Fourth week at Mind the Bridge Gym - Highligths

Ladies and gentlemen, our ten startups are almost at the end of their adventure with the Mind the Bridge Gym. However, they have no time to think about that, they are using every single second of their day to take advantage of their experience here!

This week we run several seminars as part of the Gym Edu program. The following are the most notable:

IP Rights: Vijay Toke, expert in IP rights, talked about patents, trademarks and copyrights - According to its technology a startup needs one more than another, but when a company grows up likely a combination of the three will be necessary to fully protect your intellectual property rights.

Innovation and Human Resouces: Vittorio Viarengo shared with us his meaningful experience with his startup focusing on team building. People is one of the most important ingredient for a startup. Always hire people that are smarter than you are - Class A person hires class A people, class B person hires class C people. Also, are you an entrepreneur-like guy or more a big company-like guy? Consider the 5 Fs principle. In a big company you have more time for Family and more Force; working in a startup is Fun, and has, as potential, Fortune and Fame. Which set of Fs fits you better?

The art of Networking: Evan Nisselson talked about the power of networking. One of the most important asset an entrepreneur might have or build is his/her contacts portfolio, especially in Silicon Valley. Be very smart in using it in a proper manner.

A first great result from one of our startups! Giovanni Venturini, CEO of Agroils, after few days here signed a partnership with Roberto Crea, PhD to start a new company Biosolids Technologies. This is the startup he's going to present at the Italian Innovation Day.

On Friday we had the last session of Gym Fridays' presentations. All three sessions were a big success, with an increasing number of people coming to assist to the presentations providing very useful feedback. This Friday we had some Gym Mentors and people from Microsoft and Guidewire group.

A few but intense days left with the 10 startups getting ready for the Gran Finale at the Italian Innovation Day at Stanford. We look forward to seeing their presentation after a month training at the Gym. Good luck guys!

Italian Innovation Day, March 31 - Stanford

In the day of its 150th anniversary, our Bel Paese finds itself facing some serious troubling times. Probably the most challenging since several generations.
To be able to see the light at the end of this long tunnel, Italy needs to focus firmly on nurturing its best talent, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit.
In one word, it should move Innovation at the top of its priorities.
Nurturing innovation domestically and packaging better its existing excellence to the eyes of rest of the world are the 2 main pillars around which we built the Italian Innovation Day concept.

It's the natural evolution of the "showcases of the best Italian innovation" (focused on our startup business plan competition) that we've been organizing for the last 3 years.

To be able to make a substantial imprint both internally and in international markets, we ought to widen the scope, including young companies as well as the most innovative small and medium companies that are notoriously the backbone of the Italian economy.

This is a very ambitious project that requires the support of multiple operators.
As such, the Italian Innovation Day was born as a joint effort between the Mind the Bridge foundation, Intesa Sanpaolo, sponsor of the Startup Initiative and Booz & Co main supporter of the Fulbright BEST program.

In addition, for every event (Stanford, New York, etc) further local co-organizers will join the organization committee.
Aligning the effort of such diverse entities, is already a clear sign that we are in the right direction (against all odds, one could suggest) adding rather than disaggregating.

Today, Italian Innovation Day is a nascent platform that will inaugurate its first event exactly in 2 weeks, on March 31 @ Stanford University (CA).

The half day event will consist of 3 tracks:

• a conference: in collaboration with the prestigious Harvard Business School, we'll present the macro economical prospective of what's happening in Italy today, challenges and opportunities. Does Italy still matter to the world? The session will be followed by a stellar panel titled "Does Silicon Valley still matter?". Moderated by Fabrizio Capobianco, we'll have Tim Draper (Skype, Hotmail, Baidu, Overture, etc) , Scott Sandell (Salesforce, WebEx, NetIQ, etc), Jeff Clavier (Mint, Eventbrite, Milo, Ustream, etc), 3 of the world best startup investors.

• a showcase: a set of selected most innovative SMEs will be showcased throughout the event in the exhibition area. A Scientific Committee, composed of all Italian superstars that made a significant imprint in the Silicon Valley innovation history, will evaluate the projects, interact with them and select the most innovative

• a pitch session: a dozen startups, after 4 weeks of incubation at the MTB GYM, will have the opportunity to present their elevator pitch to the world best startup investors, chaired by: T. Draper, S. Sandell, J.Clavier and F.Capobianco

We expect to live an epical night, that, hopefully, will get us one step closer to the lofty objectives we posed ourselves.

Your admission can be booked here.
We see you guys all there!

Gran Finale Stanford: videos available

You can find the full event here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/mindthebridgeTV

Special thanks to Gabriele, for another sleepless night.

VRMedia is the 2009-10 winner!

Yes, you must have heard it already... VRMedia (augmented reality for industrial maintenance) is officially the winner of the 2009-10 MTB Business Plan competition.

But I'll take you there step by step.

It's been an intense week of meetings, presentations and set up with one main objective in mind: the Gran Finale event!

As the name suggests, this is virtually the equivalent of the worldcup final for our participating startups. Almost one year of building the right strategy, plans, presentation gymnics and much more, go into a mere 7 minutes of passion in front of 5 members of the selection committee (the best of class of investors), 150+ people watching you live in the room, but many, many more watching online.

We've been raising the bar constantly for our startups. The first edition of the Gran Finale 2008 took place in a San Franciscan art gallery, followed in 2009 by a presentation in the renowned Plug and Play center, where our startups spend a few weeks, from time to time.

This year, following the already memorable Venture Camp event @ Il Corriere della Sera, we decided to include Stanford University in our plans.

In addition, we added a keynote focused on the Israel case study, the keys to replicate a successful model of bridges between the country of origin and the Silicon Valley.

So we started, putting up a very full program, mixed with some good Italian food & wine, with very high expectations on the results.

And, in fact, the event, didn't disappoint anyone (nor did the food&wine).

We'll add a few videos shortly (once we recover), but let me summarize my personal highlights before my memories begin to blur:

• the work done by a passionate community, that strongly believes in good faith in a project, can make wonders
• Italians are generally unreliable, mostly unprofessional, unequivocally whiners ... but most of all, Italians are good people. When you put them together, their ability of mixing and matching, of being affable and deeply warm goes unsurpassed
• a country can change its corse of history in a very short time for the better if (that's a capital IF) it's able to produce, retain and nurture its best talents. Exactly as a company.

But this will be the topic of future posts.

For now, let's raise our glass of prosecco to the winners.
Chapeau to them, and chapeau to all the other talents. Go back and show what you have!