• Sponsors

    Platinum SPONSOR

    • Heavy Guerrilla

    Gold SPONSOR

    • EDC Business Resource Center
    • Saint Martin\\\'s University
    • Thurston County Small Business Incubator
    • Thurston County Chamber
    Interested in Sponsoring? Contact us!

  • Organizers


    • Jerry Suhrstedt | CEO Heavy Guerrilla Jerry Suhrstedt | CEO Heavy Guerrilla

      Bio: Jerry Suhrstedt | Founder – Senior Marketing Strategist Heavy Guerrilla was formed by Northwest marketing guru Jerry Suhrstedt.

      Suhrstedt has 25 years of successful marketing, branding, and product launch experience. He has developed, and successfully marketed, and created huge growth opportunities for companies in manufacturing, distribution, sporting goods, residential home building, and the service industry. Suhrstedt founded Mothership Distribution of Tacoma, Washington in 1992, with a Netherlands-based inline skate company. Mothership launched two brands of inline skate wheels & clothing lines — HEAVY and THIRD WORLD. Both were extremely successful and garnered deep penetration in both the U.S. market and overseas markets, including all of Western Europe, South America, and Asia. He also successfully positioned Mothership Distribution for acquisition by publicly held First Team Sports of Anoka, Minnesota. In 2002, Suhrstedt founded Stanbrooke Custom Homes — with an initial capitalization of $15,000 — from his home garage. Within one year, he had moved to offices on South Hill in Puyallup and had booked sales in excess of $10 million. He successfully solicited venture capital and sold an equity stake in Stanbrooke to a Seattle-based businessman. Subsequently, armed with a very targeted business and marketing plan, which leveraged Stanbrooke’s very distinctive product offering, he changed the way consumers thought about custom homes. As a result, Stanbrooke experienced explosive growth, and rose in rank to 6th place in Puget Sound Business Journal’s – Washington State’s 100 Fastest Growing Private Companies.

Some Ideas for Ideas

Posted by Jerry Suhrstedt

IdeaMany ask, “So what kind of ideas have been pitched at past events?”  Go to the page below and you can see several ideas that became companies.  Several have even received funding or have been acquired!

Past Ideas Here

Startup Weekend Comes to Saint Martin’s University!

Posted by Jerry Suhrstedt

  • October 15-17
  • Saint Martin’s University – Harned Hall
  • Lacey Washington

Startup Weekend Olympia’s theme is:  “Bring Your Ideas!”  Have you ever thought, “Man, someone should … ?”  You know, those crazy brainstorms you have about starting a company that produces some sort of widget or a green and sustainable product, or maybe some cool idea popped in and you need a developer to program a website or iphone app.  Well, now’s your chance to bring all those wacky concepts to life!  It’s called Startup Weekend and it’s coming to the Olympia area October 15-17 at Saint Martin’s University.

Imagine something like 100 people coming together on Friday afternoon and out of those 100 people, 30 of them have an intriguing thought that won’t leave them alone for a new venture, or a paradigm that could change the world.  So these 30 folk pitch their idea to the group.  The crowd votes for the top 10 and teams are formed.  Team leaders look for a good mix of individuals that will help to bring that great idea to life … marketers, graphic designers, web developers, iphone programmers, accountants, public relations specialists, copywriters, attorneys, etc.

Then the remainder of the weekend you spend working with your team to bring the “great idea” to life.  Programming, designing, writing, talking, arguing, laughing, more talking and LOTS of ACTION converge as the team creates a prototype company!  Come Sunday afternoon, each team presents their new company to everyone.  And if your idea is sound, and you have enough synergy with some business sense thrown in, you may end up with funding from a local venture capitalist or perhaps even an Angel Investor or two!

Sign up for Startup Weekend in Olympia!  Any way you look at it, you’ll network with a ton of truly great people, learn from the experience and DO things you’ve never done before!  Most importantly, you’ll have a HUGE load of fun while exploring and fleshing out the exciting new world of creativity and IDEAS!

What is Startup Weekend?

Posted by Jerry Suhrstedt

What is Startup Weekend?

Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects. It is an amazing opportunity to connect with other passionate and skilled individuals, and perhaps even find a co-founder or two to transform your idea into reality.

Startup Weekend is a non-profit organization based out of Seattle, WA USA. Startup Weekend is a small team of three along with community leaders around the world. Startup Weekend’s primary mission is to be the most valuable and influential organization in startup communities around the world. Startup Weeked doesn’t have to teach entrepreneurship in a boreing classroom setting, we model it in a fun, interactive, and results driven way. As a result, we have become one of the leading catalysts for startup creation, co-founder dating, and entrepreneurship education in startup ecosystems around the world.

There is currently representation in over 100 cities in over 25 countries for Startup Weekend, and being a resource strapped, bootstrapping startup ourselves, we’ve had to stop counting there. Up to may 2010, we have helped educate over 15,000 entrepreneurs at over 115 events, and launched over 560 new startup ventures. In 2010, we will have at least 60 events around the world, and our goal is 100 for 2011.

What actually happens at an event?

About 1/3 of your communities brightest will have 60-90 seconds to present ideas for new startup ventures, we then crowd source the favorites and form teams around those ideas. Teams are between 4-10 people, and consist of about 50% technical people and 50% non-technical. You then spend the entire weekend getting advice from professional mentors, and building a proof of concept, demo, or sometimes even a finished product.

Most ideas are web & tech focused, but almost any new business needs a web, marketing, and business strategy regardless if it is tech centric.

Who Attends?

About anyone who considers themselves an entrepreneur or wants to be one. The primary demographic is working professionals age 25-45.

- About 50% have a technical background - Developers / Designers / CTOs / Computer Science types

- About 50% have a non-technical background – Business / Marketing / Lawyers / Investors / VCs/ Social Media

What do Attendees Get?

Co-Founder Dating - Come find other like-minded people. This is probably the most valuable type of networking you could ever do if you want to start a business.

Education – Spend a weekend with some of your communities brightest and most creative minds. Learn a new programming language, what MVP stands for, how to build an actual strategy, get feedback, and actually create & test something rather than just theorizing.

Learn How to Launch – This is the epitome of LeanStartup Methodology at its finest. Go from idea to launch. You have 54 hours to figure out everything from the mission, your target market, go-to market strategies, to giving a full presentation of a hopefully working prototype and validation (or non-validation) of concept to your peers.

Actually Launch a Business – Over 36% of the Startup Weekend Startups are still alive after 3 months. Sometimes a company emerges, sometimes one doesn’t. Over 10% of companies go on to produce revenue or get seed funding, but every time people leave with more experience, insight, knowledge, friends, and resources than they came with.

Food – 5 meals and drinks are provided during the weekend… Including plenty of caffeine. We understand the importance of keeping teams together, and helping them be productive.

How much does it cost?

Tickets range mostly between $75-$99 USD depending on the level of local sponsor support we are able to raise. This is also a proven level at which to ensure a positive commitment to the weekend and it’s goals while remaining affordable and accessible. This is never even enough to cover all associate costs with an event.

How do we survive?

SPONSORS! We are truly a bootstrapping business that relies on sponsorships locally, nationally, and globally keep these events happening around the world. Startup Weekend is always actively seeking national and event level sponsors that can truly add value to our events as well as gain incredible exposure to a global community of the most targeted, passionate people in the industry. For more information and to discuss possible opportunities please check here first or contact us.

Company Organization

Startup Weekend began in June 2007 and was formed into a Non-Profit in June 2009. We are a 501(c)6 Non-Profit organization and still in the very long process of becoming a 501(c)3. The Startup Weekend Global HQ is in Seattle, WA operating out of our small condo. We are very much a bootstrapping startup ourselves on a mission to go above and beyond Startup Weekend’s position at the very beginning of the “entrepreneurial ecosystem.”