Friday, November 19, 2010

Prizes and Winners

Training, mentoring and being plugged into a world of opportunities have always been at the core of what we do.
However, financial support if not bad either!
Thanks to our partnerships, for the first time, we are happy to distribute some prizes to a few startups.
The prizes consist of a mix of support for your trip expenses.
The details will be communicated directly to the winners.

So, here are the sponsors and the winners!

FONDAZIONE CARIPLO:
* eRALOS3
* Smania

TOP-IX:
* Risparmio Super
* MopApp

GENOVA HIGH TECH:
* Xapio

Congrats to all. You'd better start packing your things.
March will be California dreaming.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

The WINNERS 2010 are...

... find out in this video clip...


Here is the full list:
-GetConnected MopApp
-Risparmio Super
-Eralos 3
-Smania
-Fubles
-Porco Vino
-Minteos

In addition to these 7 finalists we also issued a "Popularity Prize".
The MTB Community has voted:
with 457 votes (to-date) the winner is
Xapio.


So, congrats to them, but also congrats to all the participants.
Let's keep working together.

Shortly, we will announce the prizes supported by our sponsors. Right here.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Announcing the finalists: Nov 18

MTB People, we are almost there.

Following the presentation during the Venture Camp, the selection committee has deliberated and we did pick the finalists.
Yes, we are done with our selection... but we are not sharing it quite yet!
The full list will be made public just on Thursday (Nov 18). As tradition, we picked one of the main events taking place in Italy during the Global Entrepreneurship Week.
This year, we will show a video during the event: Firenze Crea Impresa (Palazzo Vecchio, Firenze)
If you still don't think that's a good enough reason to spend the day in Florence, fear not!
We will post it on this blog, and, likely, you'll find the news in the mass media...
In addition to the finalists, we'll communicate the several prizes sponsored by our partners (CARIPLO, GHT, TOP-IX)...
one more reason to stay tuned!

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Torino, 16 Novembre 2010: UK-Italy Springboard


UK-Italy Springboard is a business plan competition addressed to Italian startup dealing with ICT, Cleantech, E-Health e Advanced Engineering.

To take part in it, a preliminary selection is needed and will be performed by UK Trade & Investment e Jstone according to the following issues:
  • Team and skills
  • International market strategy
  • Innovation / short time to market
  • Sustainable business strategy (unique selling points)

On November 16th, selected projects will be pitched in front of a judging commission composed by members from UKTI, Jstone, SETSquared, un Business Angel UK, Finmeccanica and other expert professionals.

The winner will have the opportunity to test the UK market for 6 months being introduced into one accelerator of the SETsquared Partnership at the University of Bath, Bristol, Southampton or Surrey.

The prize includes:
  • Mentoring by senior entrepreneurs
  • 3 reviews of the business plan
  • Networking and funding events
  • Services
  • Support
If you are interested, send an English version of your business plan to ukitalyspringboard@gmail.com

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

I-REALIZE: Lean Startup Hack and Google Site-Clinic


The third episode of I-Realize saga focuses on the new entrepreneurial approach called Lean Startup. It will be on November 17th at the ToolBox Headquarter - Via Agostino da Montefeltro, 2 10134 Torino, Italy.

The background is again the Global Entrepreneurship Week, a special occasion to deal with the entrepreneurship theme.
Google, which will be involved as the main collaborator in the event organization, is probably the best interpreter of "beta release" and therefore there could be no better player to show in practice the Lean approach based on the "build", "measure" and “learn” cycle.

The event consists of a panel to go into the details of Lean Startup and a site-clinic powered in collaboration with Google, the right opportunity to put in practice the lesson learned.
In the panel there will be entrepreneurs, investors, bloggers and experts, which will try to define the picture of Lean Startup and adapt it to the Italian case.
Site-clinic rules: a number of startups will be pre-selected and their web sites will be inspected by Google team in their compatibility with search engine guidelines.
In the afternoon entrepreneurs could have one-to-one meeting with Google Adwords Team in order to understand how to improve the ROI using an appropriate Adwords campaign.

The event is free but you have to register yourself: startups can apply for site-clinic and Adwords one-to-one meetings through the registration form and the dedicated website.

You can find more information here: http://www.irealize.eu

Friday, November 5, 2010

Vote for your favorite startup!

The crowd matters.
Venture Camp '10 finalists are now under review by the entire Mind The Bridge Community, not only expert investors and tech gurus as standard, but also all the common people visiting our website.

In the "era of 2.0" people's ratings rule: that's why we introduced and set up a simple mechanism to collect crowd preferences about the 15 startups running the last mile of the Business Plan Competition and taking part in the MtB Venture Camp in Milan.

At the end of the event the startup receiving the higher number of preferences will be assigned the 1st MtB Crowd Prize.
read the short profiles and click the "FB Like" button under the startup profile you prefer to give your vote!