StartUp Europe Week Invades Krakow

Paul Chen

Entrepreneurship is the engine that drives economies. It is behind the success of Silicon Valley. It is how we are able to enjoy most of the wonderful product and services today. It is great to be a consumer but it is even better to be a producer.

However, many entrepreneurs are clueless when it comes to what type of resources that are available to them in their community. Startup Europe is an initiative of the European Commission that would like to help European entrepreneurs and startups with education about resources and support in their local ecosystem as well as on the European scale.

On the week of February 1st to the 5th, Startup Europe will be holding Startup Europe Week. It is a continent-wide effort to educate entrepreneurs or would be entrepreneurs about the resources available to them in their own community.

Now here is the big news: I have brought the effort to Krakow! The event will be February 5th, 2016 from 18:00 at the Krakow City Hall.  Yes, the city hall! The event is still being planned so please stay tuned to further updates.

Here is the Facebook event link for the event:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1092718644114412/

Krakow, I need your help!

I would like to educate the members and potential members of our ecosystem about:

– Information sessions on local specific actions currently developed by your local authority to support entrepreneurs (i.e. grants, tax breaks, office space, funding etc.).

– Regional authorities will come to speak with you and make sure which current initiatives can benefit you and your startup.

– Information sessions about Startup Europe projects and European Commission funds available for startups.

– Office hours and workshops with regional representatives to guide entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs on topics in which they can help (i.e. how to incorporate a company, how to apply for a cohesion grant etc.).

– Great talks with local entrepreneurs and investors on how they smartly used the resources provided by the local authority to create or improve their businesses.

I am looking for the following people to make this a kickass event:

VCs

Seed Fund Administrators

Startup Lawyers

Incubators

Accelerators

Mentors
CoWorking Space operators

Software houses

Angel Investors

Media personnel

Fellow Startup founders

Representatives from the City (Krakow)

Representatives from the Voidvoship (Malopolska)

and more…

If you are one of these and would like to get involved, please contact me at chen.paul23@gmail.com

In order to keep this event free for all, I would like to have some awesome sponsors. If you would like to help with food and drinks as well as other promotional give-aways, please feel free to contact me!

Thank you for reading another post just for you!  If you liked what you read please share it by using one of the buttons below and check out other posts in this blog.  I don’t want you to miss out on future posts so please follow me on Twitter @Eurodude23.  If you haven’t done it already, please like my Facebook fan page by clicking here!  And if you like the content you have read, and are looking for a content writer for your team please go to www.contentfarm.org for details. See you next time!

Social network for Polish students that is doing better than LinkedIn and FaceBook

Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are not solving student and graduate problems.

Damian Słuja created BaseConnect.org, a social network for students and graduates, where they can connect with prospective employers.

There is no such a service for students and graduates!

Damian Słuja attended a conference in 2011 for international student organizations and it was here that Damian realized that there was not one social networking that is focused around important student affairs, event and resources. Moreover there was not one platform to connect student entrepreneurs and university graduates together with prospective employers.

Damian, with his friend Rafal, prepared the initial conception of the social network and pitched the idea at the Krakow startup event, Hive53 Boat Swarm, in 2012, where he met Ian Scarffe, an entrepreneur and an expert in the methods of Lean Startup, who liked the original idea, and joined together to develop the original concept into a working prototype.

Students find employers, and employers find students!

Since the original concept, the team has grown to more than thirteen employees, including: Ruby on Rails programmers, graphic designers, and specialists in sales and marketing, ambassador’s and student volunteers.  

Together, they are working on building BaseConnect as a student and graduate community portal, through which students and university graduates can connect, search and view resources, join student organizations, as well as apply for internships, jobs and review information about possible employers.

According to Damian Słuja, some small to medium companies do not realize the potential and scope of attracting the interest of young professionals. “BaseConnect has the tools to support and create employer branding pages as well as assisting in maintaining the image of companies in the eyes of student and graduates.”

In the fierce talent acquisition wars, companies must attract, develop and retain a highly diversified global pool of talent in their specific industries. Companies need structure, cultures and practices that stimulate diversity and enable the development of each individual employee. BaseConnect provides an ecosystem of all these elements in one place  - Damian says.

An Investor who can add ‘portfolio’ value

BaseConnect brings together twenty-three of the largest universities in Poland and cooperates with more than twenty career offices in Krakow, two hundred and twenty-five student organizations and clubs, as well as over 900 corporations.

Damian Słuja explains that the currently goal is to monetize the platform both in Krakow and other Polish cities, and look to Polish investors. “We intend to source specific investors who can add true value and who has the experience in scaling such portals within Europe and internationally.”

Capital to scale business abroad

We intend to scale the business within Poland and the cities across Poland, after which time we will continue to monetize the portal and provide value to employees seeking students and graduates. Our ultimate goal is ‘global domination’. We want to deliver real value for our base of users: students and graduates - says Damian Słuja.

Author:   Adam Sawicki  Mamstartup.pl

Thank you for reading another post just for you!  If you liked what you read please share it by using one of the buttons below and check out other posts in this blog.  I don’t want you to miss out on future posts so please follow me on Twitter @Eurodude23.  If you haven’t done it already, please like my Facebook fan page by clicking here!  And if you like the content you have read, and are looking for a content writer for your team please go to www.contentfarm.org for details. See you next time!

Making The Impossible Possible: The BeaconValley Global Hackathon

Several months ago we came up with the idea of hosting a global hackathon—a hackathon so big that one city couldn’t contain it. Everyone thought it was crazy. We even thought it was crazy, but we’ve never let that stop us before. A startup organizing an event in four cities around the world simultaneously doesn’t sound possible. Well, the hackathon is over now and it did even better than we had hoped back when it was just a mad dream! Let’s recap what happened last weekend in Krakow, London, New York, and Guadalajara.

Continuing the mission

BeaconValley started as an idea to beaconize our hometown, Krakow, Poland that then turned into a 24-hour IoT-themed hackathon we hosted in June 2015. This first edition attracted 100 developers and resulted in 16 amazing apps using Bluetooth Low Energy to transform different areas of our everyday lives. Starting with that idea, we expanded it to a bigger, better, grander hackathon.

Making it happen

Organizing a simultaneous 4-city hackathon is a “hack” of a lot of work, so we partnered with Proxama, a mobile commerce, loyalty, and payment solutions provider, who helped us make it happen and shared their TapPoint technology with our hackers.

The event launched on Saturday, November 21st. The task that we set for our participants wasn’t a simple one: create a smart city app that would solve a problem in at least one of the following areas: culture, health, transportation, or commerce. Based on the execution, we picked four local winners at each hackathon location, out of whom we selected the Global Winner.

Beyond that, Proxama chose a winner of their challenge of using the TapPoint platform. Each location also had their own local challenges suggested and sponsored by our local partners. In total, all prizes were worth $8,200!
Creating the world’s biggest beacon hackathon

It wouldn’t be that fun to simply hold four hackathons in several locations; the trick was to create one hackathon and to make our attendees feel that they’re a part of something bigger than the usual hackathon experience. We had a video call between each location so our local hackers could say hello to each others and share their impressions. We also live streamed our opening presentations by Kontakt.io in Krakow and Proxama in London and displayed them at other locations and promoted them in social media to let everyone watch it. Moreover, we hosted a behind-the-scenes live stream from Krakow, London, and Guadalajara. Finally, our support lines were available for 24 hours to all the attendees, no matter where they were.

Mission accomplished!

In total, 250 hackers in 39 teams participated in the BeaconValley Global Hackathon, and they developed 32 ready-to-use apps. If you’re into numbers, here’s an infographic we’ve prepared:
But hackathons aren’t only about numbers. They’re about building great solutions in a great atmosphere. So how did we do?

All the members of the jury were impressed by the teams’ creativity and motivation. We really wish we could reward everyone, but while everyone who participated in our hackathon was a winner in terms of wealth of experience and opportunity to learn new things, we had to select just a few winners of our cash prizes. Here they are:

The Global Winner: Malito Minds from Guadalajara, for “Discover the world” app that gamifies the city experience by encouraging a user to collect points spread around the area

Proxama’s Challenge Winner: Kitowcy from Krakow, for “Let’s play Krakow” app that uses beacons and TapPoint to guide tourists around Krakow

Here is a video of the summary:

If you want to see how these apps work and learn about other local winners, pop over to this playlist and let us know in the comments which team you like the most!


We want to thank everyone who attended, either physically or virtually. Congratulations to winners and kudos to other brave warriors. Keep going and get ready for the next edition! Now that we know that BeaconValley can be not only about building one smart city but connecting many of them, we’re even more excited about it. And we can’t wait to do it again!

This is a repost of a blog post that appeared on Kontakt.io on November 30, 2015

Thank you for reading another post just for you!  If you liked what you read please share it by using one of the buttons below and check out other posts in this blog.  I don’t want you to miss out on future posts so please follow me on Twitter @Eurodude23.  If you haven’t done it already, please like my Facebook fan page by clicking here!  And if you like the content you have read, and are looking for a content writer for your team please go to www.contentfarm.org for details. See you next time!

Innoventure wants to help Polish scientists take their scientific breakthroughs to Market

Paul Chen

Historically, university research has been done by scientist and most of those researched are have been kept strictly for academic and scientific purposes. However, many scientists don't really realize that their research can have many commercial applications. For example the nuclear research done by the Manhattan project lead to the development of MRI machines.

Successful projects founded in universities

Some university projects have found their way into commercial spaces. For example Stanford university students that came up with something called Google. Other successful startups that were him started in universities and became successful spinoffs are Akamai and Genentech.

Office of technology transfer opened

Because of these successes, many universities have opened something called the office of technology transfer. These offices are charged to identify some research projects that have potential commercial interest and then try to find strategies of how to exploit these developments. However, the disadvantage such a program is that getting a scientific research project to be consumer ready can be quite difficult and on top of that, trying to build a business from such a project can also take a lot of time, effort and money. As a result, many potentially great projects fall through the cracks because they're just not ready to be implemented yet.

NCBR and InnoVenture want to help

InnoVenture hopes to change that. Innoventure is an investment fund based in Krakow, Poland whose aim is to support scientist, inventors, and engineers in helping to develop their projects and trying to find a place in the market for the projects. The fund a part of EU’s bridge Alpha program and is a joint venture of NCBR, KPT Seed Fund , SATUS Venture, and the Cracow Centre for Innovative Technologies INNOAGH. Because of the  support from NCBR they are able to take on projects that are higher in risk and at an earlier stage of the project. What they will do is to work with the team to prepare the project to a point where they are ready to start the next round of fundraising or to be acquired. They are open to projects of all types, from materials science and nanotechnology to medical engineering and telemedicine as well as aerospace technologies.

What they are offering is:

• An initial investment that is appropriate for the project
• A network of experienced business professionals for mentoring
• Tutorship in product and customer development
• Protection of the project’s intellectual property
• The team will maintain control of the project
• Connections to other investors who could become sources for later investment rounds
• The amount of equity taken allows the founder to keep control of the project and keep the project attractive for future rounds of investment

How do you apply?

If you are part of an awesome university-based scientific project and would like to find ways to commercialize your project, click here or feel free to contact them at office@innoventure.io. Innovative scientific projects from independent laboratories in Poland may be considered. European projects from outside of Poland are also welcome, however, technology developed or one member of the core team must be Polish.

Thank you for reading another post just for you!  If you liked what you read please share it by using one of the buttons below and check out other posts in this blog.  I don’t want you to miss out on future posts so please follow me on Twitter @Eurodude23.  If you haven’t done it already, please like my Facebook fan page by clicking here!  And if you like the content you have read, and are looking for a content writer for your team please go to www.contentfarm.org for details. See you next time!

Poland's COOLOMAT wants to transform e-commerce of food products

Thanks to effective R&D by the Slovenian-Polish team from Coolomat which was funded from investments of KPT seed fund, there will be a more convenient to do grocery shopping over the Internet. Coolomat stands were rolled out in Warsaw last week.

COOLOMAT is a “food automat” for collecting food products purchased on the Web. The first of such machines will be available soon. Coolomat will act as the technology partner in cooperation with a network of Alma supermarkets. As a result, the market will soon debut a groundbreaking project called Alma24, which could change the face of Polish e-commerce.

How does COOLOMAT work? - Food ordered by the customer can be collected within a few hours. Each terminal box are suitable for storage of products at temperatures as low as minus 20 degrees C. As a result, it will enable the safe execution of orders with frozen and refrigerated products -  says Marcin Warzocha, CEO of Coolomat. - Coolomat will be a breakthrough in e-grocery. As the first in Poland, it is no longer a concept, but an actual solution. The production of equipment has started, and the installation of the first group of Coolomats will begin in the near future -  adds M. Warzocha.

Thank you for reading another post just for you!  If you liked what you read please share it by using one of the buttons below and check out other posts in this blog.  I don’t want you to miss out on future posts so please follow me on Twitter @Eurodude23.  If you haven’t done it already, please like my Facebook fan page by clicking here!  And if you like the content you have read, and are looking for a content writer for your team please go to www.contentfarm.org for details. See you next time!

Why Startups should Embrace Tech Bloggers

Paul Chen

Hello there entrepreneurs. So, congratulations on launching your new startup! How's it going? I'm sure it's going great. Now, are you ready to tell the world about your awesome project?  I'm sure you are, so how do you do that? You probably are very busy developing your MVP and talking to customers, and you might not have enough money to hire a marketing person. Sure, you would like to get your name up in lights and on the pages of Forbes, TechCrunch, Mashables, and others. The problem is you probably don't know anybody who writes for any of those publications. What do you do? Well a good way to get your name out there is to make friends with a tech blogger. And what are the benefits? Let's take a look:

Easier Access

OK, so one of the reasons why tech bloggers are great is that they are relatively easy to have access to. Most likely you probably don't know people like John Biggs, Mike Butcher, Jordan Cooke, Robin Wauters, or Kara Swisher. These writers are usually very busy and they get pitched by hundreds of emails and in person all the time. Most likely if you attend a lot of startup events, you will see tech bloggers pretty easily. They usually have the media credentials and they're relatively easy to approach and happy to talk to you, so why not go up to them and introduce yourself!

Start a web presence

Another reason why you should get to know a blogger is that if you get them to like what you do and you as a person then they will most likely write a blog post about your startup. The good thing about that is you will start to have a web presence and that is really important for the very beginning of your startup. Why? With a web presence, you get to use lot of the social media CRM for analytics and monitoring. For example, Brand24  from Wroclaw run by my good friend Michal Sadowski, will let you know who is talking about your startup on the internet and that can be quite valuable. Another social media CRM is a Brand Embassy from the Czech Republic and they are good for helping you provide customer service to make your customers happy.

Another reason to have a web presence is you will be able to attract the attention from my more popular or more famous tech writers. They will have seen you talked about by someone they trust. This trust cannot be bought, it has to be earned.

Get early leads

Oh, one of the things about getting a blogger to write a blog post about you is that you are able to generate early leads for your start up and those lead is worth its weight in gold. With those leads you can start a relationship with those potential customers. If you don't have a lot of money to spend on lead generating services, this can be a good shortcut. For example, I published a piece about Rombo Games and based on the social media response, I got a lot of interest towards their games. As a result, Rombo Games can really benefit from knowing who were asking me about them.

Advice: Reciprocate the love

One big piece of advice about your interactions with tech bloggers. Don’t go to them thinking, oh this is a good way to get free and easy publicity. If you just go up to them and say, “oh I see you are a blogger so write a blog post about my startup”, they will tell you where to go. Get to know them, treat them like a person. They have needs and feelings. A lot of them are doing this for free or they don't earn a lot of money for it at all. They can write about a billion of other startups, not just yours. So a good thing to do is to reciprocate the love. One of them is to give them free swag. Another one is to allow them access to you, even if you become really successful. They might even help you generate content for your content marketing campaign (paid).  And sometimes one of those tech bloggers might become successful like Kara Swisher and if you show them enough love in the beginning they are more likely to help you get connected to other tech writers or major publications. Showing some appreciation during the beginning phases of your relationship could result in good karma exponentially. Anyway, it's good PR.

Thank you for reading another one of my posts done for you!  If you liked what you read please share it by using one of the buttons below and check out other posts in this blog.  I don’t want you to miss out on future posts so please follow me on Twitter @Eurodude23.  If you haven’t done it already, please like my Facebook fan page by clicking here!  And if you like the content you have read, and are looking for a content writer for your team please go to www.contentfarm.org for details. See you next time!