VIA Technologies, Inc. and Startup Weekend Taiwan today announced that VIA will host Taiwan's First Hardware/Software Startup Weekend at the company's global headquarters in Xindian, New Taipei City from Friday 14 September to Sunday 16 September.

The Taiwan Hardware Startup Weekend is the latest in a series of highly-successful events that have been held over the past year in Taipei, Hsinchu, and Kaohsiung by the non-profit Startup Weekend organization - organized by Yushan Ventures and James Hill -, with the aim of providing Taiwan's entrepreneurs with the opportunity to turn an idea into a startup business within just 54 hours and pitch it to a jury of leading domestic and international business leaders, investors, and VCs from the hardware and software industries.

Taiwan Hardware Startup Weekend will take this model a step further by challenging participants to create ground-breaking devices for the Post PC era that combines an innovative form factor with integrated software, apps, and services from the cloud. Potential target markets for such devices include healthcare, environment, education, entertainment, and home automation.

"Taiwan has the potential to marry its world-beating hi-tech engineering and manufacturing industries with its burgeoning software development capabilities to create exciting new devices," commented Volker Heistermann, Managing Director of Yushan Ventures. "Our aim with the Taiwan Hardware Startup Weekend is to bring together people from the hardware, software, and cloud service communities to spark innovative new product concepts that will help position the island at the forefront of the Post PC era."

"We are delighted to be hosting Taiwan Hardware Startup Weekend," said Richard Brown, Vice-President of International Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc. "It provides the ideal forum for aspiring entrepreneurs from multiple disciplines to come together to create the next big idea."

The event is sponsored by VIA Technologies http://www.via.com.tw, Yushan Ventures http://www.yushanventures.com, StartupDigest http://www.startupdigest.com & The Executive Centre http://www.executivecentre.com.