Jerusalem, Palestine, January 24, 2021 Station J, Jerusalem Hi-Tech Forum and ITIQ are proud to announce that they have successfully launched TechStars’ first ever fully virtual Startup Weekend East-Jerusalem in Jerusalem. The participants worked from their homes the entire weekend to tackle challenges presented by their communities and cities. The participants worked in teams that consisted of designers, programmers, and entrepreneurs to find sustainable and income generating solutions to the problems that their communities face.
Community leaders from more than 16 organizations and companies have pledged their time to mentor the participants and helped them evaluate the validity of their ideas, learn how to pitch their ideas, and create a proof-of-concept prototype for their ideas.
“It was an opportunity for individuals to plant their promising business ideas in the right environment.” said Aya Abu El Khair, branding and designing expert and a mentor at TechStars Startup Weekend East Jerusalem
More than 140 people applied to take part in the event, 11 ideas out of 25 ideas were chosen and teams were formed last Thursday night 21/1/2021. The ideas are:
A system that saves the medical records of all the citizens (and can be shared with doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, etc.)
A Platform that provides scientific & medical content in Arabic for children.
An app that helps mothers know why their children are crying (if he/she is sad, hungry, sick, etc.,..)
AR system that assists people with first aid
A platform that offers interactive simulation games to help make education for children for entertaining
A platform for ideas, that people can see and invest in the ideas that they are interested in
A platform that helps people design advertising and marketing materials
A platform that helps children learn new skills
Generating electricity by pushing on things
Platform for buying and selling PC parts
Sustainable buildings
The winning teams were:
1st Place winner QPC: A social based e-commerce platform where enthusiasts learn about products, share bundle creations, and build their dream PC.
2nd Place winner : RedVision: an Augmented reality system that assists people with first aid to save people lives
3rd Place winner: Cry Care: an voice-recognition application that enables mothers to record newborns’ voices and give them advice.
Startup Weekend Jerusalem invited Omar Jabari to hold a session about the business model canvas, Adnane Addioui عدنان عديوي (Official) gave a very inspiring talk on his entrepreneurial experience and pitching skills, the second day, Dr. Mohammad sharaf gave an inspiring talk about his success story in IOT.
The judges panel consisted of Reem Qawasmi, Mohammad Musleh,
Salem Awadalla, and George Khadder
“The enthusiasm and energy I saw in the event are what keep Station J moving to serve the entrepreneurs in Jerusalem” said Hazem Tirhi, Executive Director of Station J and a planning committee member for TechStars Startup Weekend Jerusalem.
“This kind of activities, support and awareness raised on entrepreneurship in Jerusalem. We are paving the way for the next generation of technologies and entrepreneurs in Jerusalem” said Hazem Khattab , Chairman and Managing Director of Jerusalem Hi-tech Forum (JHF) and a planning team member for TechStars Startup Weekend Jerusalem.
“Startup Weekend Jerusalem was one of the best brain breeding, networking, and innovative sessions I have joined since I moved back to Jerusalem. I hope that this will be the start for a strong pipeline of startup ideas that grow and get established in Jerusalem” said Lama Shihabi, a participant at TechStars Startup Weekend Jerusalem.
Since the COVID-19 outbreak began to affect communities around the world, TechStars has made a variety of changes to programming and community engagement to keep people safe and still continue supporting startups and innovators in this time of great need.
The event wasn’t possible to succeed without the generous sponsorship from Ooredoo Palestine, Sbitany سبيتاني and Sun back to school. In addition to the ecosystem & design partners: Baker Street, Yplus, MENACatalyst Foundation, Al Nayzak النيزك, حاسوب – Hasoub, and AWSc.
