River City Labs hosted more than 130 attendees at its Startup Weekend Brisbane 2019, hearing 48 ideas pitched from 10 teams from 15 to 17 February.

This year welcomed Daniel Johnsen to facilitate the 54 hour long event. Daniel is a globally connected entrepreneur and has helped thousands of entrepreneurs and has hosted more than 40 Startup Weekend events around the world. “Without question I would put the Brisbane entrepreneurs up against innovators around the world. The emerging entrepreneurs that spent the weekend learning, validating and building new businesses are the ones to watch and support as they launch their current startup or whatever is next,” said Johnsen.

CEO at River City Labs Peta Ellis said, “One of the reasons we host events like this, is to encourage people to act on their ideas, we bring together developers, designers, creatives and like-minded people to take part in something fun yet also purposeful. It’s positive to see the cycle of talent in our ecosystem, with some members from the winning team Open Mike, who were once members of RCL-Accelerator #BNE3 from team MathMate”.

Teams worked on their ideas on Saturday, gathering data, validating their assumptions by talking to potential customers and creating business models ready for presentation on the Sunday evening to a panel of four judges: Colin Kinner – Founder Startup Onramp, Professor Rowena Barrett – Executive Director QUT Entrepreneurship Initiative, Jasmine Robertson – Founder Roza’s Gourmet, Yasmin Grigaliunas – Founder World’s Biggest Garage Sale

Startup Weekend Brisbane 2019 judge, Yasmin Grigaliunas said; “ Being a judge at Startup Weekend was an experience like no other. From the high highs and energy of the passionate teams pitching, to the challenge of having to choose a top 3 from a strong field, I found the whole night a blast! One of the highlights for me was having a team chase me down proactively on the night for feedback. This was a team that didn’t finish in the Top 3, however, they didn’t let that deter them from the hustle and desire to continually improve and seek further feedback to evolve their product. For me, this is what Startup Weekend is all about”.

Open Mike an idea about utilising your smartphone on the spot as a microphone at events ( solving the problem of passing a microphone around the room ) took out 1st place at this year’s Startup Weekend Brisbane 2019.

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