PhDo is the post-Startup Weekend course that keeps teams focused and on-track after the excitement of Startup Weekend. In a world-first exclusive, //Startup News can report that thanks to the generosity of the Startup Weekend sponsors, lucky participants will be getting free PhDo course places.
PhDo is the brainchild of Sam Birmingham, who saw that Startup Weekend teams would have this amazingly productive weekend, and then the productivity would drop off in the weeks that followed. We spoke to him way back in 2013 about the course, here, and the goals of the course are the same now as they were back then. 
Sam said of this iteration:
“Startup Weekend is a spark for dozens of first-time entrepreneurs and the beginning of so many interesting projects every time the event descends on Spacecubed. In many ways it is the craziness of the weekend format that conspires to make magic in 48 hours, but we have come to learn that there is a need for something more following each #SWPerth to help give teams a little more time and structure within which to explore their idea and try to validate it in a more robust manner.
Each time we run the program it has evolved, with an increasing focus on experimentation and providing accountability to PhDo-ers. In running the next round of PhDo from next month, we hope to be able to keep nudging some of those cool ideas a few steps closer to form a real business, helping to make them more ‘accelerator-ready’ and feeding into other programs within the startup ecosystem such as Upstart.”
The course will run from mid-May to the end of June, and will involve hands-on mentoring sessions with each team. This iteration I will be joining Sam to help with the mentoring, and look forward to helping people with their projects.
Places will be reserved for Startup Weekend winners and Honourable Mentions, and we’ll work out the exact numbers and places once we know who those are after the weekend.
