Organizing Team

Team Roles and Responsibilities

In-person event Roles and Responsibilities

A Startup Weekend organizer is part of a team with a typical size of 4 to 8 members.

Team members take on various roles and work together to run a great event, bringing the greatest value to participants. 

Responsibilities are usually divided between team members. Here are our recommendations for some of the main roles that can be divided between team members and a description of each role:

Lead Organizer

The person that signs the event license agreement will be the event’s lead organizer. While we define this role as ‘lead organizer,’ we are not encouraging any hierarchy in the team. Remember, good teams share tasks equally.

Responsibilities include:

• Overall team direction and making sure the team meets regularly

• Being the project lead and making sure each task is assigned to a team member

• Organizational execution and keeping everything on schedule

• Driving consensus on big decisions including sponsors, speakers, mentors, and judges

• Having a good understanding of the organizer requirements and event management tools.

Finance Lead

The event’s lead organizer (and license holder) will be responsible for managing all event finances, and will manage the budget from start to finish.

Responsibilities include:

• Tracking revenue coming in from ticket sales

• Tracking revenue coming in from sponsorships 

• Ensuring the team has enough funds to operate

• Keeping track of all receipts.

Sponsorship Lead

This role is responsible for securing sponsorships and managing sponsor relationships. 

Responsibilities include:

• Working with the team to create a sponsorship shortlist

• Managing sponsorship outreach

• Following up with sponsors about payment terms and the process for releasing funds

• Documenting the sponsorship agreement 

• Getting all sponsor logos

• Post-event sponsor reporting. 

Mentors and Judges Lead

The mentors and judges lead will be responsible for: 

• Recruiting a diverse pool of mentors and judges, and managing the relationship with these stakeholders

• Ensuring that each confirmed mentor and judge is added to the website and mentioned on social media

• Informing mentors and judges about the event schedule, their roles and responsibilities, and when they are expected to join the event

• Briefing mentors and judges on Techstars Startup Weekend best practices and their role at the event.

Logistics Operations Lead

This role is all about people and vendor coordination.

Responsibilities include:

• Procuring a suitable venue

• Being the main point of contact for the venue

• Confirming all venue information, including emergency procedures, building access times, security support, and accessibility

• Securing and coordinating healthy, delicious local catering and snacks for the whole event

• Coordinating those supporting during the weekend — volunteers, mentors, judges, and speakers.

Marketing and Promotion Lead

This person keeps track of ticket sales and leads the outreach effort to a diverse participant pool. 

Responsibilities include:

• Owning and maintaining the event website and ticketing page, and making sure all information is uploaded and up to date

• Creating and executing a promotional strategy for community outreach for ticket sales

• Responding to participant questions via the ticketing site and on social channels.

Technical Lead

The person in this role should ideally have some technical knowledge and be connected to the local tech community to do outreach to potential technical participants. 

Responsibilities include:

• Providing technical troubleshooting support for the team throughout the planning process — for example, with any ticketing page issues

• Setup support of the audio/visual equipment at the event venue

• Testing the Wi-Fi at the venue and sharing that with all event support

• Supporting on-stage presentations

• Making sure all microphones at the venue are working

• Bringing extra power cables, adaptors and power strips to the venue

• Playlist support.

Some roles may overlap, and other roles may need more than one person for support. Please reach out to us for support and guidance in developing an effective, diverse, and inclusive team.

Essentially most of the work involved in planning the event is the same, the main difference being related to event logistics. Since the event will run online, the venue and catering related tasks will be replaced by the responsibility of managing online tools and platforms, and creating a great experience for virtual networking and collaboration.

Technology Lead

This role is all about ensuring that the right tools and platforms are in place for your online event.

Responsibilities include:

• Scoping and selecting the suitable platforms for online communication and streaming of your event

• Being the main point of contact for technical questions about the platforms

• Briefing and onboarding all organizers, mentors, judges, speakers and participants onto the platforms

• Performing tech checks for each platform before the event

• Training everyone involved in the event on platform usage and etiquette. 

Virtual Participant Management

Recommended: 2 people per shift

Very important when participants join the platform, during the kick-off, around mentoring sessions and during the final pitches. 

Responsibilities include:

• Welcoming participants to the platform

• Helping participants navigate the platform / directing them to the right channels

• Introducing mentors, judges and speakers to the platform

• Facilitating team formation

• Ensuring that during the group sessions everything runs smoothly; e.g. muting/unmuting participants in group calls when needed, facilitating networking breaks during the weekend, using music during breaks, using a dynamic timer for timekeeping during pitch sessions and mentor meetings.

Customer Support

Recommended: 1 person per shift

In an offline event, people would come up to the organizers and ask questions. Online, you need to make sure that someone is available to answer questions at all times, and that the participants know where to ask questions.

Responsibilities include:

• Setting up an ask-me-anything channel on the communications platform

• Answering questions timely 

• Monitor chats in public channels. 

Operational Support 

Recommended: 2 people per shift

You will be making use of several tools, forms and documents throughout the event. This position is responsible for creating, distributing and handling all these.

Responsibilities include:

• Creating the pitch submission, voting, and team registration forms and sharing them out

• Managing the voting and idea selection processes

• Creating Mentor Signups and Matching process 

• Collecting the final presentations for the Sunday pitches

• Creating and sharing the judging form

• Counting final judging scores and communicate this with the facilitator.

Tech Support 

Recommended: 2 people per shift

This role is responsible for the well functioning of all tech tools throughout the event.

Responsibilities include:

• Managing the ‘green room’ during your live sessions

• Troubleshooting any issues with the communication platform

• Performing tech checks with all speakers.

Mentor & Judge Liaison

Recommended: 1 person per shift

This role is responsible for ensuring that the mentors and judges have a great experience at Techstars Startup Weekend.

Responsibilities include:

• Managing the mentor sign up process on the mentor side

• Briefing the mentors on the day (together with the facilitator)

• Briefing the judges on Sunday (together with the facilitator)

• Managing the mentoring sessions on the mentor’s side - answering questions, pairing them with teams, creating their schedule, helping them find their teams if needed.