This article was published on May 30, 2012

Glasgow’s Startup Weekend event highlights Scottish tech creativity


Glasgow’s Startup Weekend event highlights Scottish tech creativity

If you missed it, the first ever Scottish Startup Weekend just took place in Glasgow, expanding the event’s footprint in the UK and of course highlighting talent north of the border.

As ever with a Startup Weekend, the pressure is on as the challenge is for entrepreneurs, designers and developers to build and launch a tech startup in just 54 hours.

Starting on the Friday evening, 24 people pitched their ideas and after frantic voting, 11 were selected for the weekend’s work. All of the attendees then formed teams to get the projects going. Kudos to all involved who ignored the rarely seen Scottish sunny weather to get developing.

The chosen teams covered a great many topics and applications. Here’s who they are and what they do:

Gifty is a way to work out how to buy the best gifts for your friends. The idea is to take the guess work out of buying presents for your nearest and dearest.

Tasteomatic helps you find good local food. It’s an online market for local and artisan bites. Once users find something they like the look of they can then have the food delivered or as it is local, go and collect it.

PostPod is a personal postbox at the airport. The service hopes to help people send home the items you can’t take on a plane.

BetMate is a customised tablet PC which enables users to place realtime bets at sporting events along with sports live streaming. The devices are aimed at hospitality at events to enhance an experience. Think of a day at the races – without the need for binoculars.

VegPin is a service for helping vegans find quality food. It’s not easy going for a meal when most restaurants do not cater to vegan requirements. This app should make the process of finding a place to eat much easier.

TeamFunded is a service that helps users build a team and get funded (as it says in the name). By joining the community teams are formed not just by finding people with the right skills but also by looking at personalities.

SaveMeNet is designed to create a safer community. It’s a voice recognition mobile app which sends your location to contacts and law enforcement when you scream for help, providing you’re in a situation where you can use an app of course.

Appurchase is an mCommerce solution for retailers. It was created to bring the simplicity of eCommerce into shops by enabling the consumers mobile device to be the point of sale.

Fabricbook is a fabric search engine and is aiming to be the ultimate resource for fabrics online. To make a purchase or take a closer look at materials, users can easily find and order a sample.

X-Tribe is an online platform for matching adventurous and sporty people.  For anyone who has ever needed a last minute sports-buddy, X-tribe can pair active folk through their sport, location and skills.

SportHack. Sport and hacking might not seem to be an obvious union, but this service is determined to bring hacking to sports and competition to hacking. SportHack is a national event for sports related hardware and software hacks to compete against each other at a live final.

All of these teams worked hard over the weekend to get their product into a fit state for presentation. At the end the winners were announced and they are: VegPin, SportHack, X-Tribe, Appurchase, Gifty and PostPod with the main prize going to the PostPod team as the business ‘Most likely to make a million’.

Organiser Michael Hayes of RookieOven, having corralled the inspired but exhausted teams to Glasgow West brewery on Sunday evening summarised the weekend, “So many brilliant ideas and great how the teams of strangers gelled together to work long hours and build something from nothing. Huge congratulations to everyone.”

That’s the thing about hack events like Startup Weekend. With some dedication and hard work, amazing ideas can be realised, attendees can be satisfied with their work and no doubt after a hard weekend together, most are likely to have made some good friends along the way.

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