Startup Weekend Lahore to happen next month at LUMS

Startup Weekend Lahore, a platform for aspiring startup founders to ideate, develop and launch products over the weekend is back. The event will happen next month 10th to 12th of November.

Lahore Startup Weekend has an immense importance, over the years it has become a breeding ground for successful startup ventures in Lahore. The most recent success story of this event is BeautyHooked, a startup incepted at this event, which later raised hefty investments for the scale of operations.

For the uninitiated, Startup Weekend is a 54 hr, non-stop, work event in which teams are formed to work on different products and services. The prototypes and minimum viable products developed at the event are then pitched to judges. Veteran mentors and industry professionals present at the event provide real-time coaching, making sure that the competing startups take out the best training that will later help them in realizing these ideas in the actual environment.

The event has been divided into three parts. During the first part of the event, which will be held on Friday, the teams will be giving short 60-second pitches to a panel of judges, explaining the worth and viability of their ideas. Top business ideas will then go on to the actual exercise that will be held during the following two days.

Different mentors and industry professionals will be associated with every startup and under their guidance, these startups will then start working on their respective ideas. The whole Saturday will be spent on finding out the applicability of the pitched ideas in the domains of user research and customer development. The teams will be striving to validate their ideas and even build the corresponding prototypes, if possible. The progress thus made will then be presented to a panel of veteran industry professionals, on the third and last day of the event. Based on the product that these startups would have developed, the judges will then provide suggestions and concluding remarks.

Some of the notable speakers that have previously spoken at the event include Humayun Mazhar, the CEO and founder at CresVentures, Khurram Zafar of LUMS Center for Entrepreneurship, Co-founder at Bramerz Badar Khusnood, the President P@SHA and Nest I/O Jehan Ara among many others.

Startup Weekend Lahore is a reputable name in the Pakistan’s startup arena and is known for providing full-of-learning jumpstarts to budding startups.