Today it was announced that Techstars had acquired Up Global, arguably one of the largest identity of community leaders, founders, mentors, investors, and corporate partners who are serving and supporting entrepreneurs and their communities (2014 Impact Report). I have seen mixed responses to the acquisition and wanted to share some of my thoughts.
Up Global and especially Startup Weekend has played a huge role in my life in the past five years and helped me learn a new language in how to express ideas, be more creative how to solve problems and given me access to an interconnected worldwide community full of some of the most talented people I know.
In November 22nd, 2010, I met with Franck Noyrigat a co-founder of Startup Weekend who flew in to Reykjavik, Iceland, to facilitate the first Startup Weekend event in Iceland.
(First Startup Weekend in Iceland 2010)
Soon after the event I realised that I had just witnessed one of the most effective ways to get groups of strangers with different traits to share ideas, get feedback, meet with experienced mentors, network, executing like never before while having fun doing it in only 54 hours. There was no return. We started revamping everything my team and I had been working on with the community into building more learn-by-doing events. We organised a marathon of StartupWeekends hosted all over Iceland and even convinced the Icelandic President, Mr. Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson to open two of them. I also started facilitating events outside of Iceland at places ranging from places like Iceland to Iran. I also had the opportunity to meet with fellow facilitators and organisers at various events such as Up Global Summits in Rio De Janeiro and Austin Texas.
During all those events I was fortunate enough to meet with extremely talented people, many of whom ended up becoming community leaders, founders of various types of successful businesses and an overall creme of the crop talent pool. These are individuals that have always been there during time of need and helped connect the dots for my self and so many others on their entrepreneurial journey.
Lets face it, the business SW had five years ago when there were around 30-50 events hosted per year was different to manage from the business they have today with Up Global and more then a 1000+ Startup Weekend Events hosted in 2015 alone.
At times like these there are moments when its necessary to look at what is considered best for the communities long term success and pivot the organisations business model if needed, just like Up Global veterans would recommend any other startup to do in a similar position.
Some of my colleges have been worrying that community leaders will not continue to do voluntary work for Techstars since Up Global is no longer a non-profit. As a reply to those comments it is my feeling that the best community leaders, facilitators and organisers I know are not, and have never been volunteering their work for Up Global or Startup Weekend but to their communities and will continue to do so.
If we want a true “give before you get” culture in startup communities worldwide, we need to get more people to continue doing things like Franck did when he visited Iceland in 2010. I therefore highly encourage everyone that were working with Up Global before the announced changes to support new exciting times ahead and continue to focus on what matters the most, the communities.
