Now this is what I call an amazing offer for a startup challenge.

Webit Congress – the event that brings together digital Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia on 6th and 7th November in Istanbul, Turkey – is now open for applications for Startup Challenge.

The 21 shortlisted startups will benefit from the best offer I have seen for a conference:

• free expo booth in the heart of the congress – Startup Village
• pitch in front of 8000 participants from 100+ countries (including major investors and 530 media representatives and bloggers)
• cash prize (to be announced later)
• media coverage from Webit’s media partners

The conditions to participate are:

• the startup to be based and/or active in EMEA region
• maximum 4 years since the startups was established

Apply here until 30th June. And better blast the application because competition for the 21 places will be fierce. Last year Webit attracted applications from 500 teams from 50+ countries.

The first 18 shortlisted startups (by the jury) will be announced on 31st August and 3 more finalists will be chosen based on online voting until 10th September.

Best of luck!

This is a promo guest post by Michael Weber and Pierre-Alain Masson from SeedStars. I was in touch with Michael when they were just working on the concept of SeedStars World (moment when I was interviewing startups from all over the world for my book, Customer Seduction) and now I am happy to see they already went in their worldwide discovery.

Below you can find some details about how SeedStars World works, plus some impressions from their recent visit in   Thailand.

About SeedStars World

Seedstars World is an exclusive worldwide competition to discover the best startups in
emerging and fast growing startup scenes.

The competition takes place from March 2013 until December 2013 in cities from 20 different countries, and the final global competition will be held in 2014 in Switzerland.

The chosen cities are: Moscow, Dubai, Baku, Accra, Kigali, Lagos, Nairobi, Cape Town, Bangalore, Bangkok, Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, Sydney, Mexico City, Santiago, Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro.

The SeedStars team usually shares the experiences during these visits on the official blog.

How does it work?

A list of up to 100 startups is made for each country with the expertise and support of local Advisors and Regional Partners (e.g. accelerators, incubators, startup organisations, VCs, etc.). These startups are then invited to apply to the competition. Based on these applications 20 startups are then selected and invited to participate to a pitching event.

One winner per country (20 startups) and five startups chosen “on top” by the Seedstars
World viewers are invited to participate to the Final in Switzerland in 2014. The winners will receive different prizes such as a 3 days boot camp with intense mentorship from the best entrepreneurs and investors, equity investments, coaching and initial diagnostic from professionals and entry into acceleration programs all around Europe and more than $500k worth of deals.

About SeedStars visit in Thailand

The culture here is really different. People are extremely mild-mannered and respectful and I gather they would be expecting the same behavior from me. The local customs would probably make you wonder about the norms in the local startup industry.

the IT sector in Bangkok is rapidly developing. This can be attributed to the fact that Thailand draws millions of visitors every year: it is a major tourist destination, after all. I can see the attraction, say, for a visiting investor or a skilled worker or startup entrepreneur to stay in the long-term: it would be like combining work and pleasure. Take the case of Joseph Finkenbinder. He chose to settle in Bangkok and found Pombai, which is now transforming Thailand’s transportation system. There is sizable pool of talent, hence, mainly coming from foreigners setting up shop. This prompts investors like Golden Gate Ventures and Ardent Capital to take a close look at Bangkok (particularly as an alternative to Singapore) and what it can offer when they invest in Southeast Asia.

This is not to say that there is a dearth in local technical talents.  There are good universities in the city that can provide fresh waves of IT workers. And  Bangkok has never experienced a lack in creative talent before, particularly in design and in the media industry.

Certainly, Bangkok’s startup sector is still trailing behind those of its neighbors, especially Singapore’s. This is evident, for example, in the low angel investor population. However, recent developments depict a bullish trend such as in mobile and social media application development. I believe that our event on 7th June will be an indication of Bangkok’s bright prospects. I couldn’t wait for what is in store.

This is a promo guest post by Irina Nicoleta Scarlat from Akcees, the organizer of Start Me Up roadshow and entrepreneurship school. It is a great initiative that I am supporting, so if you have the chance to participate, do not hesitate.

We are organizing a national campaign for promoting entrepreneurship: the Start Me Up roadshow. In between June 20 and July 4, Akcees organizes workshops on entrepreneurship in 8 Romanian cities and brings in front of the audience successful entrepreneurs. You can meet the team and find out amazing stories in Bucharest, Timişoara, Cluj, Sibiu, Braşov, Constanţa, Galaţi and Iaşi.  Attendance is free upon registration on the website of the program http://akcees.com/caravana.

Then in between 21st and 27th July we will host the second edition of the Start Me Up entrepreneurship school in Predeal, Romania. 25 aspiring entrepreneurs will learn how to make their dreams come true, by generating ideas and develop viable business concepts under the guidance of established entrepreneurs and investors.

During Start Me Up the participants will learn the steps that they have to follow for starting up their own businesses. They will generate viable business ideas, will develop their proofs of concept and will pitch their projects in front of a jury. In the end, the best ideas will be rewarded.
Each day of the program is dedicated to a specific aspect of developing a business. Participants start with a process of idea generation and screening, they continue with the market strategy and financing alternatives, and they prepare a business plan and a pitch. The last day of the program is a Demo Day where competing teams get the chance to pitch their projects in front of investors and to receive feedback from experts in the field.
This year’s edition will bring together an international trainer, established entrepreneurs and investors, exceptional mentors, and amazing participants. All of the above make Start Me Up the ultimate entrepreneurship experience. During the program, the attendees work with some of the most important Romanian entrepreneurs out of which one has to mention Dragoş Anastasiu (Investor, President Eurolines and TUI Travel Center), Bogdan Iordache (Co-Founder How to Web and TechHub), Irina Anghel (Secretary General South Eastern European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association), or Daniel Dragomir (Co-Founder and CEO TechHub). Daniel Ramamoorthy, Director of Phoenix investment group, startup consultant and serial entrepreneur, is the official trainer of the program.

If you’re a young aspiring entrepreneur looking to turn your passion into a career, register now for the entrepreneurship school of the summer. Early bird registrations are available until June 10th and are rewarded with a 10% discount and an invitation to the Enterprise You pan-European training program.

The tuition fee is 340 EUR and includes the attendance to the event and all training materials, 6 nights all-inclusive accommodation at Hotel Speranţa in Predeal, free mentorship one year after the event, membership to the Akcees community, and discounts to partner events.

Those that feel ready to turn their passion into their career can register online on the website of the program http://akcees.com/startmeup.

As a founder of an early stage startup you need to be able to wear many hats. Yesterday you had to be a UX Designer, today a Product Manager, tomorrow a Product Developer and so on.

This article is for the day when you need to be a Product Manager and offers a visual tool that will help you prioritize the product development.

At splinter.me we are currently in public beta. A few months ago we did our research and then designed the whole product with all its features on a mindmap. So we had a clear vision of the product to be launched (validated qualitatively) and very limited resources to build it. The investment would only let us survive a few months, time in which we need to do product development plus customer development. We need to get to quantitative validation, to get promising metrics and to get a decent amount of users because our platform even fully developed would not work without data. So with a team of three people (out of which only two with technical skills) and a countdown of aprox. 5 months until “prove awesomeness to continue or die” we started…

And then came the times of confusion: how to prioritize the huge amount of things we were planning to build, bugs we needed to fix, more customer feedback etc. After finishing our first sprint, having a few features launched, we were preparing for a team meeting to decide what goes into product development next.

If not prioritized right, we risk not getting the best results along the way and compromising the ability to adjust resources to the most productive elements.

After an intense research on how to prioritize, I came up with a bunch of great advice from experienced people and a few models (the Kano model, the build-measure-learn model from Lean Startup etc.). I tried to combine all the inputs and make it as visual as possible.

Below it is the outcome that we started now experimenting with and that I want to share with you, thinking that there must be many startup founders that could need such a product development prioritization map.

A few explanations:

1. Features and bugs related to basic needs will always have higher priority than those related to all performance needs. This comes from the Kano model. There are some elements that users need extremely, without which the product would not be functional. These can be things like proper signup/ signin, secure payment etc. However, keep in mind that satisfying these needs don’t increase the satisfaction with your product. They are just mandatory, even unstated needs.

2. The performance features needed to be developed (preferably based on customer research and competition research) should be assigned to business goals. The best is to choose a timeframe for the next sprint and define maximum 3 business goals that are important in that period, with their related metrics and KPIs. Features related to the most important business goal will have higher priority than those related to secondary business goal and so on.

3. For each business goal, the related features to be build are prioritized according to the impact/ effort ratio (or if you want, you can use the diagram with two axes). By impact, I mean impact the feature has on increasing the chosen metrics assigned to the business goal. Those features with a very high impact and low effort or cost (time, people) come first. Those with high impact and high effort or cost come second. Low impact with low effort could be worth giving a try as a third priority. Low impact and high effort should be discarded.

4. After building the basis of the prioritized features, before improving them and fixing bugs the team was to actually measure the impact. If you built features based on qualitative feedback and your estimations, now it is time to check your metrics and see quantitative results. If they didn’t score as expected in your prioritization, you need to rearrange them. With the new order after measurement, it is time to improve the features and fix their bugs. It is obvious now which improvements/ bugs for which feature deserves first your attention and so on.

5. If you have more bugs related to one feature, you prioritize them depending on their severity (how much they affect the performance of the feature) and their frequency (how many users are affected by the bug, or which segment of the users is affected). Higher bars mean higher priority.

So during your next team meeting, define the business goals and features priority for the next timeframe. Print the map and put it in your office. Whenever the development team encounters bugs and improvement request they can realize quickly which ones have priority.

Please leave your feedback on this map. And/ or share your process/ tools used to prioritize product development in your startup.

Recently at NEXT Berlin conference, I had the pleasure to discuss with Thomas Kiessling, Chief Product and Innovation Officer at Deutsche Telekom about future technologies, markets and business opportunities led by big data and machine to machine.

We are entering the era of the Internet of Things. Be prepared for connected cars, smart homes etc. And all these Things will be sending data, communicating between themselves. Storing data in the cloud and making good sense out of it become of tremendous importance.

Listen below to the interview with Thomas Kiessling to find out what will be possible tomorrow and how can partnering with Deutsche Telekom help companies that generate or want to make use of big data.

In a nutshell, Deustsche Telekom is building the infrastructure for these emerging big data businesses (think of it, for example, as an “App Store” for the standard Smart Home of the future) and is looking for innovators to partner with. Startups tackling big data and machine to machine are invited to approach Deutsche Telekom in order to discuss potential opportunities and see how they can benefit from the developed infrastructure, facilitated access to market and business acceleration. A real Open Innovation, right?

If you are an entrepreneur, you are told to think big and go international. You are used to the “borderless” internet opportunities. You work in the open startup ecosystem where your ambition can brake many barriers. You aim for investment and acceleration programs from different corners of the world.

And suddenly you hit the wall of national laws, immigrant difficulties and oh…the need of a visa (in case you want to settle in a different country than yours).

(image credit: Mashable)

Startup Visa in the US – Work in progress political moves

Silicon Valley entry-ticket

The most craved startup hub in the world nowadays, Silicon Valley, cannot help much immigrant founders, although they represent a big share of the startup founders there. Sure you can get some temporary business visas, but it is costly, complicated and risky.

So you might have studied there, you might have been to a local accelerator (for which you probably have to figure out the temporary visa on your own – for example, Y Combinator doesn’t help its applicants with the visa), you might have local investment, but you are still in trouble to get your visa to run the company there.

“I started my day in a board meeting with one of our companies that was started in Europe. It turns out one of the founders of that company, one that is growing and hiring in the US, cannot get back into the states right now because of a Visa issue.” Fred Wilson, Managing Partner at Union Square Ventures.

“Two of the ten TechStars Boulder teams were comprised of non-US founders – two from Canada and two from the UK.  Both lived in Boulder for the summer and want to relocate here and build their businesses in the US (and – specifically – in Boulder).  Over the summer we struggled to figure out ways to get them Visas – all of the proposed approaches were expensive, risky, and tiresome.  Both companies are still trying, but each are now seriously considering returning to their home countries to build their businesses.” Brad Feld, Co-Founder of TechStars

Immigrant founders started to quit on the US 

For the first time in decades, the number of immigrant-founded startups is dropping, as foreign-born entrepreneurs struggle with the visas and decide to launch companies in other countries that offer perks to start businesses there, according to a report last year by the Kauffman Foundation.

A visa-free alternative is being build

An alternative is being build by BlueSeed – a huge co-working space on a ship 30 min away from Silicon Valley and outside the jurisdiction of the US (which translates into: you don’t need any visa). But that is supposed to be ready in at least one year from now.

Barack Obama suggests to Congress to open Startup Visa 

A Startup Visa Movement started years ago, backed by well-known American investors, offering their help with selecting the entrepreneurs who would deserve it.

Some good news might come though: a few days ago (on 29th Jan) US President, Barack Obama, “called on Congress to create a special visa category that allows foreign-born entrepreneurs who launch successful startups to remain in the country.” as mentioned in HuffingtonPost. Of course, this will come with conditions: to raise a minimum amount of investment and to employ a a minimum number of people in the US. But of course it is still a debate, and the results (if positive) will take a while to arrive.

Cannot believe how protective politicians are still, when we think we live in a free market. “Opponents argue that temporary visas allow immigrants to take jobs away from capable Americans, depress wages and discourage American-born students from entering high-tech careers. But advocates argue that creating additional visas for immigrant entrepreneurs instead create more jobs by allowing foreign-born founders to grow their companies in the United States.” says Huffington Post.

Startup Visa in Canada – Program to start on 1st April 2013

Approved and to start soon

This move of Obama might be related to the Canadian news a few days in advance (24th Jan): Canada will have starting with 1st April 2013 a Startup Visa Program, aiming to make the country a destination of choice for the world’s best entrepreneurs and thus becoming competitive in a global economy, according to Reuters.

Conditions

“Under this program, would-be immigrants would require the support of a Canadian venture capital fund or angel investor group (for now, they are Canada’s Venture Capital & Private Equity Association and the National Angel Capital Organization), which would invest in new companies started by the immigrants. Once candidates for the program are identified by these groups, the government would try to clear them for entry into Canada within weeks.” says Reuters. Their only requirement after passing the investors’ selection is that the founder hires one person for one year.

Alternative for Silicon Valley wanna-be founders

This could be an interesting option for immigrant founders, especially knowing that the active startup hub, Vancouver, is just about 2 hours away by plane from San Francisco (for prices starting with 150 dollars).

The Romanian startup scene seems to be booming lately. Local players get more and more active on the global scene, while international eyes increase their attention to the area. Now Romanians have the opportunity to nominate local startups for Romanian Startups Awards, hosted in Bucharest by TheNextWeb in association with Geekcelerator.

“The more this kind of Pan-European events happen in Romania, the more local players not only know but also feel they are part of a global industry, which will lead to more Romanian founders building products for clients from all over the world, not only for Romanian ones. It’s not an overnight process, true, but the more steps we take, the closer we are to the destination. And I’m happy that we have quite a few entrepreneurs doing it already.” Catalina Rusu, Geekcelerator

The process is the following:

1) Nomination: The public can make nominations here for 7 categories ( Startup of the Year, Best (Co-)Founder, Best Web app, Best Mobile App, Best Design, Best User Experience, and Best Investor)

2) Selection by Jury: Ziad M. Kane, CEO of TheNextWeb.com, TNW co-founder Patrick de Laive and editors Robin Wauters and Martin Bryant, selects max. 5 companies or people per category that will move on to the voting round. “The jury members (who see and review startups all day) rate the companies that are nominated, they look at the idea, look and feel, and quality.” Patrick de Laive, The Next Web

3) Voting by Public: For one week, anybody can vote for their favorites via a dedicated social voting platform. “In the end, the best 5 of those shortlists are chosen. Next, it’s up to the finalists, as it is still a public voting system. So it helps if the companies do their marketing well. So basically it could be that a company is good, but doesn’t win.” Patrick de Laive, The Next Web

4) Awards Ceremony: The winners of the 7 categories are announced at the Startup Awards Ceremony on February 5th in Bucharest. Here the startup community will gather for drinks, chats and to celebrate the winners and nominees. Each winner receives a ticket to the TNW Europe Conference in Amsterdam in April 2013.

Romanian Startup Awards is one of the 12 Startup Awards TNW is organizing throughout Europe.

“Romania is on the list of 12 because we see a vast growing tech-scene there. We think Romania is (becoming) a big tech-hub in Europe and that the Startups there deserve a global podium. We’d like to discover all these great startups so we can follow them with thenextweb.com.” Patrick de Laive, The Next Web

“It was exclusively TNW’s initiative to bring the Awards Ceremony to Romania as well. We just jumped in with Geekcelerator to support it, since we believe the local scene will really benefit from a more intense international exposure.”  Catalina Rusu, Geekcelerator

Geekcelerator, an international business accelerator co-founded by a Romanian team with an impressive track record, is indeed quite active in the local and international startup community since its launch last summer.

“We are about to officially start our investment activity, true, but our primary interest is not to select for investment teams from those participating in the contest. If it happens, it happens. Our involvement in TNW Romania Startup Awards is more about supporting the local community.” Catalina Rusu, Geekcelerator.

This article is based on the story shared with me by Marius Chis, Co-founder and CFO for Hack a Server – Crowd Source Audit Platform for Manual Web Security Testing. 

In July 2012, HackaServer had a product ready to meet its market. The link between had to be made through payments, which led the team to an interesting process of legal establishment of the company. As in many other startups, the founders take a good care of the product and other business elements, but the administrative aspects should not be underestimated. Below you can find useful information on several places well-known in the world for great conditions to legally establish a company. Beware of the hidden side that HackaServer reveals for you!

“Like in any IT business, the possibility to have online payments is essential. PayPal seemed to be the ideal solution. We made a personal PayPal account, we implemented their API on our platform, but…we actually needed a business account. Which meant having a bank account registered for a business profile. Which meant having a legally established company, even if at this moment we only wanted to test the market and we had scarce resources.”

So where to establish the company in order to benefit from best conditions while also not compromising your image? In the United States, in the UK, in Ireland? These places are full of tech startups, so it seems that they must be good options.

“The United States sounds excellent, especially if you are pursuing local investments. But after digging in their legislation, we found out that in the US we have the Non-Resident Alien status (foreigners that in the past 3 years did not live a minimum of 183 days in the US). This status implied that we could not register our company there.”

They checked other places as well, places that seemed really promising in terms of costs. However, after proper checking, they noticed there are lots of hidden mandatory costs (like those with local address, local bank account, and local accountancy). “In the end, it was like 10 times more expensive than the initial information we had about Ireland. There are lots of hidden costs there. And if Ireland is like that, we thought the UK has to be even more expensive and we quit checking it.”

“We searched all over the internet for cheap and simple conditions, for small budgets. We just wanted to start something with minimum costs, to see how it goes. Lots of places like Belize and Seychelles promote that you only need 800 dollars for registrations and 700 dollars annual costs, without other obligations. But this kind of places for a company registration may harm your credibility in front of clients.”

After searching on their own for a few weeks, the team decided to call for professional help. This took another few weeks to find someone and they had to give away some equity in return for the help.

“He recommended us British Virgin Islands – a trustful place with simple conditions. The costs were under 2000 dollars for registration and 1000 dollars annual administrative fees. We prepared the papers (which took us two weeks). In the meantime we found out that PayPal has hidden costs and we decided to change it with Braintree. All good, except that Braintree does not accept companies registered outside EU, the US and Canada. So we could not register anymore in British Virgin Islands.”

As time was passing, the pressure became even bigger.

“Another stop was Cyprus. We found out then that besides the 2750 euro costs for registration, we need to pay 11000 euro per year for administrative fees for an estimation of 100-200 annual transactions and 100K-200K euro turnover. This means that about 10% of our revenues would go only on that, so it was way too expensive. ”

After four months spent in this process of finding the best place to legally register the company, HackaServer decided to finally establish in their home country, Romania. “In Romania you can register your company with less than 200 euro and for 500 euro per year you have a decent accountant. The tax for profit is 16%. But the downside is the bureaucracy and administrative problems.”

What is your experience with company registration? Would be great to share here your knowledge on the topic and tips and tricks with other founders that might need it.

Most founders’ dream when pitching at events is to convince the investors in the room to fund them. But most events are designed for getting feedback rather than investment. An exception is European Venture Summit – an event packed with 120 international investors (business angels, VCs and Corporate VCs) ready to invest in the 128 pre-selected startups from all over Europe.

European Venture Summit took place in Berlin last week, as the final yearly competition organized by Europe Unlimited. ”Ich bin ein unternehmer” was said with enthusiasm in the opening speech by William Stevens, the Founder and CEO of Europe Unlimited, who wants to help the European startups develop and “break down walls” between industries and between business creators and investors.

The Berlin Senat was present as well at the event, being proud to welcome international venture capital investors to its vibrant local startup community. Investments can help startups better compete, but money is just one side of the solution.

The other side is to actually have high-quality startups. And here the event did not fail again – it brought startups from from ICT, CleanTech and Life Sciences that were pre-selected in the previous regional events, ensuring that investors will meet mostly high-quality startups .

The two-days event was a big startup competition with several parallel sessions of pitching in front of investors that focused on the pure content of the business, and less on the show.

A few panels spiced up the atmosphere, showcasing the challenges investors have – like having plenty of money, but lacking quality businesses to invest in. The trend seems to be that VCs go more and more for early stage. The reason is that they get to know the founders better early on, and if everything goes right, they will support them at later stages as well. Hence, less risk. And speaking about risk, the investor camp seems to be divided in two: those who take more risk and those who avoid risk. The advice is to do your research when approaching investors – did they invest in your-level-of-risk companies?

During breaks, the rooms with half top founders, half investors (now that is a great game-changing ratio) were vibrating of deals and advice.

The 10 winners of the European Venture Contest were offered access to Europe Unlimited’s close network of investors for the upcoming year.

Now this is a place were you might want to take your startup next year. Follow Europe Unlimited for information on their regional events where you can apply.

This weekend in Poznan, I had the pleasure to meet and see at work the youngest entrepreneurs I have ever met: 11 and 12 years old.

Have to admit, if you don’t see them and you just hear them, you would not be able to tell the difference between them and any other startup founder.

Here is my video interview with them at Startup Weekend Poznan 2012:

Krystian Gontarek and Dominik Korajczyk were not at their first Startup Weekend experience. They participated in January 2012 at Startup Weekend Krakow with another project. In the meantime, they developed their coding skills and business understanding.

Krystian’s father (Kris Gontarek – co-founder at Dziennik Internautów) plays an important role: he was the one to inspire and help him develop. However, it is nothing but his own choice and passion. The challenge for his father now is just to make him focus and deliver projects completely, not just always start something new.

A picture of the two kids and one SW team colleague (Michał Adamski - Lead Developer at Telekom Innovation Laboratories) at work, developing KidGifter:

The outcome? Watch here their final pitch after 54 hours of work at Startup Weekend Poznan.

This is the future. It is easy to build a startup today, it is easy to learn how to code, it is easy to follow some startup methodologies (like lean canvas). And kids learn faster than grown ups usually. Soon your competitor might be someone in elementary school.

I would also add they are a living proof of self-education, rather than not-up-to-date formal education brainwashing.

…you should have discovered at How to Web conference last week. In case you missed it, here are all the recordings provided by the organizers and their partners.

IGNITION FOR EARLY STAGE STARTUPS 

The main thing I liked was the fact that it was very practical for the participating startups, in terms of mentoring and access to investors and business accelerators.

Besides the regular pitch competition and the advice received by jury, the 32 finalist startups also benefited from hours and hours of “speed mentoring” (think a startup talking to each investor, tech media, experienced entrepreneurs willing to help them, all in an organized way).

Besides this, there were 12 reverse pitches from business accelerators all over the world, presenting what they do and answering questions from public.

The winners of Startup Spotlight are announced officially here. Mike Butcher also wrote an article, managing to cover all the 32 finalist startups.

GROWTH ADVICE FOR AND FROM SUCCESSFUL STARTUPS 

The presentations in the Growth room were also quite insightful, eye-opening and out of the box thinking with broader perspectives. Well known entrepreneurs shared their success stories, “pains of growth” and advice for the next generation of entrepreneurs. Don’t miss the recordings!

DEVELOPING ROMANIA AND CEE STARTUP ECOSYSTEM 

Bogdan Iordache (organizer of How to Web) and his team managed to take this third international edition to a higher level, pinning Romania and CEE on the startup map in the international eyes.

About 1000 participants, great speakers, interesting emerging startups mingled around for two days. I am sure new success stories will be identified soon by the team, just like they did for last year edition.

Besides, they also officially announced the opening of TechHub Bucharest, in partnership with TechHub London (founded by Mike Butcher and Elizabeth Varley).

SOME PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE STATE OF THE ECOSYSTEM 

There is still room for business accelerators. Also for more balanced conditions.

As business accelerators compete for existing talent and more and more emerge all over the world, it is time they also pitch back to startups (called reverse pitches).

Too many of them? No way, we still lack more to support emerging entrepreneurs. They are very helpful for the newbies (“startups with identity problems” as Emi Gal mentioned at the conference) that still have to refine product and get to product market fit/ getting traction. All to make them ready for approaching VCs afterwards.

I do have only one personal objection: the lack of balance between what they ask for and what they give.

Sometimes it feels like they forget they exist for newbies when they choose batches (and thye end up choosing more developed startups) OR the equity/ cash ratio is a bit outrageous (Yes, they do count in the other offers for the value, like access to mentors, but if they recruit the best networked and talented people this benefit is less useful).

So I would say accelerators should lower entry conditions for the current offer, or improve offer for higher entry conditions and more developed startups.

In any case, I see business accelerators are trying to differentiate more and more. This plus having more of them can only bring better conditions to the table.

I would like to see more ambitious startups, focused on big things, not little features.

More and more at startup pitches I notice people building small features on top of other platforms, solving very niched desires (difficult to call them needs), and they call themselves businesses. Nothing wrong with building that, but I think a business means more than that.

I guess more emphasize on content than on form in pitch competitions will only do good. Because I see a general trend at the events I go lately: pitches become more of a show, than a business competition.

Until next time, cheers! Tech style!

Excerpts from my interview for Girls in Tech Romania, event where I will speak tomorrow.

Irina: You are a woman in a field of men. What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a “Girl in Tech”?

Adelina: I take it as an unfair advantage. We are not many women in this field, so media and investors really want to support women in tech entrepreneurship. This offers certain entry tickets. But you still have to be damn good to compete with everyone there once you are in.

I don’t think there are real differences if you are a man or woman in doing this. It is just that women don’t have YET role models of powerful women founders.

Au contraire, we actually grow up with all those stories where women are saved by a hero or price charming. So we dream to be taken by the hand and be “saved”. While men grow up with the dream to become those heroes.

Maybe we should raise our children with different stories. Meanwhile, let’s offer the world examples that women are in this tech entrepreneurship world too. Girls in Tech is a great initiative.

Irina: What recommendations would you give to the women that would like to build a career in tech?

Adelina: Tech has become beautiful and sexy, so we can be better than men in it from now on. Just stay curious, ask google and ask people – it is easy to learn. And wish to be your own hero.

The complete interview here.

What would 2300 pioneers from Europe and beyond do in Hofburg royal palace in Vienna for two days? Pioneers Festival had nothing to do with music (as we are used to in this place), but with the future of tech, as Forbes described the event. And that is pure tech, beyond mobile apps and social networks. Think 3D software pitches, fastest electric car showcased at the entrance and much more.

There are four aspects of this festival that I liked. Here they are (don’t miss the mentioned presentations):

1. There were lots of eye-opening showcases and presentations proving that tech startups shouldn’t be only about mobile apps and social networks. Yes, we can do much more than “a facebook for dogs” and “instagram import on web platform”. A few examples here. Thumbs up to the organizers for bringing diversity to the event.

2. There are advantages of being a startup in Europe – great presentation by Mike Butcher, TechCrunch Europe. “Design, culture, fashion, music. Leverage this stuff. This is part of you. This is where you are from. The world buys this. [...] You go to Palo Alto, it’s full of fucking parking lots. We are in a palace.” said Mike. Here the full recorded presentation.

3. Plenty of emphasize on customer development and lean startup methodology. The festival brought to Europe well-known book authors and entrepreneurs like Ash Maurya, Sean Ellis, Alex Osterwalder (click on their names to see their presentations).

4. The winner of the Startup Challenge was a woman entrepreneur representing Poikos, building body measurement technology. Also, women entrepreneurs seem to be a lot encouraged by Dave McClure from 500startups. Quite cool to see him changing approach when a woman was pitching to him. Unfair advantage?

Until next time, cheers!

Article based on interview with Viktoriya Tigipko – Organizer of IDCEE and Director of TA Venture fund

Tech entrepreneurship in Central and Eastern Europe is booming, leveraging its great tech talent pool. CEE countries that are well known as major software outsourcing destinations, are transitioning to a product development model.

Some numbers to crunch…

In 2011, the incomes of outsourcing industry in Ukraine amounted to more than $ 1 billion. This business employs more than 1000 IT-companies, that employ more than 200K programmers. Ukraine is also a very dynamic online marketplace in the region. The total number of Internet users in the country reached 17.6 million people.

But lately more and more developers from outsourcing companies leave their jobs and start their own companies driven by success stories.

What support do they get?

In order to help the development of tech entrepreneurship in the region, Viktoriya started organizing IDCEE in 2010 in Kiev, Ukraine. Last week took place the third yearly edition, gathering 2100 participants from 45 countries, 76 speakers, 170 startups from 25 countries and 300 investors and business-angels.

“IDCEE is helping the development of tech entrepreneurship in the region by providing a unique platform for local entrepreneurs to meet and exchange ideas, experience and knowledge, as well as to meet and pitch to VCs and angel investors who are looking for investment opportunities in CEE. [...] We should not limit ourselves to outsourcing only. The main goal is to develop internet entrepreneurship, to encourage Ukrainians to develop startups that will compete on global markets.” said Viktoriya

Motivation driven by success stories

After last year’s edition, IDCEE gathered 7 local and regional success stories to inspire more tech talent to build their own startups:

1. Zingaya received $1.15M in Series A funding from investors, including Esther Dyson, Russian private investors and “Untitled Venture Capital Company” on 26.10.2011

2. yaM Labs received $500k from Foresight Ventures in Venture Round funding on 2.3.2011

3. Speaktoit received in Venture Round funding from Intel Capital on 25.5.2012

4. Piano Media received $2.62M (€2M) in Venture Round funding from 3TS

5. Mixgar Kft. incorporated with angel investment by InvestLife and Phoenix Investment on 6.11.2012

6. myThings received $15M in Venture Round funding from Iris Capital, the manager of the Orange-Publicis Venture (OPV) Fund with participation by Accel Partners, Carmel Ventures and T-Venture on 20.3.2012

7. After IDCEE 2011 Kooldiner totally raised about half a million dollars to release and build MyKoolDiner app

From one year to another

“This year we were able to increase significantly the level of the conference by bringing distinguished speakers and increasing the number of the leading global investment funds present.

The project selection criteria for the participation in the competition of startups in the conference got more rigorous  providing better quality startups.

In addition, we have included into the program some new products: workshops held by successful businessmen, representatives of leading IT companies, startup-accelerators and prominent investors.

A main attraction was also the panel on India, as one of the fastest growing IT-market in the world. We had successful venture capitalists, business angels and startups to talk about how India is developing.

In the last two years, we have been watching positive dynamics in the development of the ecosystem, internet entrepreneurship and venture businesses: Ukrainian startup-accelerators and business-incubators start to work more actively (EastLabs, Happy Farm, WannaBiz), our counterpart of Silicon Valley – Innovative technopark BIONIC Hill is born. Very recently, Fonder Institute officially launched its chapter in Ukraine.

And there are some merits of IDCEE, which is now in the top five best conferences in Internet Technologies and Business in Europe. After all, its main task is the development and strengthening of the Ukrainian IT-industry in the world.”  said Viktoriya

6 continents pinned already. 34 interviews with entrepreneurs, investors and specialists…and counting til 100! All the knowledge to be shared in my upcoming book, Customer Seduction!

If you are curious how tech startups from all over the world seduce their customers, this book is for you. Customer Seduction started out of international curiosity and desire to learn how to build profitable businesses. It is still work in progress, and it is already a hell of a journey. Nothing compares to talking to founders and investors from 5 other continents in a single day. And the knowledge gathered is already impressive.

The interviews list is public and always updated here.

And below is a pinned map showing the locations of all the people interviewed to date. If your city is not pinned, would be happy to receive some recommendations on who we should approach for our research.

If this arouses your curiosity, take the opportunity to pre-order the book at a promotional price on our crowdfunding campaign.

And if you will be around Pioneers Festival in Vienna or How to Web in Bucharest in the next couple of weeks, let’s meet up. We have some non-conventional business cards to tease you with.