Ringing the Bell

To celebrate the graduation of its 100,000th entrepreneur, the core staff at Startup Weekend rang the New York Stock Exchange morning bell today.

Not too shabby for a scrappy non-profit startup founded just a few years ago by a couple of young college. Founders Marc Nager and Franck Nouyrigat believe smart and passionate people can create great things with the right opportunity and especially the right team. The Startup Weekend group works with local volunteer organizers around the globe to facilitate weekend-long educational events for new entrepreneurs.

Startup Weekend’s strength lies in the community that develops around the events and the Startup Weekend brand. It democratizes entrepreneurship and makes it accessible to people in the farthest reaches of the globe. (And right here in the South.)

An opinion post by Philip Delves Broughton in this week’s WSJ put it well: “What America’s entrepreneurs don’t need is more people flapping their arms and shouting at them from the sidelines. It turns out that what they need more than anything is each other.” And connecting 100,000 of them is something to celebrate.

Ring away.