Techstars Startup Weekend is a model developed by Techstars, powered by Google for Startups. It is a 54-hour weekend event, during which groups of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more, pitch ideas for new startup companies, form teams around those ideas, and work to develop a working prototype, demo, or presentation by end of the 54 hours.

The teams will be mentored as part of the 54-hour learning process of an entrepreneurial journey by a pool comprising of industry specialists and entrepreneurs.

The three day long event had a total of 51 participants attending and pitching 30 ideas, of which 11 startups ideas were selected and teams formed. The teams went through intensive sessions on Customer Validation, Lean Canvas and building prototypes. The teams also got a special curated session on how to pitch and be ready for the final demo in front of the judges.

 The teams got mentoring from 11 mentors, specialising in different areas and helped the teams from ideation to coming up with their minimum viable product.

The judging panel for this year were Ms. Mariyam Visam (Registrar of Companies), Mr. Mohamed Musad (Director Digital Transformation of Dhiraagu), Mr. Abdulla Ghiyas (Deputy Managing Director of Inner Maldives) and Mr. Hamid Shafeeu (Tech Professional).

The winning team of Techstars Startup Weekend Maldives 2019 was Fish Bid - an online marketplace for fisherman, which can be accessed both by buyers and sellers. The runner-up was The Sitter’s Club - A babysitting startup which acts as a bridge between babysitters and parents. The third place was Umpire - a competition portal with unique events targeting the youth of Maldives.

The team that won first place would get an opportunity to attend and showcase the business in the next Disrupt Asia in Sri Lanka. The winning three teams would also be getting Dhiraagu Internet for Business (Biz Fibre 100m) and opportun

ity to showcase the business in Startup Summit 2020 organised by Sparkhub.

The event was facilitated by Techstars certified facilitator Dhanish Athif, who is the first Maldivian facilitator to be certified for conducting Startup Weekend Programmes. The Startup Weekend community leaders are Hussain Jinan, Yaamin Mohamed,

Techstars Startup Weekend events are held around the world, in over 150 countries. With over 2,900 events and 193,000 participants to date, it is one of the biggest global startup event series.

2019 - SW Highlights

2021: The Addu Edition (Postponed)