A one-week programme to empower young entrepreneurs

 

Learn by doing, in a creative and informal way, boosting entrepreneurship and creativity. Startup Pirates is a one-week intensive programme aiming to empower wannabe entrepreneurs with the necessary tools to create a startup.

After having visited many cities around Europe, the programme will be in Barcelona from 24 November to 1 December 2012, with a clear objective: foster social entrepreneurship.

Through a combination of intense  training, mentoring and idea development, Startup Pirates helps participants structure and develop their projects, giving them the opportunity to present their ideas to investors and successful business leaders. The aim is to help and foster new ventures that are going to change the “status-quo”,  be game-changers, capable of breaking the rules set in their markets.

In less than one year, the organization has done some fast work setting up enterprises  and helping others do the same, pushing expansion through ten countries and helping 1000 young entrepreneurs get their startups going.

The name, Pirates, is inspired by the words of Steve Job:  “Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?”, as every entrepreneur needs to have a rebel spirit to go in search of opportunities and adapt to the changing environment.

The programme was born in Lisbon in 2011 on the initiative of some university students who, persuaded of the importance of start-ups for the economy, decided to create a programme to address the gap they saw in the current education system. The first Startup Pirates event took place in Porto in  September 2011. 

www.startuppirates.org