Lots of Energy, Ending Day 2 of Shenzhen Startup weekend #swsz

An intense, but inspiring weekend here in Shenzhen! Its our first “official startup weekend” (we have the brand behind us now) but still did have a quick and dirty BootUP! weekend a couple months ago.

This startupweekend, after taking what we learned from the first Shenzhen BootUP! as well as a big marketing and organizer’s push for this startup weekend – but it all paid off, we had 63 applicants rushing in the week of the event…..a bit overwhelming as szteam coworking may not be able to handle it. But we made it work. Ahmed, our facilitator from San Francisco arrived Friday afternoon, and we were able to get another company on the first floor of the Nanjing research center to allow us to us his HUGE LED Screen for our opening ceremony and presentation!

We had mid-40 range of people here on Friday night to build teams and get a startup going!! We had about 50/50 split of Chinese and foreigners. Made everyone pitch an idea on Friday night, getting 40 startup ideas for the group to vote on.

We had 11 startups who were the highest voted – and those who “owned” the idea would then try to recruit those looking to join a startup. We then ended up with 8 teams….which quickly consolidated and merged by Saturday morning to get us the following 7 startups

1. LBS Public profile – share your profile via GPS so those at networking events, bars, or when traveling can meet new and relevant people based on keywords in your profile.
2. Fruitmask / freshmask – instead of a DIY fruit mask for women, Alice has the idea to have a pre-made fresh fruit mask you can buy in a shop to apply within 2-3 days at your home for your skin and beauty.
3. Web finance game, KISS money – KISS = keep it simple stupid, a fun way to manage your finances.
4. 2nd hand trading for college students – we had a group of Shenzhen university students who came, and they want to find a quick and easy way for students to exchange products and ideas.
5. Comic platform – a way to represent Chinese comic artists and help them earn money.
6. Family Stories in China – Chinese lost a lot of cultural records over the years, and this startup hopes to bring everyone’s family information together for them build and share.
7. Chinese Menu decoder – for those foreigners traveling to china, this platform will allow you to see exactly what’s inside your beef noodles.

Today, this morning, for day 2, we MADE A VIDEO and uploaded on the Chinese site tudou. Check out Kawai, my right hand man representing the Chinese startup community, and we are walking around the 6 different startups and get ideas.

We had so many teams, we worked out a deal with upstairs, 520.cn, to have 2 of their conferences room available for some teams to come up there to work. It has been great to have our neighbors here around SZteam to offer their facilities to us. They support this type of event. Shenzhen needs it!

Typing this out at 10:45pm Saturday, still about 20 people here building, coding, marketing, surveying. I am really passionate about this startup fever. Innovation. SOHO, its the future.

Lets continue to disrupt.