The 4th annual Pitch Competition & Closing Reception is here! Join us to hear 5 DMV Founders pitch to win $1,000 and in kind prizes.

We will be announcing the Pitch Competition finalists this week!

The tech industry moves fast and breaks things. Our careers are very different from our parent’s—our managers are more likely to be our peers and we are often responsible for our own professional growth. Feedback is a valuable source of information when its done right and a burden if it isn’t, for you and your manager. In this workshop, you will learn how to ‘close the feedback loop’: how to set expectations, analyze results, and improve the quality of feedback going forward. You will leave with a set of tools to help you get the most out of feedback, deal with criticism, and support your future career advancement.

Creating a product is just the first step in a long, complex equation. The world must be ready for your product, and people must understand how your product solves their problem. It’s called “Product/Market Fit, and it’s often referred to as the Holy Grail of entrepreneurship.

Data lakes are becoming mainstream as organizations seek to get more value from their data and start to use more advanced analytics, but the technology can be daunting.

This presentation will be a walk-through of some of the challenges and successful approaches for launching a data lake built on open source projects like Apache Spark and cloud services like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform. This will include addressing some of the technical challenges of getting a Spark cluster up and running, organizing storage for a data lake, and some of the "watch outs" from a performance and scaling perspective.

We all know the story. It’s a tale as old as time. VCs want to see outcomes, they want to results: show me revenue, show me growth, show me adoption.

In an attempt for your start up to grow in size and scale, it’s easy to get lost in the numbers. However, in a world where people resent businesses that treat them as a number and experiences are impersonal, transactional at best, it’s important to balance metrics with a compelling experience. People want to interact with businesses that have shared values, a purpose, and provide a personalized experience. In this session, learn things to consider when finding the right balance to grow your business without losing touch – and find out why getting that balance right is absolutely critical.

GraphQL is supplanting REST as the way browsers and mobile apps interface with servers. GraphQL is a rich language for apps and services to agree on the structure of all their data, how it can be queried, and how it can be modified. It has been around since 2012, and powers products like Facebook, Twitter, and Drupal. AWS AppSync is a serverless, managed GraphQL platform that integrates with other resources in the AWS Cloud. This talk starts with a fun quiz show game written with AppSync that everyone can play. We break it down showing snippets of the web and mobile code, the GraphQL, and how AppSync ties it to the cloud database (Dynamo DB).

Corporates are more interested than ever to partner with startups to further their innovation reach. However, the structures of these partnerships take many forms. Corporate innovation executives and experienced entrepreneurs come together to share their best practices, and lessons learned when forming these lasting partnerships.

This event is for beginners. It doesn't matter if you've never written a line of code in your life. Flatiron School's Josh Daniell will introduce the 3 key building blocks of the modern web: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
This is a workshop which requires active participation, and you'll be writing code throughout the 90 minute session.

You'll need to bring a laptop and energy!

Lunch will be provided

The most pressing issue for the vast majority of founders: Fundraising. It's challenging to get access to investors and truly understand what they're thinking. And what other types of capital are even out there? Join us on Friday, 9/13, at Motley Fool HQ for a candid conversation with investors where they will share what actually makes them cut a check and you will discover the best type of funding for you.

Many startups struggle to achieve their AI goal due to the limited resource of Data Scientist and AI experts. In addition, the difficulty it takes to get a working AI model in a timely fashion. This session aims to demonstrate how startup's adoption of AI/ML can be as fast and simple as possible. It will show Prebuilt AI, Customizable AI, Simplified/automated machine learning that beginner to advanced data scientists can use to produce powerful intelligent solutions.

We are inviting you to join us for a frank conversation on "how to identity your niche" with Paul Carrick Brunson. He is the founder of PCB Dating Agency and Co-host of Celebs Go Dating and many more hats in niche markets. This interactive conversation with Paul will provide you the insight you need to identify, launch, and profit in a niche market as an entrepreneur.

Purpose isn’t a trend, it’s the new norm for consumers who need a reason to like and champion your organization. Operating at the nexus of social impact, philanthropy and business, The Community Connections & Commitment Forum gathers purpose driven founders, corporate social responsibility experts and nonprofit leaders for a three-part session designed to catalyze cross-sector partnerships and drive social progress.

DC Startup Week 2019

Join us for some coffee and light breakfast to kick start the Developer Day at Alley, Powered by Verizon.

Tickets are now on sale for our Final Venture Challenge Showcase of 2019, which will take place at the Booz Allen Hamilton Innovation Center on September 12th at 6:30pm. Additionally, if you're a female founder and would like to request a complimentary ticket to the event, you can fill out the application form here. See you there!

Register here!

**Use the promo code dcsw for 50% your ticket price**

Quality community professionals are in high demand, and that means career opportunities. Some folks boosted their income by changing jobs or roles. Others got raises by proving their value. The bottom line was this – the average community professional compensation in a 2015 sample approached $80,000. Community strategists and community directors are regularly earning over $100,000.

What’s next?

If you are looking to meet and pitch to early-stage Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists in Washington DC, this event is a must . Click here to register for the FundingPost event!

**This is a paid event - to get $20 off your ticket use the code dcstartupweek**

If you need additional financial support to attend, please reach out to the DCSW team directly to see how we can support you.

Join us for an exciting panel to learn from French startups on how they expanded into the USA market- including here in DC. They will share how they entered into the market, what they learned and challenges they faced in a new country, new culture and different ecosystem. If you are thinking global expansion - this is a panel and happy hour that you cannot miss.

Join us for a happy hour to meet, network and learn from founders, angels and investors who have scaled and invested in startups. The happy hour is at Verdence rooftop and sponsored by Alexandria Economic Development Partnership.

Clear your schedule for Thursday, 12 Sep. 2019 from 05:00 - 06:00 PM and have a drink with us. Join the startup community in a coming together, and there’s no better place to enjoy your weeknight than with some of the top community leaders, innovators and change makers in DC. Our complimentary light refreshments include appetizers, beer and wine. We are hosting stakeholders across government, public, and private sectors. So grab your business cards and kick-off the Fall the right way…with drinks + networking! Come learn about the upcoming Techstars Startup Programs. Also, fun summer giveaways. And meet the community leaders that can help connect you to resources.

A business tool overlooked by many startups, corporate gifting is both a creative and strategic art. Communicating your company ethos while bringing true joy to a client or employee is a real challenge, but when done right, it’s a magical value-add to differentiate yourself from the competition and create exponential growth. At this talk, you’ll get the low-down on corporate gifting strategy, when to nurture relationships and how to find unforgettable gifts - all while sticking to a startup budget!

This session will educate you on the importance of authenticity when building a brand that stands out in the crowded market, how to identify and articulate your brand's unique value proposition and attract your dream clients and partners.

You will also receive practical tips on how to create your brand story and build the know, like and trust factor with their audience.

Clarity, Compassion and Connection This is an Experiential Workshop, we explore the Ancient Breathing techniques of Prana-Meditation used by the Sage and Yogis, that allow us to achieve peak states of self-awareness, emotional intelligence and peak-performance..

For most founders, fundraising is quite a challenge. From setting goals to creating financial projections, securing capital for growth is a task that takes direction, time, and practice. The first thing an investor will ask for is your deck. Your deck is an investor’s first impression of you so it is extremely important that you have a solid pitch deck prepared before you begin to reach out for fundraising. This session will show you exactly what investors look for in a fundraising deck- from metrics to narratives- so you can create a perfect fundraising deck that will win the heart of angel investors.

This presentation will include simple tips to boost your energy and increase productivity. We will talk about the importance of proper sleeping and eating, reducing stress, avoiding weight gain, improving digestion and much more. All of these tips will ultimately improve not only your health and mood, but also professional results and let you have more fun.

Design thinking is a framework for finding creative solutions to challenging problems. In this panel we will explore how entrepreneurs and UX designers can use design thinking principles for a hands on approach to tackling big, complicated problems in product development.

Join Shuraie Mackin, Deputy District Director of the Washington Metropolitan Area District Office of the U.S. Small Business Administration, and KSG Strategic Consulting in celebration of DC Startup Week (September 8 – 13, 2019). Ms. Mackin will present the keynote address at an introductory training workshop for startups preparing to explore contracting opportunities with the Federal government. The workshop presenter is Kesi Stribling, CEO & Chief Strategist of KSG Strategic Consulting.

Join a panel of corporate, securities, and IP attorneys who will discuss the most common legal mistakes that startups make and how to avoid them. We will discuss entity selection, equity allocation, raising capital, intellectual property strategies, and exits. Sprinkled in will be some anecdotal war stories based on the attorneys’ experiences working with startup companies. Grab some tacos and ask us your questions during our 1-on-1 speed consultations. Please note that we cannot offer legal advice during our speed consultations, but we may provide general legal information.