StartupBus is an annual technological

startup A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to ...

competition and entrepreneurship boot camp, described as a

Hackathon A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest, datathon or codefest; a portmanteau of '' hacking'' and ''marathon'') is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 h ...

, created by Elias Bizannes in February 2010. The competition is held across a 3-day bus ride where contestants or "buspreneurs" compete to conceive the best technology

. The competition seeks to attract young top talents to compete, to search for the most innovative

conceived by the groups, where the winners are determined by a panel of judges. Starting from February 2011, it has gone through many iterations in various continents from 2011 to the present day, with the first in

Austin, Texas Austin ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Texas. It is the county seat and most populous city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and W ...

and subsequently in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

and

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

. StartupBus receives an extensive online media coverage through platforms such as

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...

and technology blogs and news sites such as The Next Web,

VentureBeat ''VentureBeat'' is an American technology website headquartered in San Francisco, California. ''VentureBeat'' is a tech news source that publishes news, analysis, long-form features, interviews, and videos. The ''VentureBeat'' company was fou ...

WIRED Wired may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976 * ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993 * ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017 * "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street'' * "Wired ...

and

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American global online newspaper focusing on topics regarding high tech, high-tech and Startup company, startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. I ...

. Live coverage of the competition was also broadcast through StartupBus.TV via

Livestream Livestreaming, live-streaming, or live streaming is the streaming media, streaming of video or Digital audio, audio in real-time communication, real time or near real time. While often referred to simply as ''streaming'', the real-time nature ...

. StartupBus held its 9th annual North American competition in

New Orleans, Louisiana New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

on April 27, 2018.

History

StartupBus started off as a joke by Elias Bizannes and Bart Jellema on 1 July 2009 to start a

hackathon A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest, datathon or codefest; a portmanteau of '' hacking'' and ''marathon'') is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 h ...

on bus trip from San Francisco to Austin for the SXSW Conference. Eventually, the first bus launched on 1 February 2010, which consisted of 25 strangers on the way to Austin for the SXSW Conference, during which a total of 6

startups A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses tha ...

were conceived from the time in the bus. Soon after, starting from February 2011, StartupBus was officially an annual technological

competition.

Concept

Prior to competition

StartupBus' start off location is determined through voting via

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

and

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

since 2012, after its evident success. Buspreneurs are selected based on an invite-only basis after indicating their interest through submission of an application and proposal with an interview there after, if shortlisted. Application are only open to those who specializes in the field of coding,

designing A design is the concept or proposal for an object, process, or system. The word ''design'' refers to something that is or has been intentionally created by a thinking agent, and is sometimes used to refer to the inherent nature of something ...

and

business Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for ...

. Pre-events are organised before the competition to bond buspreneurs with the objective to create a network of like-minded people.

Competition format

The competition starts off with a 72-hour bus ride from the determined start-off location to its destination, voted through

and

. Each bus consists of 24 buspreneurs, which comes equipped with

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

, charging points and tables among the seats with no other luxuries. Through the 72-hour bus ride, buspreneurs are to form teams of 3-4 members of their choosing and work on their final product which comes in the form of viable web applications to be presented to a panel of judges for submission on the end of the competition day. Winners will get funding to kick-start their idea with prior winners of StartupBus being able to expand their creations and creating new ones. Power on board the StartupBus is however short in supply and with

that is unstable at times, making the competition even tougher for the buspreneurs. On-board are experienced mentors from prior StartupBus competitions, available to help the teams out. Pit stops are made where buspreneurs gather feedback on their products, learn about business environments and to rest for the night.

Bus Routes

StartupBus competitions cover 4 continents - North America, Europe, Africa and Australasia - and 26 countries. 15 major events had been held since its debut in 2010.

North America

Eight StartupBus North America competitions had been held in

annually since its debut in 2010.

Europe

Six StartupBus Europe competitions had been held in Europe since 2012.

Africa

StartupBus

2013's first bus into

with a total of 30 buspreneurs started their journey from 17 November to 21 November 2013. The bus started out from the Capital of

Zimbabwe file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...

Harare Harare ( ), formerly Salisbury, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Zimbabwe. The city proper has an area of , a population of 1,849,600 as of the 2022 Zimbabwe census, 2022 census and an estimated 2,487,209 people in its metrop ...

and its final destination was

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

Cape Town Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...

for the Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Pacific

StartupBus' first time in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

since its debut 5 years ago was done in partnership with SydStart. StartupBus

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the cont ...

2014 started from 29 August 2014 to 2 September 2014 with 25 buspreneurs. StartupBus

2014 departed from

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

and on to

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

and

Canberra Canberra ( ; ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the Federation of Australia, federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's list of cities in Australia, largest in ...

before arriving at its destination in Sydstart's Main Day 2014 in

, Australia. Products that successfully caught the attention of judges and the public were Dinner Companion which links business people who are looking for company over the meal for dinner, Spexy.me which allows people to design and print their own 3-D glasses and order them, and FailPage which converts error pages into useful computer metrics for companies.

Winners

After three rounds of judging, i.e. qualification, semi-final and final rounds, one winner is chosen by the judges.

North America

Europe

Africa

StartupBus

2013's winner was Workforce, a mobile-powered planning application connection employees and employers to simplify

workforce planning Human resource management (HRM) is the strategic and coherent approach to the effective and efficient management of people in a company or organization such that they help their business gain a competitive advantage. It is designed to maximize em ...

in construction sites. The platform links unskilled worker teams with potential employers through an

SMS Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, t ...

-based communication system. Runners-up to StartupBus

2013 were Funeral.ly, a funeral management application, and Bribed, an application to tackle bribery issues across

. A notable alum of this bus was Sterio.me, which later was accepted to the Start Up Chile accelerator and featured on BBC Africa and the Guardian.

Pacific

People of the Sun, a solar startup, was announced the winner of StartupBus

2014.

Judges

North America

Community

The StartupBus Community is a network of people who have previously participated in the various StartupBus competitions. The StartupBus Community consists of more than 1600 alumni from all around the world who interact to play, work and live together.

Notable alumni companies

Many alumni continued to stay as a team after the hackathon and pursue new startups. Alumni businesses have raised over $400 million in funding, with notable acquisitions by

Andreessen Horowitz AH Capital Management, LLC (commonly known as Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z) is an American privately held venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of M ...

and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

. Notable alumni companies include:

Founded on StartupBus

* Wastebits * Smart Host * Bridgefy

Founded by StartupBus teams and alumni

Instacart Maplebear Inc., doing business as Instacart, is an American retail media and delivery company based in San Francisco that operates a grocery delivery and pick-up service in the United States and Canada accessible via a website and mobile app. ...

* Major League Hacking * Touchlab * Sunrise (acquired by

) * Branch (acquired by

) * Mondo * Keen IO * Complion * Airpair * WeVue * 1 Second Everyday

Media reception

StartupBus had received generally positive reception from the hackathon community.

described StartupBus, according to its riders, "the mother of all hackathons", and

WIRED Magazine ''Wired'' is a bi-monthly American magazine that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. It is published in both print and Online magazine, online editions by Condé Nast. The magazine has been in public ...

called "the StartupBus as close to blood sport as Silicon Valley entrepreneurship gets. By compressing the time from concept to prototype, it becomes a pedal-to-the-metal business incubator."

References

External links

* * * * {{col-end Business events Hackathons Software developer communities

History

Concept

Prior to competition

Competition format

Sponsors

Bus Routes

North America

Europe

Africa

Pacific

Winners

North America

Europe

Africa

Pacific

Judges

North America

Community

Notable alumni companies

Founded on StartupBus

Founded by StartupBus teams and alumni

Media reception

References

External links