Those who know iSchool Informatics students would not be surprised to find them at the center of the first Startup Weekend to be organized on the UW campus. After all, Informatics students were key organizers for three TEDx events in 2012 – TEDxUofW, TEDxYouth@Seattle and TEDxWomen livestream 2012 – and many have plans to work for start-up technology companies after graduation.

Startup Weekend, a non-profit based in Seattle, helps entrepreneurs of all ages vet their ideas before experts and find others who might bring those ideas to market. The goal of the event is to launch a startup in 54 hours. Participants bring their product ideas, pitch to the audience, form teams around the popular choices and get to work building a business plan and product or service with advice from mentors.

Ross Hattori, a volunteer for TEDxUofW and president of the iSchool’s Undergraduate Informatics Association, teamed up with fellow Informatics students Vj Rajpal, and Kartik Rishi, organizer of TEDxUofW, to deliver a highly successful and sold out event in January that attracted more than 100 students. Alex Diaz, a UW alumnus, was the other event organizer.

Hattori was motivated to put in the hard work in order to help students, especially Informatics students, connect with future employers.

“In the Informatics program,” says Hattori, “we’re taught to work with designers and developers and see things from their perspective and take pieces from their tool kits. At Startup Weekend, students are getting connected to the larger community who are hungry for people like us.”

Rajpal agrees that as an Informatics student, he is better prepared to work in a startup. He is currently working as a web applications intern for Lighter Capital, a startup which provides revenue-based loans to online companies. 

“The curriculum really aligns well with a tech startup,” notes Rajpal. “You get a technical background and a design background. Having both of those skills is super powerful to employers, especially when a company doesn’t have the budget to hire people for a specific job.”

Informatics student Evan Cohen was on the winning team that developed nomON: a randomized food delivery service. Customers enter their location and pick a price, then the app selects a random restaurant and dishes that add up to their selected price. 

Overall, there were 51 ideas pitched, with 15 teams that formed around the most popular ideas. Groups were graded on three categories — customer validation, business model and execution — by five judges and nomON was deemed the winner.

“The beauty of our project is that it is a very simple solution to a very simple problem. We take the decision cost out of picking what, where and when to eat - and add in a fun twist,” said Cohen. “From an Informatics perspective it was an incredibly interesting project; we are using existing data and leveraging it in an entirely different way.”

In addition to continuing to work on nomON, Cohen will begin working with a startup spring term where he will get to “move data around and assign meaning to numbers.” He gives credit to iSchool faculty member William Jones for the connection.

The two students who are not graduating, Rishi and Rajpal, plan to organize another Startup Weekend next year and continue adding experiences to their resumes.

“Having that full-breadth of skills simply makes you more qualified,” adds Rishi.

Read more stories on the event from local media including GeekWire and King5 News in addition to UW’s The Daily and Flip the Media blog.