In partnership with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska EPSCoR, Commonwealth North and Alaska Version 3 Techstars Startup Weekend Seward was held October 2-4 in Seward, Alaska. Tommy Sheridan from Valdez, Alaska, director of the Alaska Blue Economy Center, a participant with Alaska EPSCoR’s Interface of Change project, provided an overview of the event as well as other upcoming events that are part of the same funding feature that still has a year of progress to undergo. A $20-million award from the National Science Foundation funds this statewide, five-year project to build capacity for co-developed, use-inspired research across the Gulf of Alaska. Interface of Change brings together researchers from the University of Alaska Anchorage, University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the University of Alaska Southeast in partnership with Gulf of Alaska community members from Seldovia, Homer, Cordova, Valdez, Juneau, Haines, and Klukwan.
“One of the projects that we support through Interface of Change is something called the TechStars Startup Weekend. That's a weekend long event that brings together community members, students, and researchers from throughout the university to conceptualize, build, test, and market a new business over a very intense 50-hour period that takes place over a weekend. This event typically happens in Anchorage, and this is the first time that we've actually brought the event out into an outlying community,” Sheridan said.
Participants who attended the event included students from the University of Alaska system, residents of Anchorage and from Seward.
“So the event starts on Friday evenings with folks kind of learning a little bit about entrepreneurship from Alaska leaders in the small business world, founders from really prominent companies, some of whom have participated in TechStars events in the past,” Sheridan said.
The final feature of the event occurred on Sunday with six teams of participants creating a pitch idea for a hypothetical business plan. The teams presented their business suggestions to an audience of about 50 people and ultimately the people’s choice award went to a business called Acquisition Arbor, a proposed company to help Alaskan companies deal with selling and/or exiting the marketplace.
“Sometimes in the past, those businesses actually go on to happen. Some sometimes these are ideas that don't move forward. Some notable examples include Remote Hands, which was a business that was conceptualized and developed at the 2024 Tech Starters Weekend in Anchorage, and so it will be at the discretion of the folks involved with this process as to where they take it from here,” Sheridan said.
Next fall, the plan is to host a Startup Weekend in Fairbanks, and what the organization would love to do is, with more advanced notice, is to work with folks in communities that are targeted by this grant, and try to get them to Fairbanks to participate in the Startup Weekend next year.
Reporting from Homer, this is Emilie Springer.
