STARTUP WEEKEND FAIRBANKS – FRIDAY KICKOFF RECAP
What a night!
40+ budding entrepreneurs showed up last tonight at the brand new Engineering Facility of the University of Alaska Fairbanks for a 54-hour whirlwind of entrepreneurship, innovation, and learning.
The President of the University of Alaska, Dr. Jim Johnsen, kicked off the night: “If not you, who? If not now, when? If not this, what? Build the future of Alaska!”
After a crazy game of “Half Baked” (half-baked startup ideas ranging from chocolate 3D printers to pickled ice-cream delivery subscriptions…), we went on to the real pitch-fire.
24 diverse ideas were pitched (1min, not more!). Voting was tough but we came down to 8 top teams after a couple of crazy voting rounds and team mergers.
Get the scoop about the top teams selected at Startup Weekend Fairbanks:

Looking forward to seeing you for Day 2 of Techstars Startup Weekend Fairbanks!
– Marion
A Successful Startup Requires All Professions

What is Startup Weekend?
Marion Desmazières, Facilitator
We are happy to announce Marion Desmazières is our Fairbanks Startup Weekend Facilitator for the 2018 event! She is an experienced Startup Weekend organizer, and energetic facilitator. Marion is quite the entrepreneur herself, though she currently spends her days working as a tech business developer based in Seattle, WA.
Marion runs developer education partnerships for Alexa, the voice service powering Amazon’s popular Echo devices. Before joining Amazon two years ago, Marion coordinated Global Startup Battle in 2012 and managed partner relations for Startup Weekend HQ in Seattle. She holds a Master’s in Business Management from EDHEC Business School and an MBA in Technology Commercialization from the University of Alberta. A Startup Weekend veteran, Marion has facilitated 20+ events in France, Canada, the US, Algeria and Morocco.
Sign up for Fairbanks Startup Weekend at go.startupweekend.org/fairbanksand gain insights from Marion and others while developing your own startup from the ground up!
Startup Weekend: Judging Criteria
The Startup Weekend judging criteria is broken up into three sections. Teams are judged according to the following 3 criteria (weighted equally):
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Business Model
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How does the team plan on making this a successful business? Have they thought about (either solved or identified problems) competition, how to scale, acquiring customers, their revenue model etc?
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Customer Validation
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Are teams building something that people actually want? How well does the team understand their customer and their customer’s needs. Did the team get out and talk to customers? What is the value proposition to customers?
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Execution & Design
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Have they established a “Minimal Viable Product” for the weekend (software, hardware, etc.)? *Note: an MVP is the minimum set of features to be able to start collecting data. Does it deliver a compelling and captivating user experience? Were they able to demo something functional?
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