Prominent players from the local and international startup scene attended yesterday’s event at Smart City, marking the end of the Startup Weekend Next programme, which started in mid-October.

These included Alex Kölpin of WestTech Ventures Partner and Hasan Haider, the CEO of Bahrain’s first Business Angels company, as well as representatives of The Edward de Bono Institute at the University of Malta.

Startup Weekend Next is a pre-accelerator training and coaching programme for early startups. The seven teams from across the island participating in Next received feedback from five mentors through the six sessions of the programme.

Next week, the best performing team of Malta Next will be invited to participate in the highly anticipated Pitch Marathon, one of the largest pitching events in Europe. On one side, 42 top startups from across Europe will be pitching and on the other side, a room full of great investors will be listening.

The goal of the Pitch Marathon is to help European-based startups to get in touch, build relationships and raise money from global investors.

The event includes four one-hour pitching sessions, each with at least 10 startups presenting for four minutes in a quick succession. At the beginning of every break, each investor will receive two million ‘Pitch Marathon Euro’.

The start-up endowed with the most ‘cash’ at the end of the event becomes the Grand Prize winner.