How the Bishkek Edition Came About<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The path to Bishkek had begun more than a year earlier, in Marrakesh. At the 2014 Global Entrepreneurship Congress, Aziz Soltobaev met Martin Rand<\/strong>, an Estonian entrepreneur and member of the Garage48 team. The conversation in Morocco led to a follow-up exchange and, eventually, to introductions across the wider Garage48 network \u2014 the point at which the idea of running the format in Kyrgyzstan became something concrete to plan around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before committing to host the event in Bishkek, Soltobaev travelled to Kyiv in the spring of 2015 to attend a Garage48 weekend there as a participant. The aim was specific: to watch the methodology run end to end \u2014 how teams formed, how mentors moved, how the room held its energy across 54 hours \u2014 and to take back a working understanding of what it would take to replicate the format faithfully in Kyrgyzstan. The September event at AUCA was the result of that preparation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The format is deliberately compressed. On the first evening, participants pitch thirty to forty ideas in front of the room. Each idea goes on the wall. Everyone votes with their feet \u2014 walking over to whichever idea they want to build. In Bishkek, eighteen teams formed this way on Friday evening, mixing developers, designers, project managers, and marketers who often had not met before. From that point, the clock ran straight through to Sunday evening, when seventeen of those teams presented finished projects to the jury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Garage48 is explicitly not a developer-only event. The Estonian organizers’ framing \u2014 echoed in the KG Labs invitation that went out to local IT companies \u2014 was that a successful weekend team needs project managers, marketers, and product people alongside the engineers. Mentors circulated between teams over the 54 hours, giving technical, product, and business feedback. Reflecting on the weekend afterwards, Aziz Soltobaev told the AUCA news desk: «Our expectations were met by 100%. The most important thing that we have changed is the understanding of what a startup is, the role of related roles in the team, and the value of teamwork.»<\/p>\n\n\n\n The event ran in English, consistent with Garage48’s international format. The hashtag Alongside the Estonian mentors, a delegation from Microsoft attended the hackathon \u2014 not as sponsors of a prize alone, but as scouts. The visit had a specific purpose: Microsoft was assessing whether the Bishkek ecosystem warranted opening a Microsoft Innovation Center<\/strong> in the city. The decision would be informed by what they observed over the weekend \u2014 the quality of the teams, the seriousness of the work, and the depth of the local technical and entrepreneurial community. For participants, this meant the room contained not only mentors and a jury but also the people who would decide whether one of the world’s largest technology companies set up a permanent training presence in Bishkek.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The grand prize went to Segmently<\/strong>, a tool that helps site owners display the right marketing campaign to the right audience. The two-person team received a trip to Estonia plus tickets to the Slush<\/a> conference in Helsinki \u2014 Northern Europe’s largest gathering of technology entrepreneurs \u2014 sponsored by Eclipse Food Group<\/strong>. Five further category awards were given out:<\/p>\n\n\n\nHow Garage48 Works<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
#Garage48kglabs<\/code> documented the weekend on social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Microsoft Delegation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Winners<\/h2>\n\n\n\n