Nope, it can’t be done…

It’s not possible to build and launch a product in three days! Are you kidding me? It involves several stages. First, market research to discover what customers want. Next, product development. Then, testing and customer feedback, more development, marketing, and of course, lots of crying. Afterwards, you clean yourself up and start pitching to any living creature willing to listen. Finally, a year or so later, you have a shiny new app you’re ready to bring to the market and say “Hello world. Pay me!”

Ok, so it can be done…

Then there’s the alternative: Starting a new business in 72 hours…on a bus with about 30 strangers…during the legendary StartupBus competition! StartupBus combines elements of an entrepreneurship bootcamp, a hackathon, and a pitch competition, then adds its own flavor. The result is a recipe that has been shared across 26 countries via a worldwide alumni community of more than 1,800 of the most talented and driven (pun intended) men and women in tech.

What’s the format?

During our bootcamp and competition, buspreneurs participate in our curriculum, accelerating through an entire first year of launching a startup in just five days (three days on the road + two days in the host city). They’ll form teams, conceptualize an idea together, build a product, pitch it to users and investors, and get traction with the goal of launching their dream startup within 72 hours, en route to Austin. But don’t worry! They won’t do this alone. They’ll be given guidance and support from world-class conductors, founders, technologists, and investors along the way.

Life After the Bus
On the last day of the competition, buspreneurs will be so buzzed with energy that they’ll want to tweet Elon Musk about their new startup — and he just might answer. But what else can they do with all that excitement? We’ve got it covered! As part of this year’s StartupBus contest, we’re launching a brand-new initiative we’re calling The LAB — which stands for Life After the Bus — where we’ll be incentivizing our winner with exclusive access to an ecosystem made up of StartupBus alumni and some of our special startup friends who can help hypercharge their business beyond what they could have done alone!

Alright, you’ve sold me. Where do I sign up?

Right here.

StartupBus North America 2022 is gearing up, and we’re ready to hit the road!

The catch is buspreneurs must apply. Seriously? That’s right! Our competitions have helped transform would-be entrepreneurs into successful tech founders, raising over $1B in capital and acquisitions.

We don’t take just anybody. We’re looking for awesomeness. We’re looking for you!

The Important Details

• Dates: July 27 (Wednesday) to July 31 (Sunday), 2022
• Destination: Austin, Texas
• 7 Bus Routes: Florida, Mexico, New York, Texas, Latinxs In Tech, California, and Advancing Black Entrepreneurs.

Apply today at https://startupbus.com/apply

Breaking fourth wall

Yes, everything I said was true. There really has been over $1B generated in funding and acquisitions. The organization does in fact have some of the most brilliant humans you’d ever want to meet. But, StartupBus is so much more than that. For me, it was the scene in the movies just before the old 80’s rock band montage. You know the one where the main character goes from being a scrawny kid to becoming prom king? That was me.

I’d spent over a decade in a career where I developed applications for large companies. I was the corporate guy. I never did a hackathon. I followed all the coding rules. I could tell you all the reasons why we should spend the first couple of weeks thinking about an idea before getting started. The thought of coding alongside a former lead engineer at Tesla (by the way, the nicest guy on the planet) was terrifying to me.

I felt out of place. But it turns out, it was only in my own head. Throughout the five day experience, I realized that I was just like the others on the bus. I was selected just like they were. Like them, I didn’t know how it would all turn out. My brain worked just as well as everyone else’s. Fast forward through all the pivotal moments as to not spoil the adventure for you…I walked away from StartupBus transformed in the most cheesy, most real way imaginable.

That one week away from home didn’t produce a winning idea, nor a million dollar product, but I stepped off the bus with a brand new swagger and a new belief. “I might not be the best in the world, but whatever challenge is in front of me, I know I can figure it out.” That new belief was enough for me to break through my self-imposed ceiling as a mid-level manager and I’m now well on my way to an executive role in tech. I have also simultaneously started my career as an entrepreneur. Outside of my family, it’s one of the best experiences I’ve ever had.

For an experience like that…you should apply.

Pitch for it

It’s important to get an invite code before you can apply. To get your code, pitch to us why you’re the perfect candidate for StartupBus by tweeting at @TheStartupBus or replying to this post on Medium. Bonus points if you include #ThinkInsideTheBus

Take care!

Applications now OPEN for StartupBus North America 2022! was originally published in The StartupBus Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There’s no doubt COVID-19 has left its mark on many people’s lives. We’ve decided after having the Bus parked for two years, we’re back. And we’re making it different!

StartupBus has traditionally been a competition on wheels with limited time and resources. It turns ordinary people into extraordinary founders through an inspirational and fast-paced experience. It results in an international tech talent network that bridges the technology gap across geographies.

But, After a Pandemic… Are We Still All That?

We are — and more!

We‘re preparing for a post-pandemic world still staggering to find its feet and ride a wave of new opportunities.

We fundamentally believe the following:

• Great ideas are being shaped and locked inside many heads. For years now.
• There are new global issues desperately needing attention
• We all want to get back to business

So here we are. Brian Davis and myself (Danna), in this new era of opportunities and accelerated change, courtesy of the pandemic. Welcome to the 2022 edition of StartupBus North America.

Looking back to improve the future

This year we aspire to do our best yet, with a fantastic team already hard at work. Cosmopolitan, inclusive, and diverse, are some of the things we are thinking about. And so are these other key ideas:

Invest in under-served communities

We want to focus on two specific communities explicitly.

• Black entrepreneurs: Talent can be found in every corner of the country, opportunity, however, is not evenly distributed. For many years, African-Americans have not had access to the life-changing opportunities the tech world can provide, and we’re seeking to obliterate that barrier yet again.
• Latinxs: The tech potential in this area is immeasurable, as are the positive impacts of the tech industry: improving economies, increasing education competencies, improving infrastructure, raising job opportunities, enhancing institutional and regulatory frames, and fighting poverty. Great changes can be achieved with the right push!

Invest post the event

The LAB, what we are calling it for now, is a new idea of the original vision of StartupBus. We, as the StartupBus community, will incubate the best concepts from the competition post the event. We’re are making StartupBus a factory for disruption.

Invest in Austin

We’re back to where it all began!

Invest in the experience

We are carefully re-evaluating the experience of StartupBus and how we can make it even better. This is going to be no rinse-and-repeat event.

Follow us on our social media networks to know when we’ll start recruiting our next generation of Buspreneurs. Applications open soon!

• Instagram
• Facebook
• Twitter

And if you want to be part of this mesmerizing edition:

• 👩‍✈️ Ride us and become a legendary StartupBus conductor
• 💰 Sponsor a Bus
• 🤝 Contribute to our Diversity Fellowship Program
• 👨🏻‍🏫 Partner with us as a mentor and champion
• 🚏 Host a stop in your community

🐤 Or share this!

⚡️ Shout out to Elias, our founder, for this sublime opportunity! Special thanks to Brian: my greatest support!! And cheers to the whole core team for their magic: Rulo, Annel, Mandy, Carlos, Julio, Claudia, Abril and Ernesto. You guys rock!

#ThinkInsideTheBus 💚 was originally published in The StartupBus Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’m excited to announce the new leadership of StartupBus.

Danna Kiedis and Brian Davis effective today are the new directors.

• Directors are historically a year long appointment of people from our community, selected to work for the legal entity behind StartupBus and who have delegated authority to act on my behalf. I only ask the best of the best to do this role.

A year-ish ago I asked what the future of StartupBus would be. I was giving plenty of answers.

• I did some calls, spoke one-on-one with a very awesome 70-ish people in the community who responded to my call for ideas on how we reboot, and we created some projects exploring a new future of what StartupBus should be.

That work is forward thinking so will reveal itself when the time comes, but as part of this, Danna and Brian stood out to me as people I want as the next leaders of the organization. Good ideas matter, but great leadership matters more.

• They will be focused on our North America activities in 2022, such as our famed competition— but with a few adjustments.

They will be advised by a group of former directors who’ve worn the shoes they are about to step into, and work with me with bringing the vision set by the members of the community this last year

• I separately want to thank Madelena Mak and Laura Horak who I’ve worked with on other projects and continue to give their energy into our community’s future.

2022 StartupBus directors was originally published in The StartupBus Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Since the first StartupBus in March 2010, we’ve run an annual competition in North America as well as Europe, Australia or Africa. Since the WHO announcement of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve been watching the news carefully and when we saw other events like the 2020 Olympics and 2020 Burning Man were cancelled, it became a foregone conclusion that the annual StartupBus competition was to not occur in 2020.

It was so obvious that putting a bunch of strangers on a bus for three days in 2020 was not appropriate that we hope you understand we didn’t need to waste the pixels.

The other thing about 2020 was the eruption over police brutality against Black people. It created a dialogue and opened awareness of what is wrong with our culture — no more blacklists (it’s ban list now) or master-slave (use “primary/secondary” or “host/client” instead). We had a head start on this conversation: our Advancing Black Pathways bus in 2019 born from our multi-year diversity goals was an eye-opening experience for me that made me realise what’s called identity politics in some circles is actually a human issue that requires White dudes like me to wake up. For example, a friend who now purchases 400 homes a month in America recently was telling me how home valuations are lower for Black people and its a well known secret to make a house look more “White” before getting it appraised. Housing has become the primary store of value for society which means home ownership has become the very definition of what makes the middle class and Black people have to look White to get a regular valuation?

There is a magic about StartupBus and our culture continues to attract the very best to build technology that disrupts the status quo. Indeed, the fact several billion dollars of equity has been been created by alumni (not just immediately following our competition experience, companies born from the competitions, but also by core leaders in the organisation behind the competition), means as a report card, that magic is very much on the money. We’ve seen our community become the entry point into the tech industry for a lot of now successful people. StartupBus, originally a joke on wheels, has inadvertently played a role to shape the minds of today’s business leaders.

Ten years on with ~2000 people that we can count as being part of the community, we’ve had a spectacular run. It’s infectious, if you pardon the pun, that we have several hundred people that are still actively engaged in the community in some shape or form. Leaving the question of what will become of StartupBus in a post-Covid19 world?

As politics gives way to evidence, increased testing capacity allows us to reopen, and vaccinations help us reach herd immunity, I am hopeful that by December of 2021, the world will be back to its pre-pandemic “normal”. And that future pandemics will be much less disruptive as globally we will develop the infrastructure to react better. (Yet it’s not even the end of 2020 and we have already forgotten about the Black lives matters protests.)

What role will StartupBus play in tomorrow’s world? Well, as I said earlier this year, “maybe it’s time”. But whether we ever run a competition again — which is how we bring new people into the community — is different from if we will continue to engage the existing community and create value.

For those in the community, I look forward to (re)connecting with you with a series of virtual events. We are going to kick them off where you will help define the answer of what will become of StartupBus now that we’ve had a decade to let it sink in. Reach out to me directly or through your Conductor to get connected to the conversations.

For anyone else such as those who have no idea what a Conductor is, stay tuned. Maybe — to a highway near you.

StartupBus: what’s next. was originally published in The StartupBus Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you think that StartupBus is just like other hackathons or pitch competitions, but longer… you’re dead wrong. We want to make 100% sure that you don’t get used to that competition winning formula mentality, as the real world often have vague rules to why a startup succeeds.

A hackathon winning hack or a pitch competition winning idea will not win the StartupBus. StartupBus judges this year are all investors, and they will judge your startup as a real startup, not a fake 5-day startup. They want to see your team and your traction.

Since StartupBus is no ordinary startup competition, a lot of the rules from your other competitions don’t apply. Instead of pages and pages of rules, we really only ask for a few things, such as:

• A core team of 2–5 Buspreneurs.
• No plagiarism. All designs and codes must start from scratch except templates and boilerplates.
• Adherence to our Code of Conduct.

Get creative! That’s what entrepreneurship is about. You’ve got tons of freedom to try things out. Here are a few proven insane and unlikely strategies that actually work:

1. Hydrate!

This sounds like a camping tip from Burning Man, but it’s actually very important on the bus, too, especially during a hot summer. When your team members aren’t hydrated, they get more pissed off more easily and derail the project. Therefore, remember to piss clear!

Colleen Wong on Twitter

@waynesutton @TheStartupBus 👋😄@waynesutton just DM'd you 🤜🤛🏾

2. Tweet up!

Don’t be shy! Taking you out of your shy comfort zone is a big part of StartupBus. Tweet to the universe and believe in what you say. If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody will.

Tweet directly and pitch shamelessly at famous people or influencers. They do check their Twitter, and you’ll be surprised when they reply your tweets if they see something in your idea. Ask them to help promote your startup to gain traction!

3. Pitch every random person you can find on the street.

The best way to validate your business strategy is to get out of the office, at least according to Lean Startup Machine. You will find people at every stop, but those can all be your potential user. You need to develop a thick skin to become a founder anyway.

Oh, and btw, nobody cares to steal your idea — execution matters way more than ideation. Get out of that mentality already.

4. Get all your friends in New Orleans to applaud LOUDLY for your pitch.

Applause is very much a herd mentality thing. If someone hears another person clap, they clap, too. So if your ultra-supportive friends clap together for your product, everyone will follow.

Judges get impressed by things like that, and your product is more memorable and impressive just because of applause. We are all pretty gullible to the applause at the beginning of all TED talks start for that reason, too. More memorable products are more likely to win.

Our Demo Day tickets are available here: https://startupbus.com/summit — So get all your Nola friends to register for free with promo code APPLICANT.

4. Write on the bus.

If your bus driver permits, you can draw your startup’s logo and Twitter handle on the exterior of the bus (with an erasable marker, of course). Our sponsors put their logos on the bus too for a reason: It’s great exposure, literally, on 7000 miles of the highway.

Or stick your logo on the bus with a magnet or a removable sticker!

5. Prototype hardware projects quickly with parts from a Walmart.

Hardware projects always stand out in startup competitions, simply because how rare they are and how hard (pun) it is to pull it off. Instead of making every custom part, try going to a Walmart on the way and taking apart an existing toy or product for parts.

6. Hire someone on Mechanical Turk, Upwork, or Fiverr. Or even an agency.

Yes, you can even do that!

All normal startup competition rules you know fly out of the window on the StartupBus. If you’re investing real money to register your domain name or buy stock photos, you might as well invest some money in extra labor if your team really believes in the product. You’re gonna need to hire extra help eventually anyway.

Why waste your developers’ time coding CSS for a simple landing page for half a day when they can spend that time perfecting the Deep Learning algorithms? Or have your biz dev person spending time scrubbing data clean when they can be evangelizing and gaining an extra 1000 followers? Delegating talents to their best use is directly proportional to your startup’s success.

And if you are that good at pitching your product and you get your developer and designer and data scientist gang back home to code for you for free during the 5 days — Amazing. You’ve definitely got some leadership skills. We love that.

7. Befriend that conductor who’s responsible for social media on the bus.

We have at least one conductor who tweets and posts often during the road trip. And guess what — your brand new startup’s Twitter account has only 2-digit followers, while your bus can have up to 3 or 4-digits of them.

So do something cool and awesome to ask your conductor to tweet or retweet about it. If you’re lucky and @TheStartupBus retweets your bus, you’re instantly exposed to 14k followers — many of them investors and top leaders in tech. That’s free marketing.

7. Convince someone talented to switch to your team.

Nobody said people can’t change teams halfway through the competition! Poaching is actually allowed. 😈

If you see a talented developer stuck in a terrible team, it’s your chance.

8. Make your team T-Shirt.

Investors love to see a good team. And a team that can work together with the looks as well is perfect. Order some t-shirts and have them deliver to the final venue!

9. Ask your mentors and conductors to code for you.

Who said your mentors can only watch you pitch but not get involved?

Nobody.

In fact, halfway through the trip you’ll realize the competition isn’t about teams on the bus against each other, but maybe it’s about buses against buses. Your mentors want your bus to win just as much — if your pitch is amazing, they might actually help you code, design, or market the crap out of it.

10. Sleep on the bus at day. Work at the hotel at night.

If you’re a night owl and possess the superpower of sleeping on a moving vehicle, take advantage of that, because hotel wifi is definitely better than bus wifi, and it’s more stable and less distracting.

Sleep management, surprisingly, is one of the life skills you’ll learn on the StartupBus, and is a key to win the competition. You don’t want to show up at your final pitch groggy. Plan your sleep and coffee intake ahead.

That’s all for now to the hidden secrets of winning the StartupBus. May the odds be ever in your favor! Have a great trip!!!

10 Insane Strategies to Winning StartupBus was originally published in The StartupBus Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Since 2010, prominent investors, founders, and top tech talents across the continent had graced the stage at our finals competition.

For years until 2017, StartupBus would travel to a tech conference as a final destination. For our 10th anniversary, we are taking another bold step forward to become the tech conference itself: We are aiming to deliver the ultimate experience to transform top tech talents across the continent into founders, and inspire everyone to make waves in the startup world. Go face-to-face with real investors. GAME-ON! Show us your serious hacks.

Join us for our Entrepreneur Summit in New Orleans on July 27th and 28th consisting of pitches and demos of our freshly formed startups and valuable wisdom from esteemed speakers and judges in keynotes, talks, and panels.

We’re excited to announce our all-star line-up of judges and speakers hailing from across the continent to our finals competition, and also our most diverse to-date! Let’s take a look, shall we?

Melinda Briana Epler

Founder & CEO, Change Catalyst

Melinda is a TED speaker, diversity and inclusion advocate and leader building inclusive innovation economies around the world.

She has more than 20 years of experience elevating brands and developing business innovation strategies for entrepreneurs, Fortune 500 companies and global NGOs. As CEO of Change Catalyst, Melinda works with the tech industry to solve diversity and inclusion together. She is a strategic advisor for startups, tech companies, tech hubs and venture capital firms around the world. She co-leads a series of global solutions-focused conferences called Tech Inclusion, and is Director at Backstage Capital, where she develops startup programs and builds inclusive entrepreneur ecosystems for underrepresented founders.

Melinda is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker and speaks, mentors and writes about diversity and inclusion in tech, social entrepreneurship, women entrepreneurs and investing.

Wayne Sutton

Co-Founder & CTO, Change Catalyst

Wayne Sutton is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Change Catalyst and its Tech Inclusion programs with passion to inspire entrepreneurs to use technology to change the world.

Alicia Syrett

Founder & CEO, Pantegrion Capital

Alicia Syrett is the Founder and CEO of Pantegrion Capital, an angel investment vehicle focused on seed and early stage investments, and The Point 25 Initiative which helps women-led companies build robust Advisory Boards.

She was named as one of LinkedIn’s 2018 “Top Voices in Startups and Entrepreneurship,” one of the “30 Women in Venture Capital to Watch in 2018” by Business Insider, and one of the “25 Angel Investors in New York You Need to Know” by AlleyWatch. She has been featured in Forbes, TechCrunch, Inc., The Huffington Post, Mashable, Entrepreneur, NPR’s Marketplace, and USA Today. She has appeared on CNBC and MSNBC 100+ times, and her TED talk on “Why VCs and Angel Investors Say ‘No’ to Entrepreneurs” has been viewed over 85,000 times.

She is a 2019 Fellow at the Economic Club of New York, a Board Member of the NY Tech Alliance, and Contributor for Inc. Prior to founding Pantegrion, she was the first employee and CAO of a multi-billion dollar private equity firm.

Uriridiakoghene “Ulili” Onovakpuri

Partner, Kapor Capital

Uriridiakoghene “Ulili” Onovakpuri returned to the Kapor Capital team in 2016. She is focused on sourcing investment opportunities, conducting diligence and supporting Kapor Capital’s portfolio companies particularly those in the digital health and medical technology industries.

Previously, Uriridiakoghene served as Director of Global Programs at Village Capital, a global accelerator program and venture capital firm which supports healthcare, education, agriculture, energy and FinTech businesses. At Village Capital she worked side by side with entrepreneurs from around the world helping them grow their ideas into marketable businesses.

Uriridiakoghene received her MBA with a concentration in Health Sector Management from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. She is a native San Franciscan and a proud UC Berkeley Alum.

In her free time, you will likely find Uriridiakoghene watching Bollywood movies or playing with her niece Maya.

More to be announced!

That’s right — there are more! Check out our complete line-up on our website. We even have a few more serious surprises yet to be announced that will make you want to jump on the bus right now.

With that said, there’s only a little less than 4 weeks to apply for your ride on the StartupBus! Our conductors are revving up our interview pipeline — it’s time to sign up now or never!

To get on the bus, use the invite code “TheStrongest” on https://startupbus.com/apply.

See y’all soon,
Madelena Mak + Colleen Wong

Announcing our strongest line-up of judges and speakers to-date. was originally published in The StartupBus Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Since its inception, StartupBus has been on a mission to empower people who are driven to change the world. Our annual entrepreneurship boot camp and startup competition, hailed as “the rite of passage for the tech industry” by HuffPost, brings together the brightest, most adventurous, and innovative talents across the globe and equips them with the experience, business skills, and social capital needed to launch the next generation of companies that disrupt the status quo — for the greater good.

This year, we are extremely proud to announce StartupBus: Advancing Black Entrepreneurs — the newest addition to our cohort of buses entering our 2019 North American championship — in partnership with JPMorgan Chase Advancing Black Pathways and Chase for Business.

The Advancing Black Entrepreneurs bus represents a huge step forward in our efforts to make tech entrepreneurship a truly diverse and inclusive industry. The bus will be comprised entirely of talents qualified by our Diversity Fellowship Program, which requires a commitment to contributing to their communities at home and advocating to support our mission for a diverse, inclusive, and accepting global StartupBus community.

Unlike any other buses we’ve ever hosted, we welcome all qualified tech talents, designers, and entrepreneurs who self-identify as Black to apply from not just one, but six, origin cities: New York City, Baltimore, MD, Washington D.C., Detroit, MI, Atlanta, GA, and Oakland, CA. If you’re applying from one of these cities, our crew will find a way to get you to Harlem, New York, where the journey will commence on July 24th, 2019.

Important Details

• Dates: July 24th to 28th, 2019.
• Launch city: New York, NY (Harlem)
• Destination: New Orleans, Louisiana
• Who can apply? Self-identifying Black technologists, designers, and entrepreneurs from: New York, NY; Baltimore, MD; Washington, D.C.; Detroit, MI; Atlanta, GA; and Oakland, CA.
• Cost: 🤜🏿💥only $99!💥🤛🏿
  Thanks to our sponsors JPMorgan Chase Advancing Black Pathways and Chase for Business, lodging, meals, and return transportation stipends are all included for all of those who qualify for our Diversity Fellowship Program!

For more information on your eligibility and our application process, visit us at https://startupbus.com/abp.

Why Advancing Black Entrepreneurs?

Representation of Black people in tech is disproportionately low. Despite representing 12.6% of the US population, only 2% to 5.3% of tech executives are Black. The lack of diversity is so evident; even we had a hard time ourselves finding good photos and videos footage of Black Buspreneurs from our own archives.

Beyond tech, economic opportunities continue to remain out of reach for many Black Americans. That’s why we’re working to expand their pathways to wealth. We’re focused on improving the financial health of Black Americans through a focus on increased savings, improving credit, homebuyer counseling and helping black-owned small businesses get access to the capital they need.

During our epic road trip, we will be developing and creating pathways to financial empowerment. Our Black Buspreneurs will develop products aimed at improving the financial health of Black Americans. We’ll provide them with the ideal environment and tools to help them develop the confidence, negotiation skills and communication tactics needed to reach their full potential on the bus — and beyond.

What is StartupBus?

StartupBus is an entrepreneurship boot camp and global startup competition on-wheels spanning across 4 continents, 26 countries, 18 competitions, and a global community of over 1800+ alumni. It’s transformed hundreds of emerging entrepreneurs into founders that have raised over a $1B worth in venture capital and acquisitions. Not to mention all of the incredible media coverage.

Our legendary curriculum will accelerate you through an entire first year of launching a startup into just five days. You’ll form teams, conceptualize an idea together, build a product, pitch it to users and investors, and get traction with the goal of launching your dream startup within 72 hours en route to New Orleans. Better yet, you’ll receive guidance and support from world-class conductors, founders, technologists, and investors along the way.

Apply for #StartupBus2019 today!

Get involved!

Ride the bus

To get your invite code, pitch to us why you’re the perfect candidate for StartupBus by tweeting at @TheStartupBus, replying to this post on Medium, and hustling to get our attention. Get creative!

Partner with us

Interested in contributing to our mission? Please contact us to host a stop, sponsor our buses, donate to our diversity scholarship fund, spread the word, or mentor our participants.

We can’t wait to see you for our 10th anniversary!

From the StartupBus Team,
Elias, Madelena, Colleen,
Stefan, and Brandi, the Advancing Black Entrepreneurs bus organizers.

Advancing Black Entrepreneurs: Discover your pathway to wealth on StartupBus! was originally published in The StartupBus Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Now in its 10th year!

How it all started…

A decade ago, during an ordinary night out at a pub, a waiter named Elias Bizannes joked that it’d be fun to organize a road trip to SXSW from San Francisco, with the twist of launching a startup by the time of arrival in Austin. What started as a joke turned into a serious bet. A month before departure, Elias scrambled to find a bus with wifi, raised sponsorship to cover the costs, and gathered together 25 adventurous folks to embark on the journey of a lifetime: six prototypes were developed, lifelong friendships were formed, serious co-founders were found...

Ten years later…

Fast forward ten years later, the experiment has evolved into a series of entrepreneurship bootcamps and startup competitions on-wheels that span across 4 continents, 26 countries, 18 competitions, and a global community of over 1800+ alumni. It’s transformed hundreds of emerging entrepreneurs into founders that have raised over a $1B worth in venture capital and acquisitions. Not to mention all of the incredible media coverage.

Insert <YOU>

Will you become part of our lineage of amazing tech founders, and create a startup that raises the next billion dollars?

Now you can.

Introducing StartupBus North America 2019. And coincidentally, our 19th competition.

The Important Details

• Dates: July 24 (Wednesday) to July 28 (Sunday), 2019
• Destination: New Orleans, Louisiana
• 8 Bus Routes: Canada, Florida, Mexico, New York, Northeast Ohio, Silicon Valley, Washington D.C., and Advancing Black Entrepreneurs.
• Apply today at https://startupbus.com/apply

What is StartupBus?

During our bootcamp and competition, you will participate in our legendary curriculum, accelerating you through an entire first year of launching a startup into just five days. You’ll form teams, conceptualize an idea together, build a product, pitch it to users and investors, and get traction with the goal of launching your dream startup within 72 hours en route to New Orleans. Better yet, you’ll receive guidance and support from world-class conductors, founders, technologists, and investors along the way.

“Entrepreneurship can’t be taught, but it can be learned.” -Elias Bizannes

StartupBus’ cross-pollinates unparalleled technological, creative, and visionary talents, allowing graduates to re-inject their expanded social capital, innovative mindsets, and newfound energy into the communities they call home. To further sustain the impact of our efforts locally, we’ve developed partnerships with economic development organizations, ensuring entrepreneurs can continue to be supported as they return to pioneer the growth of their local startup ecosystems.

Apply for #StartupBus2019 today.

Pitch to us

To get your invite code, pitch to us why you’re the perfect candidate for StartupBus by tweeting at @TheStartupBus or replying to this post on Medium. Get creative!

See you on the bus!

Applications now OPEN for StartupBus 2019! was originally published in The StartupBus Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Introducing the leadership behind the 10th Annual StartupBus

Holy snap!

Have you seen the #10yearchallenge that’s been all the rage on social media? Right on cue, StartupBus — the “mother of all hackathons”— is also entering its 10th year as the most extraordinary entrepreneurial rite of passage in the world!

Ten years, seriously. Let that sink in. This is going to be our 10th friggin’ year.

In the spirit of the new year, let’s look back on our accomplishments so far and the challenges that lay ahead!

2010: The People Accelerator

The legend, so it goes, began in February 2010. Our founder Elias Bizannes handpicked 25 individuals to embark on the first-ever StartupBus going from San Francisco to Austin, TX. The high-tech modern twist of Odysseus was an instant hit: Strangers quickly turned into friends. Teams evolved into the founders of successful startups.

Since then, beyond keeping the excitement of our rambunctious road trip alive, we’ve also matured in numerous ways. We’ve proudly stayed ahead of the curve in terms of inclusivity, civic engagement, cutting-edge technologies, and social impact. And thanks to the support of our growing community of alumni, sponsors, and partners, we’ve become one of the most cherished and documented startup competitions — see TechCrunch, Gimlet Media, WIRED, and more.

2018: Bridging the Digital Divide

StartupBus North America 2018, held last May in New Orleans, marked a number of firsts:

• 🔗 Women+TGNC in Blockchain Bus: We made her-storical strides with distributed ledger technology, the most revolutionary technological innovation since the internet, courtesy of IBM! Check out this short documentary on NBC News and these articles from Buzzfeed and Forbes.
• 👩🏽‍💻 Nationwide Diversity Fellowship Program: With the generous support of our donors and community partners, 34 developers, designers, and influencers from backgrounds underrepresented in tech were awarded scholarships to participate, developing their entrepreneurial skills and network.
• 🌎 Reaching further: New bus routes were formed from Detroit, MI, and Dallas, TX, providing access to our entrepreneurial boot camp to over 10 regions across the country.
• ⚖ Changing the ratio: More than 40% of our organizing committee and riders were women and gender non-binary folks, setting us apart from major tech conferences and events.

2019: Democratizing the (Tech) Playing Field

This year, we will leverage StartupBus to spur economic development in under-resourced communities by connecting budding talents with technologists, investors, and community leaders across the country — literally, on a bus!

By helping these individuals establish genuine relationships with powerful people, we aim to help them advance not only in tech careers, but also entrepreneurship and leadership.

We are pleased to announce two national directors who will lead us in taking StartupBus to the next level: Madelena Mak, director of our previous competition, who will resume her role as senior director; and Colleen Wong, lead conductor of last year’s Women+TGNC in Blockchain Bus.

Together, StartupBus can bridge the digital divide across geographical, socioeconomic, gender, and racial disparities.

Get Involved

Keeping a fire alive for a decade is no easy task.

We need your help to make our 10th year our best year yet — and hopefully not our last!

• 🎟 Ride StartupBus! We’ll notify you when we’re ready.
• 👩‍✈️ Join us and become a legendary StartupBus conductor
• 💰 Sponsor a Bus
• 🤝 Contribute to our Diversity Fellowship Program
• 👨🏻‍🏫 Partner with us as a mentor and champion
• 🚏 Host a stop in your community
• 🐤 Share our story by publishing a tweet, article, podcast, or documentary
• ➕ Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Medium, Youtube, and Facebook!

See you on the Bus!

Cheers,
Madelena + Colleen
StartupBus

A Decade of Entrepreneurial Odysseys was originally published in The StartupBus Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This spring, 28 women, transgender, and gender nonconforming (TGNC) designers, developers, and influencers embarked on a five-day road trip from New York City to New Orleans to ideate, build, and launch blockchain startups. This was a part of an international competition across North America with teams on buses departing from 8 different regions: Silicon Valley, New York City, Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, Dallas, Tampa, and Mexico City.

What started off nine years ago as a hackathon on a bus that ended in an epic pitch battle in SXSW has now become an annual tradition and pilgrimage for hackers and founders from all over the world. The unique combination of a road trip, hackathon, and competition takes ‘Buspreneurs’ out of their comfort zone, pushing them to realize their potential and evolve into fearless founders ready to pursue dreams that impact the lives of many.

The Women+TGNC in Blockchain bus, in partnership with IBM Blockchain, was the first-ever route organized by StartupBus that was focused on blockchain and exclusively for women and TGNC individuals, with the goal of empowering these underrepresented communities in this nascent space in tech. Earlier this year IBM was honored with the prestigious 2018 Catalyst Award for leadership in building a workplace that values diversity and inclusion. IBM is the only tech company honored this year — and the only company anywhere recognized for a fourth time.

Participants were challenged to build and deploy blockchain applications en route to New Orleans with tools provided by Hyperledger from The Linux Foundation. Hyperledger Fabric is the framework powering the IBM Blockchain Platform to help businesses usher in a new era of trust, transparency and accountability.

Four interdisciplinary teams were formed to launch products for a wide variety of applications:

• PetFolio, a blockchain application that allows veterinarians, vet hospitals, animal rescue centers, service providers and pet owners to easily store and transfer a pet’s medical records and documentation.
• StarterBlock, a marketplace that matches borrowers or “sprinters” and “lenders” or starters, utilizing smart contracts on the blockchain to decentralize the process.
• Pivot+, a platform that empowers women by guiding them through financial and crypto education modules, as they put learning into action, they are rewarded with tokens.
• Rememory, a permission-based network that allows families to have a decentralized database to be in control of your own history.

Petfolio won second place overall and is currently developing their platform and raising pre-seed capital from VCs in New York.

The 28 participants were stuck together 24/7 for three days on the bus, with stops at the National Mall in DC, Advent Coworking in Charlotte, Toccoa Falls in Georgia, digitalundivided in Atlanta, and Propeller Center for Social Innovation in New Orleans.

“I collaborated with many like-minded women and used my pre-existing skills to help push the creative limits on blockchain technology. The StartupBus journey gave me the opportunity to do all of that and more!” said Brandi Kinard, a UX/UI designer who heard about the opportunity through her professor.

To increase the diversity of participants in the overall competition, StartupBus also rolled out a more comprehensive Diversity Fellowship Program. The program effectively increased access to entrepreneurship and tech for people from communities typically underrepresented in the space — ~40% of this year’s participants were women — an impressive number much higher than the tech industry average. The fund included donations from alumni and partner organizations including Veterans Florida, The Knowledge House, The Ocean, ConsenSys, Sourcetoad, WasteBits, Intersect, and more.

“There is no better vehicle than a road trip across America that can bridge the digital divide in our continent in terms of socioeconomic, gender, and racial inequality. We need to increase access for underrepresented communities not only to tech jobs but also tech entrepreneurship and leadership. StartupBus is committed to bringing together top talents of tech, design, and business in one place,” said Madelena Mak, the National Director of StartupBus, and the first-ever transgender person in this position.

“I’m proud we provided a safe space for women and TGNC folks to work together without the distractions of gender dynamics present in most startup competitions and hackathons. One thing was clear, everyone was here to work and blaze trails in our world with blockchain,” said Colleen Wong, the main Conductor of the Women +TGNC in Blockchain bus.

Due to the success of the first-ever StartupBus Women + TGNC in Blockchain Bus and Diversity Fellowship program, StartupBus plans to organize more programming that fosters more inclusion in the tech industry. Experiences like these can help to pave pathways to upwards social and economic mobility for the have-nots and inspire those more fortunate to give back.

While applications for StartupBus North America 2018 are closed, interested applicants can visit www.startupbus.com to subscribe and stay informed about the next competition. StartupBus is also looking for sponsors and seeking proposals from cities interested in hosting their next competitions.

A short film documenting the experience, published by NBC News, can be viewed here.

StartupBus and IBM Blockchain Launch the First-Ever Bus for Women + TGNC in Blockchain was originally published in The StartupBus Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.