“Work like a captain, play like a pirate“.

This has been the only rule of the 3rd edition of Startup Weekend Cagliari (Website), held in the beautiful island of Sardinia on May 29-31.

About 115 people gathered at Tiscali’s headquarters where the Open Campus coworking place is based. And for the third time we, Mind the Bridge, were there to report and scout the best projects or “pirates” to send to Silicon Valley for our personalized entrepreneurship 3-week  Startup School in San Francisco.

10 out of 38 ideas have been selected for the 54 intense hours of coding. The goal: transform a primitive idea into a concrete project (startup) thanks to the contamination of skills of all participants.

We witnessed tremendous ambition and a big-bang creactivity around the tables. Most of the ideas pivoted many times along the 3 days, to finally become something completely different, thanks to the advices of a significant team of coaches.

The result? A spectacular last-pitching day, with very well put-together presentations and a nice surprise: the 3 youngest participants (Hangreen, a tech system for vertical gardens) winning the 1st prize – a 6-months tutorship grant in Open Campus – and  many other awards! Second position for Native, a project aiming at converting and reusing the old cellphones and third position for Jam, online platform for musicians and event organizers.

We finally bet on the horse. And we chose a very motivated, 32-year-old engineer/architect, Alessandra Deidda. She has lived between China and Norway, where she won a local edition of Startup Weekend and then founded her first startup. In Cagliari she supported DopHub, a platform to promote and enhance local Dop-IGP agricultural production to visitors.

We truly believe serial entrepreneurs are the best pirates…and we can’t wait for Alessandra to join us and assault the galeon of innovation!