The end of Pier 38 (the way we know it)

It's official. By the end of the month, all Pier 38 tenants (~70 startups to our last count) will have to move out.
It doesn't really matter what's the real story behind it (Chronicle, Techcrunch) , the 400 people signing a petition or the visit of the mayor of San Francisco.

What really matters is the bottom line.
On Sep 30th, Pier 38 will stop being that unique, creative, open, vibrant hub for startups as we've known it.

We can't say enough about how this pirates cove had an impact on our beloved organization.
It's been our first home. But since we moved in, just over a year ago, things have happened faster than we all expected.

The open, anarchic spirit of this place, almost a commune where nobody has any other interest than promoting successful startups, has been deeply inspiring.

Here's where we started organizing events for all possible occasions, the end of a startup summer school, a large group of visiting students, GYM Openhouses and demo days.
You name it.
That's also where my 5-year daughter (with other 90 something people) ended up celebrating her graduation from Preschool.
It's all good.
We are definitely not worried about our new home. In fact, we'll be moving to the One Market building, another San Francisco landmark.
It's a great opportunity to grow. And we'll take it.
But, as good pirates after a successful assault, we want to honor our first battleship, or rather, our beloved galleon.

On 9/20 we'll host our GoodBye party for Pier 38. Drinks, startups and laughter. Pier 38 way.

From Marco Marinucci

10 more startups flying to San Francisco

The time has come!
10+ more reasons to add a direct flight Italy-San Francisco...
Today, 10 Italian startups are in the midst of their trip that will take them to the Silicon Valley.
From March 1st through the end of the month (or more), you'll find them @ Pier 38, guests of the MTB GYM.
7 finalists of the MTB Business Plan Competition (Xapio, Minteos, Smania, Risparmio Super, Eralos3, Mopapp, Porco Vino)

this year will be joined by 3 startups coming from the Intesa SanPaolo Startup Initiative (Agroils, Glossom, Skipso).

You can find the full description of the startups activity here.

The startups will go through a pretty intense 4 weeks of activities, filled with training modules, meetings with 1:1 mentor, group presentations and networking events.

If you are in the area, come and say hi to the founders on Friday, March 4th, we are hosting a welcome party for them (=drinks @ MTB GYM).

Since you are there, pencil down another date: March 31st.

They will present in front of a large audience @ Stanford University during the so called

Italian Innovation Day event (more to come on this one :-) )

The Italian flag is flying higher in Silicon Valley these days... let's keep it up!!

Interview to Francesco Baschieri

Today we want to introduce our special friend,Francesco Baschieri. He is the founder of Spreaker, the first start up that has joined the Mind The Bridge GYM this summer in San Francisco.
Francesco is a serial entrepreneur, passionate about new technologies and business models and always interested in the next innovation that will change the world.
Spreaker, his last adventure, is a true Web Radio 2.0 where every show is created by the audience itself. Spreaker has shifted the paradigm from creating a complete radio stream to producing a single show. Radio stations are then created by assembling single pieces (one after another) into a continuous stream of audio.
“Creating a show is easy and does not require any technical expertise: all the necessary tools that users might need are available online at www.spreaker.com. The DeeJay Console TM allows users to mix live audio input from their microphone with music tracks and sound effects which are available online as part of a large user-friendly library.

The entire service is free of charge for the user: it is Spreaker that manages the whole infrastructure and pay for music royalties.”

At the well-known Pier 38 Francesco has spent 3 months trying to bring his start up to an international dimension: he has participated to numerous events, business meetings and social happenings and was actively participating to the entrepreneurial life of the city. For this reason we thought to realize the following interview in which he presents his company and tell us his experience in the Silicon Valley.

For those that might join our crew in the future, take into consideration all his suggestions.
Ciao Francesco, It was a pleasure to work with you!

Introducing HyperFair: Trade fairs get virtual

Even if many of you have already heard about them, today we would like to officially introduce HyperFair, the new stat up that is taking part to the 2010 Gym Program at Pier 38.

HyperFair, thanks to a proprietary web-based 3D platform, revolutionizes the way of making trade fairs, organizing and managing turnkey virtual exhibitions on the web. HyperFair reproduces the trade fair environment just as we all know it: pavilions, booths, workshops and conferences. Inside the virtual fair real people in real time are moving around, interacting through their avatar and communicating via chat and video call. Exhibitors can choose their stand and customize it adding 3D products, brochures, video and any interactive content. Visitors can exchange information, view the products and download documents from the comfort and convenience of their home or office.

HyperFair (www.hyperfair.com) was founded in December 2009 by Marco Campanari (CEO) and Massimiliano Bonfanti (executive VP). The Company holds a qualified technological partnership with the Politecnico of Milan University, and is being hosted by the University incubator managed by the "Politecnico of Milan” Foundation. The operations in the U.S. are carried out by Andrea Ballarini (COO) who is also leading the strategies of the Company.

HyperFair has completed the development of the technology and in November will show up to the market during the Virtual Transpotec. Next appointment will be in December during the Hip Expo, the first online fair dedicated to halal food products. (www.hyperfair.com/eng/eventi/eventi.html).

We asked Marco how the project started and which are their plans for the future. That’s what he answered: “We officially started up HyperFair in Italy on December 2009, but we have been working on it since the beginning of 2009. Massimiliano and I were looking for a new technology that could significantly impact the business community and we came up with this ground-breaking idea by developing our own innovative technology. We thought to a virtual world focused on business applications where people could interact and do business together as well as socialize and improve their network; everything without moving from the office.

Our product was meant to be at the same time fully 3D-immersive, strongly multimedia oriented, and cool. We first made a technical JV with the Politecnico di Milano-Metid Center and after we entered into Politecnico incubator. The reason why we are at Pier38 with Mind The Bridge is that we want to think global: we'll soon relocate HyperFair headquarters in San Francisco, keeping the technical development in Italy. Our mission? To grow as much as possible, as quickly as possible. To this extent, no other place in the world is better than the Silicon Valley.

Italian Parliament member visiting the GYM

August 26th has been a crowded day here at Pier 38. We had numerous guests intrigued to visit our new location in San Francisco. At 3.00 pm we received a special visit from honorable Alessia Mosca, member of the Italian Parliament along with the Italian Consul in San Francisco, Fabrizio Marcelli.

Alessia Mosca (www.alessiamosca.it), is the current secretary at the Labor commission of the Italian Parliament. She has been the protagonist of numerous petitions for women’ equal opportunities and has a special interest for the dynamics that affect the Italian entrepreneurial ecosystem. Alessia was supposed to be in San Francisco on vacation but she carved some time to meet the MtB factory.

“This place is marvelous”, she said once entered our old-navy-style open space, perfectly fitting the in her jeans and T-shirt. After a short tour of the premises, meeting the start ups and incubators that are based in the Pier, we moved to our favorite meeting room (also used for after-hour video games competitions).

Here we met Marco Campanari, CEO and founder of Hyperfair, and Andrea Ballarini, (COO) responsible for leading the strategies and setting up the company operations in the U.S. Hyperfair is the typical example of an Italian Company managed by talented professionals that intend to take all the chances offered by the market at a global level. Marco gave us a brief introduction about the story of the company and the plans for the future, while Andrea showed us a demo on how they organizes and manages virtual trade fairs on the web. “HyperFair reproduces the trade fair environment just as we all know it: pavilions, booths, workshops and conferences. Inside the virtual fair people are moving around and interact through their avatar (virtual alter-ego), communicating in real time via chat and videocall”.

Coming back to reality we discussed about the major drivers of the innovation process and the problems that a young Company have to face in the actual Italian contest. Alessia was particularly interested in the subject as she is working on future reforms that the Italian Parliament should introduce in Italy to promote the Venture Capital industry. It was 5.30 when Alessia left us to spend the rest of the day in a sunny San Francisco.

We thank our guests for the visit and we hope that our experience in Silicon Valley will contribute to produce significant changes in the Italian entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Silicon Valley Study Tour visits Mind the Bridge at Pier 38.

Yesterday a group of about 20 leading students from Italy visited Mind the Bridge office at Pier 38, San Francisco. They are participating to the 6th edition of the Silicon Valley Study Tour, one of the first initiatives aimed at introducing young graduates from Italy to the Silicon Valley, creating useful links with Italian "insiders" working here and giving awareness of the opportunities in the Bay Area.

After meeting Elance and the theme-park-looking headquarters of Yahoo and Facebook, it's time for them to enter Pier 38, the funky place in which more and more fledgling Web 2.0 startups are renting desks to stay plugged into the ecosystem.

It's 6 P.M. and a chaotic and crowded meeting of "Hackers & Founders" has just started in the open space where MtB works. The first impact of the group is a bit unexpected:
"How can people work here with this noise?" asks Roberta Martelli, studying business at the University of Piemonte Orientale and one of the few girls in the group. A hundred geeks and want-to-be entrepreneurs are in fact having a beer and some pretzels and talking about shiny technologies, new projects, sharing ideas and looking for co-founders. Even if during the day people work hard and are mainly silent, it's routine to have some social events in the evening. Everyone enjoys the atmosphere and starts to meet other interesting people, so that it becomes nearly difficult to start presenting our activity.

"Environment and people are so smart here that you immediately would like to join them and create a startup!" says Enrico Cinquini, a student of the University of Genova interested in criptography.
Nonetheless, the visit goes on and sitting on couches we listen to Marco Campanari, CEO and founder of Hyperfair, one of the 2 new startups that will take part in the MtB Gym program. The audience looks very interested: finally an Italian promise in the Silicon Valley!
After that, we invite our Spanish friend Pedro Moneo to present Opinno, an open innovation network of entrepreneurs and investors, working just beside us, in the same "Mediterranean branch" at Pier 38. People continue to interact, exchanging business cards and eating popcorns. We finally ask Roberto Fonti, a smart Italian guy who founded Buzzbox - a web startup developing Android ad iPhone applications to filter news - to tell his experience as Italian in the Silicon Valley.
Even if tired due to the intensity of the day, students are very glad to meet these people really living the American dream.
What if one day they become the next Zuckerberg...?

The GYM @ Pier 38

Since the beginning of July, the MTB GYM has a new home: Pier 38, in San Francisco, right at the beginning of the Embarcadero promenade, past the Giant's AT&T Park.



The highly stimulating open space of Pier 38, hosts several incubators (the most famous are The Dogpatch and Opinno) for a total of ~ 60 startups. Among them, some famous success stories such as WordPress and a couple of others recently acquired by Google.



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Or the recently arrived GYM startups that have started populating Pier38.
Starting from Spreaker, Francesco Baschieri's creature, that is quickly gaining popularity in the Bay Area with its web radio broadcasting.

Pier38 is also home of Mashape, the web tool startup founded by Augusto Marietti, Marco Palladino and Michele Zonca and one of the TechCrunch's favorite.
Since the beginning of the month the Gym is also home for Danilo Cardascia and Marco Rizzone, our new entries in the MTB family. You'll hear about them soon...