Lithuanians are getting more and more serious about spreading the word about their startup activities. The next thing they have come up with is declaring today, August 13, International Startup Day. On this day, Startup Lithuania encourages every startup enthusiast around the globe to celebrate the new holiday online.
If you feel like joining the initiative, the organizers recommend you post some info about what your startup team is doing on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, adding a hashtag #startupday, city and the name of your startup. Some examples provided for your inspiration are brainstorming in San Francisco, chillin’ in London and writing code in Vilnius. And, yes, the latter is clearly pointing to the hardworking startup culture in the region.
The August 13 campaign is primarily launched as preparation to create more buzz around the 2014 Lithuanian startup roadshow this autumn. The announcement is intended as a fun way to introduce the global community to #LTstartups that will visit startup hubs on both sides of the Atlantic this autumn.
To be fair, #startupday is not a new hashtag and has already been used before by various event organisers and startup communities across the globe for all kinds of purposes. Also, the world has seen other events called International Startup Days in Oslo, London and across the US. However, so far ‘International Startup Day’ predominantly denoted particular events taking place on different dates and with varying frequency, and not an ambition of a worldwide startup holiday.
International Startup Day has even obtained its own page on Wikipedia, which was, however, quickly removed as ‘unambiguously promotional’. Nevertheless, there is still no other ‘International Startup Day’ page that could take its place either. So, if Lithuanians are serious about developing this tradition further and will gather enough support for their initiative, at some point we may actually end up with one worldwide International Startup Day on August 13th. I guess it is now all up to us to decide.
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Marija Odineca is passionate about Baltic startup scene, visiting interesting Baltic startups and gathering their stories. She also coordinates the Global Entrepreneurship Week in Latvia.
