This week two Grinnell College students hope to introduce their peers to startup culture through Pioneer Weekend, a three-day event that begins Friday evening at the Iowa college.
Organizers Kevin Charette and Maijid Moujaled say Pioneer Weekend is modeled on Startup Weekend and is a free event open to college and high school students from the region. Over the course of 42 hours, aspiring entrepreneurs will pitch ideas, assemble a team, create a business plan and interact with accomplished mentors and judges.
“This is an opportunity to network and find those resources that you wouldn’t otherwise have,” Charette said. “I just sort of started looking around at the startup space, talking to some alums who have done stuff in this space about how to get started.”
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When he attended a Startup Weekend, he was inspired to create something similar.
“Grinnell needed more events centered around startup stuff,” said Charette, a third-year bio-chem major. “My goal was to bring this to Grinnell and see what sort of traction we could get.”
Charette said he feels Grinnell is focused on social justice and preparing students for the nonprofit world, but that more could be done to encourage students who want to start their own businesses. With sponsorship from the college and The Wilson Program, Pioneer Weekend is part of filling that need.
“We just want to get that entrepreneurial scene stronger,” said Moujaled, a senior computer science major who hails from Ghana.
While Pioneer Weekend may appear to be suited to business and technology students, Moujaled and Charette want to emphasis that it’s for any student interested in entrepreneurship and learning about the startup scene.
“There’s sort of this view that if you don’t have some [specific] skills that you might just discount your ideas,” Moujaled said.
The pair hopes the event will attract around 50 students, with a dozen or so coming from Grinnell and the rest traveling from across the region.
On Friday evening participants will pitch their ideas and teams of three to six people will form around the best concepts. On Saturday the mentors will arrive to work with the teams as they prototype their business ideas. Sunday is reserved for finishing their projects and presenting to three judges. There are cash prizes for the top three finishers—$400, $200 and $100, respectively.
Moujaled says he sees a growing interest in entrepreneurship across the country, with an increase in hackathons and similar events.
“I have noticed that there are a lot of people open to entrepreneurship in Iowa, which I didn’t know before we started this event,” Charette, a San Francisco native, said. “So that is encouraging.”
Interested in attending Pioneer Weekend? Register online or contact Kevin Charette and Maijid Moujaled via email.
