Third week at Mind the Bridge Gym - Highlights

The third week at Mind the Bridge Gym has been a very intense week for all the MTBers!

Events in Palo Alto and Sunnyvale, meetings in Redwood City, Mountain View and Stanford...our startups are getting the chance to know the Silicon Valley and its vibrant network pretty well!

While working hard to get their pitch ready for the Gran Finale at the Italian Innovation Day at Stanford, this week our 10 startups were invited to participate to a few pitching events in the area and they participated to two seminars within Mind the Bridge Gym Edu program.

VISA issues: On Wednesday 16th, Jim Mayok, expert in immigration Visas, talked about the different typologies of Visas. Having a good law consultant facilitates the possibility to get a Visa tailored to the business you have rather than tailoring your business according to the Visa you can get. Getting a Visa requires a startegy that needs to be taken into account in your business plan if you are planning to move in the US.

Accounting system in the US: Elizabeth Shwiff, talked about some differences between the accounting system in Italy and in the US and she stressed the importance of relying on experts especially if you don't know pretty well the system yet.

VC Task Force: On Thursday 17th Minteos, Supercompare.it and Skipso presented their startups at VC Task Force. Marco Brini won the top score with Minteos while Supercompare.it and Skipso arrived in the first 5 positions among 11 startups. Good job guys!

Happy birthday Italy: Although in San Francisco, our startups didn't want to miss Italy's 150th anniversary celebration. What else better than a Italian flag - colored pasta? Milan, Turin, Sicily, Bologna, Florence, Brindisi.. no matter what city are you from, nobody can disagre with pasta!

Pitch @ Plug and Play: On Friday 18th, eRalos3, Glossom, Minteos, Mopapp and Supercompare.it were invited to present their ideas at Plug and Play in Sunnyvale.

Mind the Beer with Technogym: This week ended with a fantastic Mind the Beer event with Nerio Alessandri, founder and president of Technogym. He shared with us the inspiring story of his company, a story of passion, persistance, and hard work - three the key words that guided him in these years: passion, innovation and execution.

A great and inspiring example of a successful company based in Italy but internationally known, exporting its product everywhere.

Each entrepreneur and his/her own startup have particular conditions that may make more or less difficult or opportune to base or scale the startup in Italy, but examples like that gives some good hopes.

The debate is open..