What is Paper Plane Academy

What is Paper Plane Academy? It is a community of women entrepreneur that are committed to help one another business and success.

Wait, Why yet another community? We believe women are as entrepreneurial as man but at times lack confidence. Some existing communities are not very woman friendly. This community is respectful and empowers its members to achieve their goals and get sh*t done. No more excuses.

What does Paper Plane Academy do? Paper plane academy helps its members with the all the necessary bootstrap needed to start a business and keep everyone honest. How do we achieve that? By organizing startup weekends, tutorial/lectures and check points meeting.

Startup Weekend (day) Members pitch ideas to all the participants of the startup weekend (day). Each member select the ideas that they would like to materialize in a company and groups are formed. Groups have 24 hours (48?) to come up with a product/service, business plan, website and logo. At the end of the weekend(day), each team presents and a jury(the members) will elect the winning team.

Tutorial/Lecture Each member is an expert in a subject. We can host meetups (food provided) where the members can talk about her field of expertise (Marketing, Venture Capital, Program manager, Product Manager, Code, etc.)

We will also invite guest speaker for subjects that we lack expertise or for motivational purposes. A dream of mine is to invite the first italian woman astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti amongst the other motivational speakers.

Check-point meetings One of the major incubator in Silicon Valley is Y Combinator. One of the reason they are successful on what they do is that they put goals on team that are part of their programs. If a member decides that they are serious on their business but they need help to keep them honest we can organize check-point meetings. For example, you set a goal to present to the community a business plan by a certain day. The community will keep you honest about your commitment.

How much time does this require from me? As little or as much as you want. The idea is that anyone in the community can host a session. All the meetups, startup weekend, materials and recorded sessions will be found in the website. The idea is that anyone and anywhere can copy the format and help her local community to thrive.