PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Sergio Ferreira felt out of place last winter at the so-called NERD Center in Cambridge, Mass. A nerd, he is not: He and his family run a concrete business in East Providence.
But there he was at Microsoft’s New England Research and Development Center, alongside graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Business School, giving his loosely practiced 60-second pitch for a new business.
He stumbled over his words, he says. But before he knew it, Ferreira was deep into the 54-hour frenzy known as Startup Weekend, an event that brings together coders, designers, business managers and others in the name of brainstorming ideas (Friday night), fleshing the best ones out in small teams (all day Saturday) and presenting a demo or prototype (by day’s end Sunday).
“Everything pretty much got built that entire weekend,” Ferreira said of his startup, SubBids.com, which is designed to ease the job bidding process for construction subcontractors.
Ferreira, whose team came in first at that Startup Weekend in Massachusetts, has spent months organizing Providence’s event, which begins Friday. Two area campuses, Bryant University in Smithfield and Providence College, have hosted the weekend before, but Ferreira said this is the first time it is open to the general public.
About 120 startup enthusiasts are expected to attend at Johnson and Wales University. A 2004 Johnson and Wales graduate, Andrew Hyde, put on the first weekend five years ago above a Boulder, Colo., bike shop, and events have since been held all over the world, including Jerusalem and South Korea.
A recent report on overhauling economic development efforts in Rhode Island said the state should do more to support homegrown businesses and nurture startups as it tries to bring down a 10.7 percent unemployment rate that is the country’s second highest.
The idea of Startup Weekend, Ferreira said, is to foster collaboration among the varied types of people it takes to turn the germ of an idea into an actual business. It’s also to push people out of their comfort zones, just as he was at the NERD Center this year.
“Anybody can come out, and anybody can start a business,” said the 35-year-old father of two, whose family came to the U.S. from Portugal when he was 1. “They could be the next Facebook.”
He said he hopes Startup Weekend will serve as a feeder for Betaspring, a Providence-based startup accelerator program that provides 12 weeks of intense mentoring to fledgling tech and design companies.
One local startup is among the 13 companies enrolled in the current Betaspring session. HealthID Profile, based in Cranston, is working on a medical identification bracelet that lets users secure critical health information through cloud computing.
Co-founder Angelo Pitassi Jr. said the growth of startups and other small businesses can help put the state’s economy back on track. He puts it this way: It’s more realistic for 100 small companies to each hire one new employee than it would be for a bigger company to hire 100 outright.
“This is really what the state needs,” he said. “We are certainly finding the right buzz because of organizations like Betaspring and Startup Weekend.”
Ferreira, who is still developing aspects of SubBids.com, said he intends to stay involved with the startup scene, even after Startup Weekend is over. His message to would-be entrepreneurs: “Don’t be afraid to do this.”
