Emanuele Guglielmino wins the MTB Startup School!

Last Thursday the MTB Italy Tour stopped in Genoa.
Genova is a home of  the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), the new Technology Park "Erzelli" and a prestigious University:  an enormous but highly unexploited potential for innovation.

Our goal for this second stop of our Tour is Genova was simple:  spread the message, as loud as possible, that building a company, create your own job is cool, heroic even.
A mission fully shared by Francesco Oddone, Assessore Sviluppo Genova, Paola Girdinio, Dean of the Genoa Engineering School, Paolo Marenco (Silicon Valley Study tour), Renato Soru (Tiscali) and, last but not least, Maria Silva from Genova High Tech who successfully promoted and coordinated this event in Genova.

In the morning panel, coordinated by Marco Marinucci, Renato Soru from Tiscali and Marco Salvadori from Cisco Systems shared their invaluable experience with the audience.

In the afternoon, as usual, we run a Gym Session. Five selected startups were invited to present in front of investors and entrepreneurs with the goal of receiving constructive feedback. 

Genova High Tech sponsored a free entry to our Startup School in San Francisco to the most promising project.

And the winner is... Emanuele Guglielmino, a team leader at IIT, with a background of electrical and control engineering and 13-years of research experience in big companies such as Westinghouse (UK) and General Electric and R&D Institutions. 

His project (called microturbine) is a patented coin-size high speed microturbine able to harvest energy exploiting airflow to produce electric energy with applications ranging  from pipeline monitoring to web farm servers power supply back up. 

We think this idea has the potential to turn into a solid product that can successfully address global markets. MTB is going to give him the tools and skills  to make it happen! 

We are not done yet... Next week we will land in Sicily.
On June 29th MTB will be in Catania for the last date of our Italy Tour 2012. 
Principia SGR will be sponsoring a MTB School to the best presenting startup.

If you are interested to send your business plan or to participate to the event, you are still in time to submit your application or register! More information here. 

See you at the foot of Etna...

June 21st: the MTB Italy Tour arrives in Genova!

As tradition, the MTB Italy Tour stops in Genova this summer, one of our favorite city (guess why :). 

When? On June 21st, save the date! 


Held at Camera di Commercio of Genova, this one-day event brings in Liguria a new culture of entrepreneurship, and gives to one startup the possibility to experience the Silicon Valley. 
Indeed, thanks to the partnership with Genova High Tech - one of the more active actors of the local innovation ecosystem -, one of the startups selected to pitch at the afternoon Gym session will win a free seat and attend our Startup School in San Francisco! 


How to participate in the event and fly to Silicon Valley? Send your Business Plan to genova2012@mindthebridge.org and fill the Executive Summary on line here by June 17th. You will be considered for our Gym Session and, if selected, you will present in front of a panel of investors and entrepreneurs. The best startup will win the MTB Startup School in San Francisco. 


The event starts at 10am. After the welcome speech, Marco Marinucci (MTB Executive Director) and Alberto Onetti (MTB Chairman) will present the "nuts and bolts" of building a startup and getting funded.
In the afternoon experienced investors and entrepreneurs will give constructive feedback and advices to the startups admitted to present at the Gym Session.

See the full program here and don't miss this opportunity! Participation is free but registration is mandatory (here the link).

Startup School 2012, a New Adventure Awaits

After the success of the previous editions, Mind the Bridge is now receiving applications for the 2012 Startup School, which will take place in San Francisco from March 5th to March 23rd.

Having a precise business idea is not a requirement; all you need is a strong desire to create a technology startup company and a good English proficiency. The deadline is January 31, 2012.

The startup school program includes theoretic learning lessons taught by Silicon Valley personalities on the typical aspects a startup needs to take into account to scale its business.

Don’t worry, you won’t spend all your day taking notes. Our program also includes a practical learning workshop with team work, visits to Silicon Valley high tech companies, incubators and Universities. A full immersion in the life of a startup.

To learn more about the program, take a look at the Curriculum. And if you’re curious to know what our alumni have experienced, browse through our previous editions.

HOW TO APPLY

Send an email to startupschool@mindthebridge.org with your CV and business idea (optional) attached. A good level of English proficiency is required. After completing the application, you will be invited to take an English Test which is one of our main criteria for evaluating applicants.

COST

The tuition cost is $1,800. If you are under 30, Mind the Bridge Foundation could support up to 40% of the tuition cost, based on merit. The cost is not refundable and it doesn't include transportation and accommodation.

ACCOMMODATION

Mind the Bridge offers the availability of shared corporate apartments starting at $1,800 per month per person. Living with your peers is an important component of the school.

APPLICATION DEADLINE

Apply by January 31, 2012. Limited availability.

The program will be only activated with a minimum number of 12 students.

Here you can find more information about the program.

Highlights from 2011

Startup School - A new edition coming in October

Two editions of the schools gone and - here the big news - not one, but two to go!

Indeed, given the high number of applications for the first three editions of Mind the Bridge Startup School, we decided to organize a new edition in October (10th - 28th)!

So, halfway through the 2011 Startup School activities we can definitely say we are pretty much proud of how things are going. We've hosted 12 students with different ages, from different background and coming with different goals, but every student leaves the school as they've experienced a "life changing" period. Students visited some of the most prestigious incubators and accelerator, 500 Startups, Plug and Play, Rocket Space, prestigious universities as Stanford and Berkley and the Singularity University; they participated to a few incredible events in the area, as Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, giving his speech at the Singularity University and Steve Blank talking about Entrepreneurial Education at Parisoma. Moreover a few terrific new speakers, Burton Lee, Hartmut Essingler, and Gigi Wang.

These were the regular activities MtB Startup School offers, but along these activities the students had the possibility to breath the Silicon Valley incredible vibe of energy, good ideas and technology and people.

The energy and the dynamism of the Silicon Valley are two things that surprise students every time here. "In three weeks I've learnt so many things and talked with so many interesting people; I've also talked with another startup for a possible agreement on the product development. I've experienced so many things in three weeks that have never happened in Italy in a long time." Or "Here nobody wants to read a 80 pages business plan, things are so dynamic that you need to pivot your business idea so many times according to the reaction and feedback you get from your users. A 10 pages deck is what you only need and then just talk and get feedback."

The easiness to get useful feedback is also another things that thrills students. "Here you don't need to talk with three assistants to get in touch with the CEO of a company. You just go to one of the pool party in the Valley and you can meet him there, drinking a beer with his/her t-shirt and his/her flip flop talking with other startups.". Or "The density of talented people here is incredible, you can go everywhere, just get a coffee and you can find a person ready to give you feedback on your startup and to pitch his/her startup. There are no issues here in sharing ideas, while in Italy it seems more difficult either because people are afraid that someone can steal their idea or because the person listening can simply destroy the idea but without constructive feedback. Here in Silicon Valley, people always give reasons either for a positive and for a negative feedback".

Our intent is to improve and enrich even more the activities of the school! So, if anyone is ready to experience all this and much more, the applications for the October edition are now open! Availability is limited so hurry up!

For more information contact summerschool@mindthebridge.org.

Startup's.. cool!

People living in San Francisco during this weeks will certainly agree that there's not a full summer in the city, the fog and the cold wind are good and habitual friends here. Although the cold summer, 5 guys decided to leave the 95 °F (35 °C) in Italy to attend the first edition of Mind the Bridge Startup Summer School. They brought a few sweaters in their luggage, a business idea in their mind and a lot of excitement for this life-changing experience.

Simone Lini, 21 years and at his second year at Bocconi university, is developing a business on a carpool system. Massimo Garzulino and Danilo Spanò, 25 years both and at their last year respectively of Law and Business School at University of Pavia, have a patent on a wall mobile charger. Andrea Amedeo, 32 years and expert in communication, is developing a systems of feedbacks on top of a social network and finally Andrea Morra, 34 years, physicist and MBA, is developing a tracking system to avoid falsification of goods.

Whatever their idea, they decided to spend their holidays to get their first experience of the startups world in the most entrepreneurial area in the world, the Silicon Valley, because yes, also in Italy for increasingly more people "startup is cool"!

And in the big debate between "born-to-be entrepreneur" or "trained-to-be entrepreneur" they just jumped in the action without waiting for other people's answer to this big question, deciding to try, to share their project with the speakers of our seminars and with other startups in the area, ready to see their business model destroyed and to rebuild a new one with the feedbacks received.

Are those guys born to be entrepreneur? I guess they just took the risk to become one.

Summer School: who's in!

MTB people,

after launching our first Summer Startup School a few weeks ago, we did experience an overwhelming response from you.

One more sign that the popularity of the Silicon Valley-Startup pair is at its tipping point amongst Italians.

Here are the candidates who made it through, for our next 3 sessions (July, August, September):

• Andrea Amedeo
• Andrea Morra
• Luigi Greco
• Marco Solfato
• Enrico Prunotto
• Albert William Pozzi
• Fabio Parisi
• Eugenio Pugliese
• Matteo Bortolu
• Giancarlo Vergine
• Luca Bernardi
• Alessandro Coscia
• Michele Orsi
• Giorgio Bertolino
• Federica Riva
• Alejandro Martinez
• Giuseppe Pace

We are still working on the selection for the promotion in collaboration with Wired.it

Stay tuned to get more info.

In the meantime, congrats to all those who have been accepted.

You can start packing (and don't forget some thick socks + hat!)