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...?

Introducing Marco & Danilo @ Team MTB

The desks at our new creative space on Pier 38 are getting filled up quickly.

Since the beginning of the summer, the Pier speaks more Italian with the arrival of 2 new MTB members, Danilo and Marco.

Here how they introduce themselves:

Danilo Cardascia is the founder of Human capital (www.hcapital.it), a Company based in Bari with the mission of promoting entrepreneurship and venture investing in the Apulia Region. Human Capital supports talented young entrepreneur by providing them with funds and other consulting services during the start up phase. In July Danilo moved to San Francisco to collaborates with MTB at Pier 38. After a couple of weeks spent dealing with the airline company that lost his bag, he is ready to discover the reasons that have made the Silicon Valley, the home to many of the world's largest technology companies.

Marco Rizzone is a PhD Student in Technology Management at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa, Italy (www.sssup.it). His research is focused on Web X.0 Business Models and startup creation: nothing could be better than getting plugged into the Silicon Valley network! After investing 4 months in a venture capital fund to learn how the world of innovation financing runs, he decided to elaborate a plan to get in touch with a number of web entrepreneurs and collect data for his PhD thesis.

Collaborating with Mind The Bridge, he has the chance to act into the heart of the ecosystem.

At Pier 38 Marco can interact with incredible startups and creative minds: "it's very cool here - he says - I was studing the Hi5 business model and just two desks behind me I meet the founder, a serial entrepreneur who has now started Buzzbox... or you sit on the couch to post something in your Wordpress-made blog and the person in front of you is just writing... Wordpress code!" (Wordpress is also sharing space with us).

Despite his picture here, Marco seems to be enjoying his new life: social networking at day, social dancing at night!

You'll hear more from Marco, Danilo, our startups hosted at the GYM and their (ad)ventures in the next few days...

Business Plan Competition: Selection is ongoing

Deadline for Mind the Bridge Business Plan Competition is over.
This year we received hundreds of Business Plans & Call for Ideas. Really a lot, better than any other previous Mind the Bridge (which is definitively a great sign).
Now it's time for our Selection Committee to start its job (actually they already have). It is quite a challenge given the high number of submissions we received. But we are committed to complete the selection by the end of the first week of September. And we are not going to miss it.
Below you can find the list of the components of 2010 MTB Selection Committee, that is coordinate by our Fabrizio Capobianco, Funambol CEO: they are all top-notch Italian and international venture capitalists, business angels and professionals. Thank you to all them for their continuous help and support!
Their goal is to select the best 30 proposals. The selected top 30 entrepreneurs will be admitted free of charge to our Bootcamp (that will be held in Varese on Sep 23-25) and Coaching (that is scheduled in Pavia on Oct 14-16). During these two events we provide the startups with tailored training and mentoring and select the 15 semi-finalists who will be admitted to present at the Venture Camp in November (on Nov 5-6 @ Corriere della Sera in Milan).
If you are confident that you business plan is good enough, please save all these dates.
Stay tuned to check the list of admitted startups.


MTB Business Plan Competition
2010 Selection Committee
Fabrizio Capobianco, Funambol (coordinator)
Alessio Beverina, Sofinnova Partners
Claudio Giuliano, Innogest
Fausto Boni, 360 Capital Partner
Leonardo Camiciotti, Top-ix
Gianluca Dettori, Dpixel
Pietro Dova, XG Ventures
Lorenzo Franchini, IAG
Ruggero Frezza, M31
Maurizio Liverani, Classfinance
Massimiliano Magrini, Annapurna Ventures
Nicola Nicoletti, Pricewaterhouse Cooper
Stefano Peroncini, Quantica
Maurizio Petitbon, Kreos Capital
Mauro Pretolani, TLCOM
Nicola Redi, Fondamenta
Elisabeth Robinson - NicOx/Fulbright BEST
Carol Sand, The Angels' Forum, The Halo Funds
Giuseppe Serazzi, PNCube
Maria Silva, Genova High Tech
Pietro Strada, Centerboard Partners
Alberto Trombetta, Finlombarda
Davide Turco, Atlante Ventures, Intesa San Paolo
Luca Ungarelli, Golden Mouse
Charles Versaggi, Versaggi Biocommunications

MTB Summer BBQ 2010 - Pics

It's that time of the year.
San Francisco is getting flooded by ords of turists, in particular Europeans. How can you tell? They are the ones in shorts and flip-flops (Italians have some fancy ones) freezing while walking the San Francisco Fisherman Warf, immersed in the cool thick fog (dudes, ever thought about checking TripAdvisor before leaving??)


And in this time of year around "ferragosto" the MTB BBQ for friends and families has become a tradition.

This year we moved South, to the warm Woodside, where, in fact, there is a summer.

A great gathering for the startups hosted at the MTB Gym, the full MTB team (including the freshly arrived reinforces), mentors, and MTB aficionados that included startups from the 2009 competition (Francesco Inguscio, VRMedia) and even a witness (and finalist) of the 2008 competition (Michele Aiello, Eris 4).

Drinks, burgers and an illegally imported Italian "coppa" made the rest.

From lunch to dinner, it was a real Italian "festa".

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.



View Larger Map

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...

-10 days to MTB 2010 Competitions deadline

Dear friends,
this is a reminder that the deadline to submit proposals for the 2010/11 edition of the Mind The Bridge
- Business Plan Competition and
- Call for Ideas
is fast approaching: JULY 31 is the last days for submitting your executives summary!
This year competition is accompanied by a number of highly stimulating prizes, on top of the usual goodies (training, presenting at Venture Camp event @ Corriere della Sera, incubation in Silicon Valley).
We would appreciate if you can give visibility to this opportunity to your network through your highly effective communication tools.

Feedback from ESOF 2010 in Turin: video interviews

We were invited to present last week in Turin at ESOF 2010. We sit in a panel organized by JSTONE.
The goal was to discuss about new models of innovation and ways for effective networking knowledge, finance and entrepreneurship.
Among the speakers: Alberto Onetti (Chairman, Mind the Bridge Foundation , US), Ilana Gross (Program Director Matimop, Israeli Industry Center for R&D , Israel), Reshma Sohoni (CEO, seedcamp, United Kingdom) and Gianluca Dettori (Chair, Dpixel , Italy).
In this video (kindly provided by Top-ix) you can get some insights from the speakers. Enjoy!

Mind the Bridge Business Plan Competition 2010: deadline is approaching!

July 31st, 12am CET: this is the final deadline for submitting your Executive Summary and Business Plan and try to start your own way to Silicon Valley.
We have a lot of news this year.
Firstly, we have Prizes for the best startups. Not money, but grants to cover the costs the startups have during their period of stay at our Gym in Silicon Valley. Stay tuned for more details. Meanwhile don't miss the deadline for submitting your idea. Late comers are not adimitted.
Secondly, besides our mainstream Business Plan Competition (BPC), we have launched a new program, named Call for Ideas (C4I), dedicated to proto-enterpreneurs with an idea at the very early stage. Check the website to understand which competion does fit best with your idea.
Don't miss the opportunity! Less than 20 days to the final deadline...