By:
Paul Chen
With
the 2013/2014 school year getting underway, so has the startup
community. After a long summer recess, the students as well as
their professional counterparts are back in town and ready for a long
winter campaign to the next summer. Although winter is coming,
Krakow is getting warmed up with entrepreneurial ideas and the
development of those ideas into startups companies. One of the must
attend events of the young season is the Google for Entrepreneurs
Week – Speed Mentoring event. With similar events in over 100
cities world-wide, and about two years of organizational experience
under its belt, Google for Entrepreneurs in Krakow welcomed its new
batch of startup hopefuls last night in their office.
The
event was organized along with a partnership with Innovation Nest, a
Krakow-based accelerator. What we got were 15 startups and about 30
mentors. With a faculty to student ratio of 2:1, some schools can
only dream about such stats. As with some events at Google, it was
catered with wonderful sandwiches.
To
kick things off, there was a pitching session where like many events
like this, startup founders made their two minute pitch to the
mentors. My top 5 pitches by startups not in any particular order
were:
- Turbotranslations: fast online translation service
- Orbizer: Cloudbased tool for project management and CRM
- Zagrafikuj: Employee scheduling, time tracking, and payroll management system
- Neiberia : Creating a virtual market connecting people with local produce growers
- AlleRad: Auctions for medical services
I
believe that these founders expressed their aim and explained their
products in a concise and easy to understand way. I had a good feel
for their products and services. As I made my rounds later and had a
chat with the mentors they expressed some common concerns. They said
that some of the pitches were a bit too abstract, especially those
dealing with highly technical applications. Some mentors said that
it was difficult to extract from the pitch what the product or
service was. Some founders spent too much time on their CV and
background information, and as a result, didn’t have time to talk
about their product.
After
the pitch session, comes the speed mentoring. So there were stations
set up with mentors assigned to each station, and the founders are
given approximately 20 minutes of mentoring at each station. The
founders would move from station to station for a total number of
three mentoring sessions. What I am really impressed by was the
caliber of the mentors that the event was able to get. They included
local Google staff members as well as one from London, Innovation
Nest investors, incubator consultants, lawyers, external software
professionals, management consultants, seasoned startups, and venture
capital professionals. It was nice to see local startups who had
some success sharing their experience with the young batch.
During
the mentoring session, the startups were given a Paul Graham style
interrogation and were given encouragement. The founders were
coached on various aspects of their business including: technical
issues, marketing, monetization, supply, funding, and logistics. The
takeaway that many startups was that they needed to think about
marketing and “why should an investor give them money?”
After
the mentoring, there was a networking session where I did some
surveying of the mentors. They were happy and amazed with the
variety in the types of enterprises on display. I am also happy that
there are more startups than just ones dealing with IT products.
There was a startup that made an actual pivot during the event. They
decided to stop pursuing their current idea of a ride-sharing service
to focus on a test prep app for college students in collaboration
with one of the senior startup who is also one of the mentors.
Google also showcased their Cloud Platform and a demonstration of
their Chrome cast technology.
Here
are my picks of the night:
Neibria
Turbotranslation
AlleRad
Zagrafikuj
Orbizer
Flowbox
Thanks for the mention of http://TurboTranslations.com ;)!
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