Eu Consultor wins Startup Weekend Brasilia

Last week I ended up posting about Startup Weekend Brasilia (February, 3-5) only on Pulso Social (you can check the post here). It was real pleasure helped mentoring the teams and I really enjoyed the final results. After 41 elevator pitches,  the event launched 14 new startups in the Brazilian market. I have been talking with some of the startups and the things are apparently evolving very well since the event, including several meetings with potential investors.

The winner of this edition is  Eu Consultor (“I Consultant”), a CRM for direct sales. The idea of Eu Consultor came out based on a problem that Daniel Rochetti, CTO of Trip2gether, was experiencing at home: his wife is a sales consultant and used to work as many other consultants in this direct sales market, i.e., writing down the orders in the catalogues, compiling it in a notebook and then ordering the products at the company’s website. After a while he built a spreadsheet for the second step, but it was definitely not enough to support a good customer relationship and sales management. The team involved used to work together in their initial startup, Trip2gether, so the team integration led to a great execution of the project along the weekend. You can check the business model and great video about the product in its landing page. Their initial business, Trip2gether is about to be launched in beta in the next month.

The runner up is Os Músicos (“The Musicians”), a marketplace for musicians and people or companies willing to hire those professionals, got the second place. In this platform you can register or find musicians and events. The first event using this platform took place in the last day of the event, before the teams’ presentations.

Savespot, a platform to take reservations in restaurants, got the third place, was featured in the Startup Weekend’s newsletter and started to operate during the weekend, with some reservations completed using the platform. It is worth to mention that this market is having a really hot week in Brazil (check the next post).

The fashion industry (another field in the spotlights this week in Brazil) was represented by Fashionistas, an online look assistant, and TáNaModa, a search engine for the fashion industry, where you can search the right clothes and accessories based on your profile, not just online but also get the addresses of the real world stores with the selected products, closing the top 5 ranking.

After an intense feedback, the team Challenge.me realized the lack of a consistent business model along the weekend and presented a series of lessons learned that pleased the audience.

The carbon footprint of the event was neutralized by another great startup launched in this edition: KarmaPoints, a solution to boost good actions bringing the online engagement to the real world. Using the KarmaPoints app (and further a web version), anyone can propose a social action involving the community. The sponsors of those actions pay a fee per action and per participants. The sponsors, organizers and participants earn KarmaPoints (check in in the place of the real action is required) and increase their reputation for the good.

Karmapoints proved along the weekend that is possible help people and the environment and also be profitable. The first action was called "Startup a Tree" and besides neutralizing the carbon footprint of the event, was sponsored by seven companies, generating about US$600 in revenue.

I am sure we can expect great things coming from those entrepreneurs in the near future.