Event Platform

After your Startup Weekend application is accepted, your Techstars Community Support Contact will create your event page where you will be able to add details about your event. This includes your event finances, event tickets, event schedule, and information about the organizing team, mentors, judges, and speakers.

Event Page

Your event page will be composed of the following information: 

OVERVIEW: section to get an overview of your event, reports, and metrics 

• A preview of what your event looks like live 

• A metrics dashboard displaying your event ticket sales and registration numbers

• A list of attendees for your event, (this is where you can check them in)

• A list of attendee responses to the registration questions you asked. 

EVENT MANAGER: edit, adjust and customize your event

• Manage your event payment information, such as your payment settings, platform payouts, event ticket orders, and refunds 

• Manage your basic event information, such as the event location, date, and event description 

• Manage tickets types and registration questions if required  

• Manage your event sponsors and add their logos to your event page

• Manage your event promotion using Facebook Pixel  

• Manage your event communication, such as emailing your attendees and fellow organizers.

SCHEDULE: update your schedule, add your event stakeholders and venue information 

• Adjusting your schedule

• Adding event mentors, judges and speakers to showcase on your website

• Once your event facilitator has been assigned, Techstars will add the facilitator to your page. 

SETTINGS: additional tools like Help, Permissions, Settings 

• Permissions is where you will add your co-organizers to the platform as a lead organizer. 

Event Group

Events are part of geographical groups and each event is assigned by country (ex: Techstars Community - USA). Event groups are managed by internal Techstars staff.

Access to Event Platform  

• You’ll receive an email inviting you to access to your event page

  • From email: no-reply@meeter-app.com

  • Subject line: You've been invited to Techstars' Events Platform 

• Once you login, you’ll be asked to set up an account. Once that’s done, you should be able to see your event in ‘My Events’.

Inviting Your Co-organizers and Staff to the platform 

1. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and select Permissions

2. Click on the “+ Add Members” button 

3. Ensure the person is not already in the platform by searching for their exact email 

4. If they don’t show up click “+create”

5. Add them with the correct permissions:

   • Organizer: can edit the event, manage tickets, add staff

     • Select both Organizer AND Staff for your organizing team.

   • Staff: to be used as volunteers in order to check people into your event, but can’t edit the event

     • To be used for volunteer staff 

     • Select ONLY Staff permissions.

Updating Your Event Name, Date, location, Media and Description

1. Click on My events section of your dashboard and click on the event that you are managing

2. Click on the Basic Info tab on the left hand side and update you event name (Title), Start and End date, and place (if known)

   • For in-person events: Add the address of the location (Google location integration available) 

   • For online events: add ‘online’ for the location name and add the link of the conferencing platform that you’ll be using (Zoom, Hangouts, etc) in the address field

3. Click on  the Media tab to update your cover photo. You can choose an image from a curated selections provided by Techstars 

4. Click on the Description tab to update your event summary and additional details. Let the participants know how to reach you. Remember to add your email address and any other contact details.

Note: Remember to save all your changes! You can preview your event page by clicking on the event name (hyperlink) on the top left hand side of the page.

Techstars Marketing Requirements

• Event title will follow this naming convention: [Event] [Vertical] [City] 

• Event URL must follow this naming convention: event.techstars.com/e/title/date

• Header image will be locked on the template 

• The header and footer sections will also be locked according to the event terms and conditions.

See Brand Kit page for more information on branding.

Updating Your Banking Information

Payment Account and Method 

Important: If your event will have paid tickets, you must set up your payments before you publish your event.

1. Under Event Manager, click on Payments 

2. The platform connects to Stripe as payment processor, you may need to create a Stripe account if you do not already have one.  

   • To register an account in Stripe:

     • Head to Stripe

     • Register an account with your name + email + country (Stripe will send you an email to activate your account)

     • In your Stripe account, head to Business Settings > Account Details and add your information there. 

3. Click on Add Payment Account on MeeteR

4. Choose the correct type of account you are going to link: Company OR Individual

5. Once this information is added, it will be located in “Payment Settings”, and an “Adding Tax” section will appear  

6. Press “add tax rate” 

7. Add your country and your local country’s tax metrics

8. You can press auto-populate to add your tax rate (based on MeeteR’s auto-populated options)

9. Please double check this rate as you will be responsible for collecting the correct taxes per your state/country

10. Press add tax rate. 

Purchase Orders and Payouts

• You can see all purchased orders under Overview > Orders to track your event’s purchased ticket orders.

• Click into each individual row if you would like more details on that specific ticket or would like to refund it. 

• If you need to provide a refund, click on the row with the ticket that you want to refund, and it will take you to a separate page to complete that action

• Event payouts will occur every two weeks

  • Funds will automatically go to the bank account that you have entered in “payment settings.”

All in-person events must charge a registration fee. Online events have the option to offer free tickets or charge a ticket price. Review these requirements in the Finance section of the resource portal.

1. Click on the Tickets tab to edit/ create ticket types 

2. To preview existing ticket type or create registration questions, click on the entire row

   • Make sure to pair your registration questions with your ticket types

   • Scroll down to the Questions section and click “Edit” 

   • Click on “Add Question” to add all the required questions

   • You can rearrange the order of the questions by dragging and dropping them

3. To create a new ticket type, click on + Create button on the top right corner

Coupons and discount codes

• Coupon codes are a great way to promote events with a discount by reducing the amount charged to attendees for one-time payments. They can be applied to specific events during the checkout process.

• Discount codes are customer-shareable codes created on top of coupons and can be shared directly with your attendees. 

• For example, two promotion codes, FALLPROMO and SPRINGPROMO, are both generated from the same 25% off coupon, which must be generated first.

To Create a Coupon Code:

1. On the left-hand side navigation, in the section, select Event manager > coupons

2. To create a discount code, select “+ create new” and fill in the coupon fields 

3. After fields have been completed, select Create.

To Create a Discount Code:

To create a discount code, you must create a coupon code first.

1. After you have created a coupon code, select the code

2. In the Promotion Codes section, select “+ Add a promotion code”

3. Complete the “Add new promotion code” fields, select Save

4. The code name can be shared and redeemed.

Global Sponsors 

Our two global sponsors GoDaddy and Google for Startups have been added to your event page. Read more about them here. 

Adding Sponsors and Collecting funds  

1. Under the Event Manager > Sponsors, click on + New Sponsorship

2. Start typing in the name of your new sponsor and click create new

3. Add all the new sponsor information 

   • Note: all fields listed there are required including the logo 

4. Assign this sponsor a tier (or select none), enter in their contribution amount and/or any additional notes

   • If it is in-kind sponsorship, please select $0.00 and choose “None” for tier

   • Global tier is only for sponsors who support all Techstars Startup Weekends 

   • The sponsor notes and contribution amount will not show up on the public facing website.

1. Head to Schedule and click on Mentors OR Judges OR Organizers tab

2. First check that the person is not already in the system by typing their full email address.

3. If the person is not there, click on +Create New

4. Fill all their personal information

5. Click create

6. Click on the three dots on the right to invite them to the platform 

7. An invitation from MeeteR will be sent to that person directly. You can resend an invite if necessary

8. Once an organizer or invited guest has been added to the platform and is in active status, you will no longer be able to edit that person’s profile

   • You are only able to edit profiles of people that are in inactive or invited status 

   • Profiles will appear on your event website, even if they’ve not been completed on the platform.

Marking Event Winners

Remember to add information about the winning teams from your event. These people will be showcased on the website as the winners of the Startup Weekend pitch competition. 

1. Under Schedule click on Event Winners tab

2. Click on +Create New  

3. Fill in all their personal information including the winning team as their company

4. Continue to add all the people associated with the top three winning teams 

Publishing your event page

1. Log in to your Account

2. Check that all the basic information, tickets and banking details have been correctly set up

3. Click on the “Publish” button

4. The event page is now Live

IMPORTANT: If you need to postpone or cancel your event, please let your Community Support Contact know before making any changes to your event page. 

Unpublishing your event page

• Unpublishing an event will remove the page from public listings

• The status will change to draft  

• You will still be able to edit the page and republish the page again once you’re ready. 

Cancelling your event page

• Cancelling an event will remove it from public listings and change its status to cancelled

• All information on the page will be archived, and no future changes can be made to the page. 

• Cancelled events cannot be republished.

NOTE: The event page status can only be unpublished or cancelled once all orders have been refunded. See Purchase Orders and Payouts for more details on providing refunds.

Platform Tips and Tricks: 

• To preview your event, click on your event title on the top left of your screen which should appear in blue or click the Overview > Preview 

• Head to Event Manager > Marketing to add a Facebook pixel

• Edit your location once your in-person venue is confirmed or you know your online event hosting platform

  • Go to Event Management > Edit Details > Description

  • Find ‘Place’ and click ‘Edit’ to the right

  • You’ll have a Placeholder location - change this to ‘Location’

  • Name your location (example, ‘Startup Headquarters Building’)

    • For in-person events: Add the address of the location (Google location integration available)

    • For online events: add ‘online’ for the location name and add the link of the conferencing platform that you’ll be using (Zoom, Hangouts, etc) in the address field

• Location is different from ‘Places’ on the event platform 

  • ‘Location’ is where your event is being held

  • ‘Places’ are where sessions of your event are occuring. (This feature is only needed if you are running multiple sessions in different locations other than your main event location)

• You can make your event private in your event page settings. (A private event is only accessible if the URL is shared)

• ‘Tracks’ only relates to Startup Week events, and can be dismissed for Startup Weekend events.

• If you have questions about the event platform, please reach out to the MeeteR helpdesk for assistance.