This weekend, The City of Light will be hosting the first-ever Startup Weekend Paris ChangeMakers edition. The goal? Making an impact through projects focused on social and environmental change.
These hackathon-style weekends deliver a serious opportunity for budding entrepreneurs. What started back in 2009 as a few folks crowded around laptops has turned into a global movement with over 4,000 events held in 150 countries. It's an international community that's fostered and incubated thousands of ideas and hundreds of businesses. We've sent out hundreds of great stickers to these Techstars-owned events, and for ChangeMakers Paris we printed up a rectangle custom kiss cut sticker. Their design features a red-and-yellow colorway featuring the Startup Weekend beaker and event branding against the famous Parisian skyline stocked with obelisks, churches, spires, museums, and of course, the iconic Eiffel Tower.
Anyone from any walk of life can attend and participate. It's doesn't matter if you're a marketing professional, a JavaScript programmer, a student, a dishwasher, an electrician: everyone has an idea worth developing. Startup Weekend is where the words "no" and "can't" aren't an option, and the only way to move is forward. A ChangeMaker, in the words of the organizers, sits somewhere between Social Business and purely capitalist start-up. ChangeMakers develop projects that have a strong social, societal, environmental and economic impact, while having a profitable business model that potentially allows dividends to be paid out.
In three days, individuals will pitch ideas and then build a viable business model with their future partners and teammates. There are judges and mentors who will shepherd projects to the judging round, where the jury deliberates and decides on the prize and awards for each idea. We want to thanks all of the organizers, mentors, judges and participants for setting aside their time to work on something that will do some good. Best of luck making change!
Follow their Twitter account @sweparis and the hashtags #SWChangeMakers.