What a Techstars Startup Weekend actually looks like inside those 54 hours, how we went from weekend idea to completing the EIT Grand Finals, and what changed between initial hypothesis and current reality.

Quick overview:

LEARN MORE ABOUT TECHSTARS→

Techstars Startup Weekend compresses ideation, validation, and pitching into one weekend. People form teams, talk to real customers, build basic prototypes, and pitch to judges. It happens worldwide in universities, coworking spaces, and city hubs, run by local organizers using Techstars playbooks.

The format exists to lower the barrier to starting. Instead of planning for months, you test an idea immediately with accountability and access to mentors you would not meet otherwise. This is not a hackathon. Teams win by validating user problems and telling that story clearly, not by adding features.

Friday starts with 60 to 90 second pitches. Everyone votes on ideas they want to work on. Teams form around problems, matching by role such as product, design, tech, and operations.

Saturday focuses on validation and prototyping. Teams conduct problem interviews, create basic landing pages, run lean surveys, and build early prototypes. Mentors rotate through giving feedback on assumptions and approach.

Sunday means refining and pitching. Teams finalize value propositions, business models, and traction signals. The final pitch runs 3 minutes plus Q&A with judges who care about evidence of demand, clarity of problem and solution fit, and believable next steps.

Deliverables include problem statement, hypothesis, customer insights, prototype screens, go-to-market draft, and one slide on next steps. Tools we used included Figma, Notion, Google Forms, and Webflow for landing pages.

We focused on a specific user pain in the content creator ecosystem. Analyzing the problem where more than half of content creators agree that creating unique posts in a short time is too stressful and difficult to sustain long-term, we developed Omnilyst.co, an all-in-one platform for creating and managing social media content.

Our approach centered on three main tools: personalized AI-generated content, automated scheduling, and post-performance tracking. We built clickable prototype screens and a landing page to measure interest through signups and customer interviews.

The biggest learning came from creator interviews that validated the stress and time pressure while another round killed our initial pricing assumptions. We cut features ruthlessly to hit the pitch deadline. Our team, Milena Petkovska, Ana Apostolovska, Pavel Taskov, and myself, made decisions fast by staying cohesive and full of constructive feedback despite the pressure.

I have a background and experience in UX/UI design and Front-End development, as well as formal education in the field of computer science. A large part of my experience is based on international projects and internships which, in addition to improving soft skills and technical knowledge, encouraged me to complete additional courses in digital marketing and brand design. I try to transfer my knowledge and skills through mentoring projects and teaching classes.

Persistence, integrity, and taking on great responsibility even before being fully ready for it are the values I appreciate most, while the areas that interest me most are business and technology. Knowing my interests and character, I realized that the startup world is the right working environment for me, and I am glad that Startup Weekend Ohrid gave me my first such experience.

The business idea we worked on was Omnilyst.co — an all-in-one platform for creating and managing content for social media. Analyzing the problem faced by content creators, where more than half agree that creating unique posts in a short time is too stressful and difficult to sustain long-term, we developed a solution that initially offers three main tools: personalized AI-generated content, automated scheduling, and post-performance tracking.

Part of the Omnilyst team are Milena Petkovska, Ana Apostolovska, and Pavel Taskov. I am proud that we formed a cohesive and dedicated team, full of constructive feedback and, most importantly, a sense of humor despite all the seriousness that the work requires.

The atmosphere and excellent organization of the event allowed us to fully dedicate ourselves to developing the idea, while the advice and support provided by the mentors were of great help to us.

Additionally, one of the greatest values that Startup Weekend offers is the exposure to a large amount of information, mentorship, experience, and new perspectives in just three days in one place — things that otherwise would take much longer to gain.

Of course, these three days would not make sense if they did not provide support and motivation for participants to continue developing their ideas afterward. By participating in Startup Weekend Ohrid, we definitely gained that, and we are already preparing for the next event where we will present the prototype for our startup Omnilyst, ready for all the upcoming challenges that come with it.

We completed the EIT accelerator program few months ago. The product scope evolved significantly. We serve a different user segment than our weekend hypothesis suggested, though the core problem remained valid.

Traction signals include beta users testing the platform, pilot partnerships with three organizations, and early revenue from our first paying customers. What surprised us most was the sales cycle length. What we thought would take weeks actually requires months of relationship building.

What stayed true was our refusal to drop the original problem. Customer interviews kept confirming the pain existed even when our solution approach changed. The hardest constraint turned out to be integration complexity with existing systems our users rely on.

Next immediate milestones include expanding pilots to five more organizations, and hiring a technical co-founder to accelerate development.

Do a Startup Weekend if you want fast validation practice, accountability from a team, a forcing function to ship something, and mentor access. People who thrive can prioritize ruthlessly, talk to users comfortably, and build scrappy prototypes without needing perfect code or design.

Perfectionists struggle. Pitch-deck-first builders struggle. Anyone allergic to feedback struggles. Non-coder roles matter significantly including customer research, business modeling, storytelling, GTM experiments, and operations.

Prepare one to two days before by drafting a one-liner problem statement, setting up a landing page template with analytics, preparing a ten-question customer interview guide, and agreeing on a decision rule for when to pivot.

Judges care about evidence of demand and clear problem-solution fit, not impressive demos. The teams that win validate their assumptions with real user conversations and can articulate what they learned, not what they built.

Shortly after Startup Weekend, two publications covered our journey and what we learned from those 54 hours building Omnilyst.

Until next time,