises to spend 90 percent or more of the total budget raised for this initiative within Haiti’s borders and to post its budget on its Web site. “Beyond that, I don’t want to make other promises,”

Mr. Nager said. If the event inspires the creation of one company or one job even, he said, he would consider it a success.

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