Startup Weekend — Fashion and Tech Tehran
I promised in the previous post I would write about the Startup Weekend Fashion and Tech Tehran so this is it!
Event
Date: Dec 28 2016 4:00pm — Dec 30 2016 9:00pm
Fun fact: If you check the start date, Dec 28th is actually a Wednesday, you may think what’s that got to do with the weekend, reason is that in Iran Thu-Friday are considered the weekend rather than Sat-Sunday.
As mentioned on Techrasa the goal of the event was to “bring innovation in Iran’s fashion industry and to inspire and educate aspiring entrepreneurs in building startups with the theme of fashion”.
Day 1 — 28th Dec 2016:
Registration / Welcome & Speakers / Pitches Start / Voting/Form Teams / Dinner & Networking / Begin Work
I have to say the venue was just perfect, 11th floor of Palladium shopping mall, it had plenty of free space, high ceiling and big windows overseeing beautiful Tehran. Also as it was just above a shopping mall it provided perfect access for the teams to market test and validate some of their ideas, for example doing surveys with the consumers or speaking to shop owners if they would be happy to sign up to their platform.
Day 1 had a big impact on me as I witnessed so many young faces stand in the queue one by one to pitch their ideas. There were around 90+ participants for this event and around 20+ people pitched their ideas, to me this was quite incredible!
The flip side to this was the quality of the pitches, however as Patrick correctly told me on another day, the Startup Weekend event is simply there to act as a spark, some of the participants may have never had an experience speaking in front of a big audience or giving a pitch, the event is there to give them an insight to what’s it like to form a startup and challenges they face, it’s meant to be educational. Anyhow as you will see from the pictures below there were plenty of ideas and positive energy was flowing around!
After each person gave their pitch, they wrote the idea on a poster and the audience would vote by sticking the sticky note that was provided in their pack on the poster, each pack contained only three sticky notes so you had to pick your choices carefully. The ideas that had the highest number of sticky notes on them would be picked as the winning ideas and the individuals that pitched the ideas would go on to pick their team.
Day 2 — 29th Dec 2016:
Breakfast / Begin Work / Lunch / Check-In / Coach Meetings / Dinner / Check-In / Wrap-Up
I made it to Palladium by approximately 1 pm, teams were formed and seated at different tables around the hall. As you would come in you had this great view of 10 teams working intensely all around you, so that got me fired up straight away!
This is the day I really got involved with some of the teams and I started really caring about their product/service and wanted each one to be the baddest startup in the world to come out of a three day event. One thing that frustrated me the most was that some of the founders had not cooked their ideas well, as mentioned above Patrick corrected my mindset.
“try to make what you can sell, not sell what you can make”
I started prompting the teams to try to make something that they can sell rather than what’s convenient for them to make and then try to sell it. Also think about their target market, target customer, feasibility of their idea, competitive advantage, barriers to entry, SWOT analysis, pull factor, revenue models and anything else I thought would help their MVP and pitch stand out.
In simple terms you should be able to define the problem clearly, then define your solution and how your solution will be at least 10 times better than what’s already available, how it will make money and demonstrate how you have exactly the right team that has got what it takes to make it happen.
Some of the teams made use of being located at the top of a big shopping mall by doing interviews/surveys etc with shop owners and consumers to market test their ideas.
It’s also worth mentioning that my mentoring did also involve reminding the teams to have fun and at times I did manage to make them laugh. how was my funny? Please give feedback by calling 1–800-I’mjokingdon’tcall!
At some point in the afternoon the mentors and organisers realised some of the teams weren’t progressing through the ideation stage. The teams were meant to present a MVP on Day 3 so this was a bit worrying. Patrick decided to give the teams a little kick in the back and remind the teams of the time constraint:
Day 3 — 30th Dec 2016:
Breakfast / Check-In / Lunch / Coach Meetings / Presentation Prep & Tech Check / Final Presentations / Judging & Awards / Wrap-Up / Go Home!
Day 3 was all about refining the MVP and writing up the pitch deck, clock was ticking and teams were firing on all cylinders.
I think it was around lunch break when we decided to do a group photo and I decided to sneak in a selfie:
After lunch it was time for Presentation Prep & Tech. Here teams were divided into four/five groups to do a practice run of their pitch in front of group of mentors. This was to ensure teams were ready for the final presentation in front of the judges and the big audience. Also to ensure their slides were running smoothly with their pitch.
Practice makes perfection, if you have a big presentation, always practice in advance in front of your friends and family and get their feedback or just in front of the mirror until you are familiar with the text in each slide, the points you want to make in each slide and to get the timing of your presentation right.
This practice run helped some of the teams quite considerably, by refining their target market their pitch stood out a lot better. I felt the feedback given to one particular team was a bit demoralising as it questioned the whole idea of their startup. I invited one of the mentors who had expert knowledge in the field this team was working on to join them after their practice run. I felt this would not only inject some positive vibes back in the team but also help them look forward to the final presentation. In total we spent less than 10 minutes with this team and by making one small adjustment to their idea it achieved exactly what I hoped for.
Teams spent the next few hours refining their MVP, practice their pitch and make their slides look pretty. The look of nervousness and determination was forming and the stage was set for the final presentation:
All the pitches ran fairly smoothly and the judges asked each team around three questions.
Winners were:
1st: Fit & Fine — A comprehensive personalize style& fashion platform as a mobile application
2nd: Aseman11 (11th Sky)- 3D virtual scanner and e-commerce site that allows user to create a profile and preview the clothes on their body-shape
3rd: Klouch — Online Market place for Iranian designers and manufacturers
Well done to all the teams for their hard work and enthusiasm, I genuinely had a great time and was buzzing for the next few days from the energy of this three day event. (You can find the full list of the 10 teams here)
Rock on!
I have to give a big shout out to the organisers Amirreza, Moojan, Khayyam and the rest of their team for organising such a fantastic event and making sure everything was perfect, from food and beverages to location to smooth running of the event, a big thank you to all of you!
Also I like to thank all the other mentors for their time, some of whom I got to know over the course of the two days and hence made some new friends, I hope to see you all again very soon!
I would highly recommend watching this fun video covering this event.
Additional sources covering this event:
Forbes article — Female Developers And Consumer Demand Drive Fashion Tech Startups In Iran
Patrick Bosteels’s comprehensive recap.
Startup Weekend’s official web page of this event.
This is the eleventh in a series of posts about Iratel Ventures Events. We’d love to hear from teams with crazy (but commercial) startups. Get in touch or attend our breakfast series. Finally, don’t forget to get your IV Score or talk to ourFundingBot to prepare for your next VC meeting.
