In
many incubator and accelerator programs and some VC's, once a startup gets up to a
certain level where they have raised millions of dollars in funding
and/ or have acquired a large amount of customers and are earning
revenue, the incubator and accelerator starts to phase out their
involvement. Once in a while, it is encouraging to see a VC continue to develop their startups professionally even after that
point. Piotr Wilam, the founder of Innovation Nest said that this
meetup was organized to give startups a chance to connect with each
other. They don't usually have a chance to talk and exchange ideas.
He
would like to keep it as an invite only meetup inorder to connect the
right type of people and to make the time spent more effective.
Ideally, Mr. Wilam would like to hold a meet up every other month.
And in the next meetups, he would like to invite startups and mentors
for other parts of Poland as well as Europe.
On
Friday October 3, 2014 Innovation Nest decided to take a startup
meetup to the next level. They organized a whole day event where
there were mentoring sessions, keynote speeches and a series of
mini-conferences. Innovation Nest invited just about all their
portfolio startups to this meetup.
The
main topic of the Meetup was „How to get your first 1000 paying
customers”. Unless you are a social startup, your main goal is to
make money. It is obvious that getting paying customers is a lot
more difficult than getting customers when you have a freemium
product. Answering this question is essential to the survival of
every startup.
The
day started with a intense session of speed mentoring. The mentoring
staff included senior members of Goldenline (Polish version of
Linkedin), Grzegorz Blazewicz (CEO of SalesMango), Giancarlo Maniaci
(co-founder of Tapit), Zack Onisko (Chief Growth Officer at Creative
Market), Ela Madej (founder of Applicake), Monika Chodakowska (Head
of Sales at Codility), and Dimitar Stanimiroff (EMEA Managing
Director of Stack Overflow). All of the partners of Innovation Nest
were also on deck as mentors. Each startup were given chances to
talk with multiple mentors about sales and growth.
Zack
Onisko then gave a keynote on growth hacking. He gave the startups
insights on how to engage customers and build a following. He
advised that SEO's are important and providing engaging content can
help you connect with your customers. Monika Chodakowska talked
about how Codility became the first platform where employers can test
how good a candidate can code with a test. She said to nail your
product, meaning know what you are selling inside and out. She also
advocates for a constant stream of communication with your customers.
Last Dimitar Stanimiroff talked about Proving product value,
understanding your pitch, and scaling the organization. He also
suggested that you should run your sales process by using Scrum.
One
of the most interesting parts of the day was the Open SpaceTechnology sessions. It was as the organizer called it, a longer
coffee break. The cool thing is that there were topics like Content
Marketing, Freemiums, using Social Media, and how to keep your
costomer coming back for more. The positive points of this approach
is that you can join the discussion that interest you and that you
can switch discussions when you want. Sometimes, the best way for a
startup to solve a problem is to consult other startups. This was a
wonderful opportunity to do so and to share some ideas and to
understand that there are other startups that are going through the
same growing pains as you.
When
asked about their feeling about the day's event, they were generally
quite positive in their feedback. They would be eager to do it again
in the future. Zack and Dimitar were both very surprised by the
talent and the maturity of the startup community here in Krakow.
Zack observes that the startups are trying to solve the same problems
that his colleagues are trying to solve in Silicon Valley.
The
participating startups were:
UXPin
– UX software design
Enteye
– Connecting you to the cloud
Children's
University – Educational ogranization aimed at kids
Sigmapoint
– Backend for mobile
POSbistro
– Point of sales software
Rublon
– 2 factor authentication for web apps
Clime
– Sensors for homes
Notatek
– Notes for university courses
Landingi
– Landing page design
Sher.ly
– Micro-cloud service
TurboTlumaczenia
– Fast translation service
Triangly
– Personal branding platform
Gardenmate
– Creating your dream garden
PressPad
– Online access to periodicals
Trawell
– Management of travel groups for travel agents
Pirx3D
– 3d Printing
Edrone
– Social CRM for e-commerce
If
you are interested in joining future meetups you can contact Chris at
Innovation Nest here.
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