• This event is designed for educators, nonprofit/public sector professionals, parents AND engineers, designers, and entrepreneurs...the goal is to bring these two worlds closer together.

    Check out the “About” section of this site for more detail on who should participate.

  • Startup weekend is for everyone! Participants in the general track should be 18+ years old. We will have a “scholar” track, with high school students from Breakthrough Birmingham’s “Project Element” career immersion program participating to pitch their ideas.

    Judging and prizes will be done separately (although we encourage you to cheer on the high schoolers as they pitch their ideas on Sunday, too!)

  • That’s ok! You don't have to have a startup idea to participate; most participants will be joining a team to build out someone else's brand new idea.

    If you do want help generating ideas, check out bit.ly/helpmebrainstorm

  • Each team will have 5 minutes to present their pitch, followed by 2 min of Q&A with the judges (1 - 2 questions).

    Judges will use a tailored rubric to evaluate each pitch, identifying the top 3 teams to receive prizes.

  • Prizes will be awarded to each participant individually:

    • $500 / person for 1st place

    • $250 / person for 2nd place

    Individuals will have the options of “claiming” their award in the form of a Visa gift card (via mail), Amazon gift card (via email), or donation to Breakthrough Birmingham (with receipt for tax writeoff).

  • Transportation and accomodation are NOT provided as part of the general (free!) startup weekend experience.

    That said, let us know if you are looking for a ride-share and we will do our best to connect you! bhmstartupwknd@gmail.com

  • While we’d love for everyone to join us for the whole weekend, we know that life happens.

    If you need to miss Friday 11/7 (5 - 7 pm) — email bhmstartupwknd@gmail.com to let us know and we will assign you to a team.

    If you need to miss Saturday 11/8 (9 am - 4 pm) — if you need to duck out for ~1 - 2 hours, that is something you can negotiate with your team. Remember, you’ll be on the hook for part of the pitch deck! If you’ll need to miss more than a couple hours, you will likely need to wait for the next startup weekend to compete.

    If you need to miss Sunday 11/9 (1 - 4 pm) — Have a conversation with your team. While we’d prefer that the whole team participate in the presentation, we know that some folks will not want to present and that’s ok. Pitches are only 5 - 10 minutes for each team, so there is some flexibility with scheduling on Sunday.

  • We hope so! There are lots of cool pitch competition opportunities hosted by partners such as The Alabama Collective and techstars; stay tuned for updates via email and this site.

  • At Breakthrough Birmingham, we rely on our norms as a consistent touchpoint in every gathering to keep us aligned in our commitment to an inclusive and productive community.

    For startup weekend, we’ve started generating co-created “agreements” that we can refer back to as a community. The first couple are…

    • Respect - Active listening; no judgement on ideas that are shared

    • Be present - Engage 100% and avoid distractions

Missed the orientation call?

Check out the recording here.