Atooma is the winner of MTB Early Call 2012!

As you know, we launched in March an Early Call in preparation to the Seed Quest 2012 (yep, we are going to rename - and broaden the scope of - our annual Business Plan Competition, stay tuned). In just 45 days we got tens of applications and provided feedbacks to all of them.

But we were also supposed to reward the best application... Suspense, curiosity... Who is the winner of MTB Early Call 2012?

Here we go. The winner is Atooma! And the prize is a free seat at our MTB Startup School in San Francisco!

Atooma is an app that allows smartphones to perform certain actions when certain conditions are fulfilled. Its team is composed by 4 members: Francesca Romano, a young and enterprising UX designer, who serves as Chief Executive Officer; Gioia Pistola responsible for all the communications and marketing operations; Fabrizio Cialdea, CTO, and Andrea Meriggioli a visionary creative director. Thanks to the summer experience at our MTB Startup School these four guys have now the chance to get introduced in the Silicon Valley ecosystem and learn how to improve their product and better address the market.

Do you want to join them? Applications to our Startup School are now open! Spots are limited, then hurry up.

Moreover, we have decided to assign a prize also to other two startups which applied for the Early Call 2012: Surkld and Answhere.me. To them a free ticket for participating in Frontiers of Interaction, a super cool event organized by Leandro Agrò!

Another one is available. Interested? 

Check out here how to win.

Hurry up!

Win a free ticket for Frontiers of Interaction!

Mind the Bridge gives you a fast track to Frontiers of Interaction, the unique event dedicated to design, technology and everything interactive held in Rome on June 7th and 8th. 

This interactive show attracts inspiring international speakers and Italian talents. It includes 5 workshops, 4 conference tracks and more than 25 speakers and guests... An opportunity for networking and for plunging in the new technology waves!

Thanks to Massimo Sgrelli, one of our long-term supporter, Mind the Bridge has the possibility to offer 3 free tickets to one of you.   

We reserved 2 tickets to two of the best projects that applied to the MtB Early Call 2012. But we will assign one ticket to one member of our Facebook and Twitter community. 

How can you win?

Tonight we will publish on Twitter and Facebook a post you are invited to share and comment. We will extract the person who gets the free ticket for Frontiers of Interaction among all the community members who will share the post!

Don't miss the opportunity!

Come and meet MTB at MIfaccioIMPRESA!

Today Mind the Bridge is in Milan at MIfaccioIMPRESA, the saloon of new entrepreneurs which aims at gathering all opportunities and new themes regarding entrepreneurship and startup. 


During this two-day event of workshop, conferences and one-to-one meeting, held in Milan at Palazzo Isimbardi, MTB will be presenting together with EUROImpresa, its new activities (Tensostruttura - from 4pm to 5pm). It will be an incredible occasion for you to discover the countless opportunities we can offer you either as a student, as a wanna-be entrepreneur or a startupper.


You will have also the chance to meet the founders of Ploonge, two guys who get to know each other at our Startup School in San Francisco less than one year ago and since that moment started to work together. Isn't it amazing? Take advantage of it to ask them for tips and advices!


Our workshop, "Sviluppa un'idea e costruisci una startup", will be held today at Tensostruttura from 4 pm to 5 pm. 


See you there!

Winds of (very positive) changes

We've been a bit silent on this blog in the last couple of months, but that's no indication of what's actually happening at Mind The Bridge. So far 2012 has been a fantastic year for the Italian startups ecosystem, and it will be remembered as a key turning point for the Mind The Bridge foundation.

So, here's a bit of what's going on

The winner keeps winning

Timbuktu, the innovative publisher of an iPad magazine for kids who won the 2011-2012 Mind The Bridge competition, is currently going through the famous 500 Startups accelerator program here in Silicon Valley, picking up a lot of press both in Italy and in the US, and attracting substantial investor interest.

Dave McClure - founding partner at 500 Startups - a couple of months ago made it clear in an interview that "families" will be a central area of focus for his program: startuppers typically don't have kids and don't tend to focus on that target market, hence the big opportunity. It makes sense, and Timbuktu's timing couldn't have been better.

By the way, here are Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo interviewed by Stefano Bernardi at a recent Mind The Bridge Event.

The finalists keep finalizing
Many of the other MtB competition finalists including D-Orbit, NextStyler, StereoMood, and Vivocha have already finalized or are finalizing their first or second found of investment. It was great to have them in the Mind The Bridge office in February (and some of them stayed for ad additional couple of months) and help them get to the next step.

We'll run startup-specific stories on each of them in upcoming blog posts.

The bridge is growing
In the meantime, at Mind The Bridge we are working on several exciting projects:

• All Mind The Bridge Web sites are being completely redesigned and consolidated under one roof to better tell the Mind The Bridge story, more effectively showcase the startups that go through our programs, and more prominently highlight the increasing number of mentors that volunteer their efforts to make them grow and thrive. The redesigned Mind The Bridge Web site will be launched in the summer. More on that soon!
• The mentoring program is expanding: it turns out that mentoring and wine tasting go really well together. The program is growing not just in the number of mentors involved, and also in the type of involvement, and we'll have some big announcements in that area soon too.
• More and more companies pass through our offices in downtown San Francisco: it's become a hangout place for entrepreneurs with an Italian connection, and we love it.

The wind is blowing strong on the 7th story outdoor terrace at One Market (one of the awesome perks of the MtB office building), and we're feeling it inside the office too. It's a time of big momentum for Italian startups in the Valley (big, official celebration for the Glancee sale to Facebook coming soon on June 6, to be confirmed: stay tuned), and at MtB we'll to our best to make sure the momentum keeps growing.