Cambodia Startup Weekend has just recently passed with its second episode being dubbed bigger and better than the last event.
By | August 6, 2012
Hosted at a larger and more modern venue, Yellow Tower, the weekend brought together several Startup Weekend core team and numerous observers flying from China, Hong Kong, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam.
Unlike other similar occasion held in other cities, numerous preliminary sessions were held to spread the awareness out on what the weekend long workshop will be and how it will take as the first step towards launching the desired startup. Teaming up with Phnom Penh GTUG, the organizer held a technology training event. Another one was Web Designer Best Practices with HTML5 and CSS3 training session. Apparently, it was an initiative as bridging program before the 54 hour frenzy of business model creation, coding, designing, and market validation starts.
JFDI Lead Warrior no other than Hugh Mason, New Zealand Private Incubator WebFund Stefan Korn, Australian Ventures Future Health Marcus Tan, Shirley Fong and Sam Ng representing local Business Incubator EME and local entrepreneur respectively sat amongst the committee as the judges.
Cambodians were expected to create working startups during the event and collaborate with any individuals outside of their daily working circle. Teams later received talks by industry leaders and valuable feedback from local entrepreneurs.
Nine teams have tried to deliver their best ideas, plans upon completion the mentorships from Malaysia Hacker Monthly Founder Lim Cheng Soon, Startup Weekend Adelaide Co-Organizer David Truong and Orren Prunckun, Mike Gaertner, Christopher Zobrist and local experts: Kunthy Kann, Tony Lim and Sopheap Seng.
Prunckun who successfully co-organized Startup Weekend Adelaide early this year said that he was invited to attend South East Regional Summit held in Cambodia. Meanwhile in the same time, he supports the show as a mentor particularly lending his marketing experience and knowledge to participants.
He tells e27 that “the event exceeded his expectations and was a success by any measure. The weekend facilitated the creation of multiple interesting and viable tech concepts through the collaboration of locals and expats. It was held in a world-class facility.”
Prunckun continues, “What stood out for me was the high level of technical talent present among the Cambodian participants. I found them to be very willing to reach out to mentors for help in the areas in which they were lacking and receptive to feedback. It was encouraging to see this kind of attitude in an emerging start-up community. I think Cambodia is in for good things in the future.”
More than 80 people signed up and worked on all kinds of new business ideas all weekend and 25 pitches were given. Joey Pomerenke, StartupWeekend.org Chief Marketing Officer, flew from Seattle to attend all three days and lead a planning group of regional high-technology participants at the Lazy Beach private hideaway located on Koh Rong island.
A ‘HundredWords’ team lead by New Zealander and English teacher Michael Yockney diminished 25 ideas pitched on Sunday night and won hosting space on Amazon and other high-tech gifts as the prize.
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