THUNDER BAY -- Terry Smith knows a successful company needs more than just a single person steering the wheel.
He was one of a number of people working to develop a business plan this weekend for the city’s first Startup Weekend event, a competition to give aspiring entrepreneurs a whirlwind exercise in how to launch a company from the ground up.
The event, which is being hosted on the Confederation College campus by the Northwestern Ontario Innovation Centre, also serves as a networking opportunity as participants formed teams, recruiting people with different individual skillsets.
For example, Smith has a plan to build a mobile app but he knew the work involved goes far beyond just creating the product.
“I’m a software developer and we have people here who are designers, business people and it takes a village to put an idea like this together,” Smith said while taking a brief break on Saturday.
“I can build it but I can’t sell it. Marketing it is a challenge and doing it by yourself is 10 times as difficult.”
The StartUp Weekend is a three-day, 52 hour accelerated business creation process where participants must make a pitch, form a product, develop a business plan and target a specific demographic.
Facilitator Myles Foster said similar events are happening in at least eight other locations around the world this weekend.
Organizers heard a number of pitches on Friday before whittling the list down to seven that would be pursued during the weekend. Smith got the greenlight to go ahead with his project.
His app, called Be a Better Blank, encourages users to come up with different ways to make daily improvements as anything they want to be, whether it’s as a parent, spouse, sibling, athlete or employee.
He has been working on the idea for about six months, creating daily goals for himself before realizing it could have wider applications.
“I thought it would be great to have a whole community of ideas to get behind this and give me some support,” Smith said.
“If you run out of ideas you can search what other people are doing to be a better person and take ideas and encouragement from them, as well as share your success on Facebook and Twitter.”
The groups receive assistance from experts on how to move forward with their ideas.
“We were sending a whole bunch of mentors by the groups giving them advice,” Foster said. “That will tend to make the groups pivot a lot and think critically about their idea and how it will become a real business. That really accelerates the idea stage.”
Each enterprise will be judged on validation of the product, execution and design as well as the business model.
The top three groups will receive prizes from the innovation centre.
“We want the money to go to further the ideas that were developed,” organizer Mike Dohan said.
“There are a lot of resources that will help out entrepreneurs. I think now is a really great time to consider entrepreneurship and innovation as a career.”
The event wraps up on Sunday.
