Startup Weekend is an intense 54 hour event which focuses on building a web or mobile application which could form the basis of a credible business over the course of a weekend. The weekend brings together people with different skillsets – primarily software developers, graphics designers and business people – to build applications and develop a commercial case around them.

Here is a video to explain a bit more:

Next weekend will see Startup weekend take place in many cities including San Francisco where it is being held at pariSoma between 3-5th June. Every weekend after that will see more cities across the world play host to this hugely popular event.

The London event will be held over the second weekend of September with the venue TBC. To see the list of all the cities and dates visit the Startup Weekend site.

Founded by Andrew Hyde in July of 2007 in Boulder, Colorado, Startup Weekend saw over 80 events take place within the first two years and it has now spread to over 100 cities in 30 countries.

So how successful are these startups, well over 36% of Startup Weekend startups are still going strong after 3 months & Roughly 80% of participants plan on continuing working with their team or startup after the weekend. One of the biggest successes has been Foodspotting founded by Soraya Darabi (who we covered last year) has over 600,000 users and has received $3.75 million in funding.

Here is a video from a recent event in Baltimore:

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Soraya Darabi is the founder of social networking food site Foodspotting. The site lets you find and upload specific dishes as opposed to restaurants. Foodspotting allows you to take a picture of the dish you’re eating and upload it to the website as well as giving you a chance to find some interesting dishes when visiting someplace new.

Soraya seeks her success through social media as shown by her career to date.

Soraya founded Foodspotting less than a year ago (at the time of writing), in December 2009 and has seen rapid growth on the website. The site is one that can only get better, as the more people join the more enriched range of foods and locations will be available. Foodspotting is great for casual and passionate users and has a twitter style follow option as well as a points system.

Prior to Foodspotting a 23 year old Darabi found herself with a job at The NY Times where she implemented social media integration for The NY times including a presence on Facebook and Twitter. Her social media prowess led her to winning first prize at the INMA Awards for excellence in marketing.

This determined young entrepreneur is pushing the way forward for other young female entrepreneurs, “We need more young women starting companies” she says, and with over half a million followers on twitter there are plenty of people listening.

Soraya was given the accolade of 53rd place in the top 100 most creative people in business 2010 list. She is the social media queen and always seems to know where the social media trends are, why?

“I get information from my peers,” Darabi says simply.

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