These guys are trying to make DC Startup Week a thing

A week dedicated to celebrating startups and entrepreneurship in the D.C. area. What’s not to like?
That’s the idea behind Startup Week, a Techstars-created initiative to “build momentum and opportunity around your community’s unique entrepreneurial identity.” Much like Startup Weekend, another Techstars invention, the decentralized ethos of Startup Week depends on entrepreneurs in a given city to run their own programming. And this is precisely what Chida Chidambaram and Steven A. Rodriguez are setting out to do for D.C. (This, by the way, also sounds like what Technical.ly has been doing for years in Philly, Baltimore and Delaware.)
D.C.’s inaugural Startup Week is scheduled for Nov. 14-18 — purposefully designed to coincide with Global Entrepreneurship Week. Chidambaram admits that this year’s programming will be “very low-key” — but with the hope that it can expand in years to come.

The #DC #Startup #Celebration is around corner. Attend diverse events across #DMV #DCTech, or host your own! https://t.co/5K0Nrw9BN7 #DCSW16 pic.twitter.com/rI325Hk0zy

— DCStartupWeek (@DCstartupweek) October 18, 2016

Essentially, Chidambaram and Rodriguez are are working to gather a list of all startup- and entrepreneurship-related events taking place during the Nov. 14-18 week — they’ll post those events to the D.C. Startup Week website and help to cross-promote. In this way, the duo hope to form connections with key community event organizers they may be able to call on next year.
The mission of D.C. Startup Week? It’s simple, Chidambaram told Technical.ly. They’re looking to bring the local startup community together, to “get them energized and engaged,” and to amplify the work being done by local entrepreneurs.
Got an event happening Nov. 14-18? The D.C. Startup Week team would love to help you get the word out — you can submit an event through their site here.
In a way, the whole thing sounds quite similar to DCFemTech’s October Tour de Code — a month during which the women-in-tech collective works to amplify the voices of its (mostly female dev-focused) member organizations by cross-promoting their events. Tour de Code has arguably been quite successful at raising the profile of women in tech within the broader #dctech community — could a D.C. Startup Week do the same for the city’s entrepreneurs?