It’s Global Entrepreneurship Week! This is the world’s largest celebration of the innovators and job creators who launch the startups that bring ideas to life. It is amazing to know that across 140 countries, 25,000 different organizations will be holding more than 30,000 events all around the globe.
We are proud to claim .CO as a community partner in many ongoing endeavors at Tech Cocktail, and so in celebration of Global Entrepreneurship Week. we are happy to share with you three great new membership program offers provided by .CO:
- Amazon Web Services: For a limited time only (till November 29th 2014), AWS Activate (Amazon) and .CO have teamed up to bring you this special offer which extends their popular IAAS service – Amazon Web Services. Even if you are not ready to scale as yet, you can redeem this offer and apply for the credit, as long as you use it before November 30th 2015.
- The Lean Brand book: This exclusive signed book giveaway deserves a prime spot on any .CO-er’s shelves! 25 special signed copies of “The Lean Brand” by Jeremiah Gardner and Brant Cooper are available to give away to you lucky .CO-ers for free! Check the link for details.
- Elance/ODesk: UK Members can grow their businesses more quickly by posting a job or searching for a freelancer to get the job done with this offer to save $50 towards their first Odesk freelancer. Elance-oDesk is the global leader in online work with over 9m highly skilled freelancers in 180 countries. If it can be done via a computer, it can be done on Elance and oDesk.
.CO is also sponsoring Global Startup Battle, which is a global celebration of innovation that gives Startup Weekend participants a unique chance at startup success. During the weekend prior to and following Global Entrepreneurship Week, hundreds of Startup Weekend events are hosted around the world; and winning teams from each event move forward to compete with one another in a global video competition. Last year there were 27 countries, 57 cities, 67 events, and 4,300 entrepreneurs involved in Global Startup Battle and this year it’s going to be much bigger.
A special aspect to this competition is the .CO Innovators Track. If a team launches its domain on .CO during the Startup Weekend competition, they have a shot at winning the .CO Innovators Track prize: a trip to demo at LAUNCH Festival! This is the best place to launch a startup, raise money, and learn about starting a company. The winner of the track will get a spot in the Demo Pit to present to attendees, have a shot at being selected by the LAUNCH staff to present on the Main Stage, and a chance to win a 1:1 meeting with LAUNCH Founder Jason Calacanis! .CO is also covering up to $5,000 in travel expenses for the winning team.
The video competition that follows the Global Startup Battle will be judged by the following prominent individuals:
- Dave McClure (Founding Partner of 500 Startups) :a venture capitalist & founding partner at 500 Startups, an Internet startup seed fund and incubator program in Mountain View, CA. He likes to hang out with entrepreneurs and occasionally invest in startups foolish enough to let him.
- Lori Anne Wardi (Vice President of Business Development at Neustar): Vice President of Business Development at Neustar’s Registry Services Group. Previously, Lori Anne was a co-founder of the company behind the global launch and management of the .CO domain extension, which was recently acquired by Neustar.
- Juan Diego Calle (CEO of Pop.co): a serial entrepreneur with successful exits for two of his past companies (TeRespondo and .CO), and plenty of failures in between. He’s looking forward to reviewing all of the amazing ideas being built during Global Startup Battle!