The Fourth Annual

Ideathon

Saturday, October 8, 2022
9 AM - 5 PM

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About The Event

The fourth annual Ideathon is an immersive seminar on the intersection between technology and business, geared towards UVA students interested in entrepreneurship. Many students have either the technical or business expertise to start a tech startup, but seldom have both. The Ideathon will bridge the gap between these students to help foster entrepreneurship at UVA.


At the Ideathon, students will have the opportunity to:

Match with students with other skills. Students with technical experience can match with more business minded students. Students with a tech idea can match with students who are looking for a team to work with.

Meet with and form a lasting bond with a mentor. Teams will meet with mentors, either UVA business or engineering faculty, or professionals in the industry, about their ideas. Mentors and students will swap information and continue to build their relationship and idea well past the Ideathon.

Attend workshops by experts on digital innovation and marketing. Both technical and business-minded students can learn from the workshops from UVA faculty and industry professionals, on what it takes to build a tech startup.

Pitch their ideas to a Shark Tank-esque board and to their fellow students for feedback and seed money. Students will be able to pitch their ideas in both an expo experiment, as well as to a panel of professionals for feedback and seed money.


Where

UVA Campus, Rouss-Robertson Hall

Rouss Hall and Robertson Hall, 140 Hospital Dr, Charlottesville, VA 22903

When

Saturday, 8 October, 2022

Event Schedule

Check-In

Show up and get signed into the event! Then, have some free Bodo's Bagels!

Opening Ceremony

A brief introduction to the event and messages from our sponsors.

Team Building

Join an existing idea, or find people to help you out with the ones you have!

How to Pitch

Learn tips and tricks to make the perfect pitch!

Workshop: Creativity, Herding, and Groupthinking

Presented by UVA Professor Chris Yung

Lunch

Get your Roots Bowl!

Workshop: Working at an Early Stage Startup: Perspectives and Advice from You.com Engineers

During this workshop, Saahil and David will talk about their work at an early stage startup. Topics will include working at a big company versus a startup, what it's like to work at a startup, iterating to build a product using examples from You.com , and an introduction to the You.com open platform. At the end, there will be a Q&A session.

Idea Generation Ends

Finish your presentations, prep your pitch!

Pitch Presentations

Show off your hard work and great ideas to our judges!

Decisions Out

See which ideas won!

F.A.Q.

  • We would love for mentors to participate for a minimum of one hour, but welcome them to be active for longer. We would also love to have mentors give talks or conduct workshops, if they are interested. We expect mentors to have 30-60 min meetings with each team they mentor and to maintain however much contact teams would like to have after the ideathon.

  • We will not be assigning mentors. Instead, we will ask mentors to come up with a list of information they would need from teams to judge whether or not they would be a good mentor-mentee fit. Then, teams will fill out a form, and mentors can select the teams they feel they would be able to mentor well

  • Sponsors can acquaint themselves with UVA students who are passionate about a cool idea with the capability to execute on it. They can also develop relationships with UVA clubs, especially VVF and HooHacks. They can also help foster entrepreneurship at UVA. Contact us for more information about sponsoring our event.

  • We would like sponsors to provide us with mentors and/or speakers to give talks/conduct workshops. We would also love it if our attendees could get to form connections with the sponsors for internships, or other learning opportunities.