PANAMA CITY — If you have a business idea, this is your weekend.
Beginning Friday, the Business Innovation Center (BIC) at Florida State University Panama City will once again host “Startup Weekend,” a global event aimed at providing entrepreneurs with the tools to see their ideas through to development.
Pamela Kidwell, executive director of the BIC, said virtually all successful businesses begin with nothing more than an idea, the only requirement to participate in Startup Weekend.
“The sticky note started with an idea; the Apple computer started with an idea. ... Every technology we have started with an idea,” Kidwell said. “There is not a shortage of ideas; there is a misunderstanding of what you do with it.”
The event will kick off with a free session on pitching ideas at 6:30 p.m. Friday at the Gulf Coast State College in the Advanced Technology Center (ATC). Following the session, registered participants will each conduct a 90-second pitch for their ideas and encourage others to join their team.
“You do a presentation on what that product could mean for the market,” said Kidwell, noting participants then will vote on the top ideas and form teams to execute those ideas. “You spend the rest of the weekend making that idea into a real product.”
Startup Weekend drew about 40 participants last year, and one team is still in the process of developing their product today. The group, which came from the Orlando area, pitched a “Follow Me” smartphone application, to help friends following in a separate car with directions to the destination.
The development process is one familiar to Travis Perry, a high school music teacher-turned-entrepreneur who appeared on the hit TV series “Shark Tank” in 2012.
Perry, who struck a deal with Robert Herjavec for his guitar training product “Chord Buddy,” will share his story as the keynote speaker at the Startup Weekend event Friday.
Perry originally developed the product to help his daughter stick with guitar lessons, and has since grown his company to reach more than $2 million in sales annually.
“Anyone who is looking to start a business, anyone who has that entrepreneurial blood, really really should attend this event,” Kidwell said.
For more information about the Startup Weekend, including cost and registration details, visit www.facebook.com/StartupWeekendPC