Commercial Confidential

More of the evening's final presentations at Startup Weekend Portland (if this is your first visit, here's some more background on what's going on).

Unicorn Bump

"Unicorn Bump" is the new name for Jodie Lapchick's Dance Gym concept. Here's the website: unicornbump.co.

They've put together a promo video with a soundtrack from Michael Jackson. "Not the late-night dancing queen you once were?" asks a voiceover. "What if you could go to a daytime dance club instead of going to a gym?"

Final presentations at Startup Weekend: ChronoQuest, the People's Movement

Sunday March 24, 2013 | 07:35 PM

A big crowd has gathered upstairs at Peloton Labs this evening for the final presentations from the nine new businesses that the weekend's participants have forged over the past 54 hours.

If this is your first visit, here's some more background on what's going on.

The night's opening with some encouraging words and humorous video clips from Kerem Durdag, the CEO of Boothbay's Biovation, and a contributor and founder of several patents and new companies.

The first presentation comes from ChronoQuest, about whom I wrote earlier this afternoon.

Startup Weekend: Maine International Dance Festival, ChronoQuest Time Travel Tours

Sunday March 24, 2013 | 03:55 PM

There are about three more hours left in Startup Weekend before the final presentations for the judges. The teams are focused on building either a viable product or a rock-solid pitch to make to funders in order to convince judges that their businesses are going to survive beyond the end of the night.

Maine International Dance Festival

I caught up with this team shortly after they’d made their draft presentation to the coaches early this afternoon. They’d just been working with designer Sean Wilkinson to build a logo and basic website, which you can visit here.

This team is aiming to produce a full-blown dance festival in the summer of 2014. They’re looking at partnering with existing groups, including the Bates Dance Festival and Franco-American community organizations. Team member Jean Michel Kayumba says that dance offers “a great way for different cultures to interact without a language barrier.”

Startup Weekend: Updates from Goals with Friends, Media Shifter

Sunday March 24, 2013 | 02:30 PM

It’s Sunday afternoon, and there are just a few hours left in Startup Weekend. By the end of this afternoon, the teams will have either a viable product or a rock-solid pitch to make to funders and partners for future growth.

Here are updates from two more teams:

Goals With Friends

“We’re feeling the pressure,” said team leader Erika Allison while she was grabbing a plate of lunch to take back upstairs. “We had kind of an identity crisis last night – GoalsWithFriends.com wasn’t available, and we were trying to decide whether we should change the name – but we decided that, for today, we’ll keep it, and if we move forward, we’ll look more at other options.

Sunday morning update from Startup Weekend: new brands, new websites

Sunday March 24, 2013 | 01:05 PM

Most of the teams have also adapted their branding or business model in the hours since they first made their pitches Friday night. Here’s an update from the three groups working downstairs at Peloton Labs:

The People’s Movement (formerly known as “Green Porta Potty”):

This team’s focus for today is in making a killer presentation for funders. Various members of the team report that they worked well into the wee hours of the morning. Marketer Emily Straubel shows me a very slick slide deck that they plan to use for their presentation and website (I hope to get copies of these presentations to post here later this evening).