Kickoff weekend was April 4th and we had a blast!

Friday night, April 4th we had our evening kickoff party at the Science Center in Philadelphia. The evening began around 6:30 and all teams made it in on time.   We had a total of over 100 people including team members and many of our angel investor friends, VC's, and many of the professionals that pledged to support the DreamIt companies.

We had a Philly themed food selection featuring cheesteaks, soft pretzels and the like.  We kicked off the formal part of our presentation at 7:30 with welcomes by Richard Miller from the Science Center and David Bookspan from DreamIt.

We then had a visit from the Mayor of Philadelphia, Mayor Nutter who spoke about 20 minutes and offered his support for the program.

Then our keynote speaker, Josh Kopelman from First Round Capital, spoke to the group.   Josh shared some of his war stories and offered many insights into what is was going to take for the teams to create a fantastic program.

On Saturday, April 5th, we had our kickoff day and we offer our thanks to Wolf Block for hosting us.

We began the morning with a continental breakfast during which our teams were able to meet with their mentors/gurus, many for the first time.  After a short break the professionals (accountants and lawyers) who agreed to donate services to help the teams get off the group joined the teams and their mentors.

The groups got involved in lengthly conversations and finally at 10am we had to cut them off to continue with our program.  We then were honored to have Lucinda Holt  join us and speak for an hour about her success as an entrepreneur in the Philadelphia area.    Lucinda shared a spirited discussion of the lessons learned while she helped launch various startups over her career.

After a break and through the afternoon the DreamIt teams each introduced themselves and shared with the other teams for the first time what their business idea was.   The teams did an outstanding job and there was incredible energy in the room.    Finally around 4pm the day ended and everyone enjoyed a bit of downtime before regrouping and meeting for a fun evening at Buffalo Billiards in downtown Philadelphia.