The 48-Hour Startup

Garage48 helps entrepreneurs launch a venture by Sunday night

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By Diana ben-Aaron

September 15, 2011 at 10:15 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

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This article is part of the September 19, 2011 issue of businessweek.

Jevgenijs Kazanins walked into a business school in Riga, Latvia, one Friday night in March with a problem: how to determine whether publicity campaigns on Facebook were getting results. Two days later the 29-year-old media planner left as the founder of a startup that could measure the clicks, customer conversions, and revenue coming from fan pages on the social-networking service. Clients of the company, now called Campalyst, include Danish brewer Carlsberg, low-cost airline Blue1, and Finnish ad agency Zeeland Group.

Kazanins created the company at Garage48, a series of weekend boot camps founded by entrepreneurs from neighboring Estonia. About 100 participants pay €25 ($35) each to spend the weekend choosing teams, brainstorming ideas, and building applications. By Sunday night the teams have working demos ready to pitch to venture capitalists.