Varna Smart City Startup Weekend

For 11 teams of young entrepreneurs to tackle city urban development topics and find digital solutions to some of them. Smart City Startup Weekend is a 54-hour event where developers, designers and business folks come together to pitch an idea and develop it with the assistance of experienced mentors. Everything happens like a competition – jury, consisting of professionals, investors and business angels judge the final ideas. The best of them are awarded and implemented with the support of the experts and investors. Every participant is welcome to pitch a startup idea, work with awesome coaches and get a feedback from the jury. The idea is to foster young people’s involvement in city integrated development and provide more opportunities for their professional development.

This year’s Startup Weekend had a specific focus on one of the challenges, identified by the Urbact Local Group. It featured the ambition of the city to extend its traditional image of summer vacation destination, fostering new business and investment opportunities that it provides. The concept is to use social media and digital marketing tools as powerful instruments to encourage business and stakeholders to share information of public interest thus improving the visibility of the city in social media.
The jury nominated one team that has proposed a mobile application gathering all the international events organized in the city and promoting them among visitors through social media and tourist information sites. Within the next 30 days, under the professional supervision of digital marketing experts from Varna Free University, the team will develop the idea in a competition with other teams of students and young entrepreneurs who will also focus their efforts on more effective tools for online destination marketing. At the end of this period, the best ideas will be presented and awarded by URBACT Interactive Cities project.