Jun 29th, we are in Catania

As you know in Q2 every year Mind the Bridge is on Tour all over Italy. We started from the North (Trento) in April, we decided to end in the far South. On Jun 29th we will be in Catania. As usual it will be a full day program (here you can find the updated program): Startup School in the morning (with Alberto Onetti and Marco Marinucci on the stage) and a session of our MtB Gym in the afternoon where 5 local startups will be selected to pitch in front of a panel of investors such as Marco Magnocavallo (Principia), Davide Turco and Gianni De Caro (Atlante Ventures), Alfonso Riccardi (Vertis)... And an awesome prize is ready for the the best startup presenting in Catania: Principia and Mind the Birdge grants a free spot to the Mind the Bridge Startup School in San Francisco! That's your opportunity to fly to California and be a Silicon Valley startup for 3 weeks. Can't miss it! Learning, open discussion, comments, honest feedbacks. Ultimate goal of the Mind the Bridge Italy Tour is learn about the startups' world, fine tuning your business idea (what and where it works, where and what doesn't) and making your value proposition more effective. If you want to be considered for the MtB GYM Session, please send your Startup Pitch (10-15 slides) to catania2012@mindthebridge.org and fill the online document (www.surveymonkey.com/s/mtbearlycall)before June 24. We will select 5 promising startups. The best startup will “Win the Summer in Silicon Valley” and be admitted free of charge at the MtB Startup School in California! If you are just interested to attend to the event, please remember to reserve your ticket: it is free, but admissions are limited. Here is the link for RSVP. The event is hosted by Ehica and the venue is Le Ciminiere di Catania (Viale Africa). Catania, here we come. See you there.

Startups and The Law

When? Jun 27th, 6:30pm Where? Milan What? A special event focused to address the main legal and tax issues startups and founders face in the early stage of their business venture. That's the goal of the event named "Startups and the Law" we organize in Milan in partnership with Cleary Gottlieb and Tavecchio & Associati. In this event, that is part of our Mind the Bridge Italy Tour 2012, we are going to have a sort of "Legal Gym", i.e. a Q&A session where startuppers and entrepreneurs can discuss with legal and tax experts about hot topics such as: - where to incorporate my startup(Italy vs US vs UK vs Luxembourg), pros and cons, - how to deal with investors, - how to manage my IP, - how to deal with convertible notes and stock option plans. The Q&A session will be moderated by Alberto Onetti (Mind the Bridge), Carmelo Fontana (Google Italia) and Roberto Bonsignore (Cleary Gottlieb). We provide high level information about the topics above and answer to some basic questions. Please anticpate on Facebook some topics/questions you would like to be addressed on Jun 27th or in one of the following Legal Gym sessions we plan to organize in the incoming months. The participation is free of charge (yep, free beer, since participants will get pizza&birra), but limited to 50 startups. Registration is mandatory, here is the link. First-come, first-served. The event will be hosted by Cleary Gottlieb (Milan, via San Paolo 7), one of our long-term partners. See you there!

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.

Charles Versaggi, new director of Startup School

Our Startup School has quickly become a key activity for the MTB Foundation.

Since June 2011, we run 4 intakes, graduating 30 entrepreneurs (or wanna-be entrepreneur, prior to the school).

On Monday this week, the new cycle of our startup school, 2o12 edition, just kicked off.

The school is poised to become a major effort for our foundation: we plan to more than double the total number of graduates and total sessions, establishing an important imprint in Silicon Valley.

I'm really happy to announce that our Charles Versaggi will be running such an effort.

We are truly excited that a seasoned professional of the experience, commitment and sense of humor (we need a lot of that!!) like Charles accepted our offer to lead such a development.
In the past Charles directed several Bootcamps for MTB, so we know he'll do a terrific job stepping up in this new endeavor.

For our Foundation, the Startup School really represents a key opportunity of funding and support for all other programs we run.

Go Charles, can't wait to see the future developments ahead of us!

And the Winner 2012 is... Timbuktu!

The Latins (and Italians...) called it "par condicio". After 2 years at Stanford, the show-case of the Mind the Bridge startup finalists for 2012 moved to UC Berkeley, kindly hosted by the European Business Association of Haas Business School.
Different side of the bay, same full house, same temperature (after 4 years, the summer-like conditions for our IID are almost guaranteed).
160 people attended to see what this new wave of Italian innovation has to offer.

They were not disappointed.
After an engaging keynote by Peter Arvai, the founder of the super cool Prezi (he's also a super cool dude), the 11 finalists of the MTB and Intesa Sanpaolo initiatives took the stage.

By design, we want to present a diverse showcase of different technologies, ranging from new media to enterprise software to green tech and bio-med.

Among a wide group of investors, this year's Investor Committee was composed of:

• Fabrizio Capobianco (coordinator) - founder Funambol
• Ronald Weissman - Band of Angels
• Pietro Lomazzi - Noventi VC
• Ettore Leale - Xplorer Capital
• Adam Smith - AOL Ventures
• Peter Arvai - founder Prezi

Their role, as usual, was to grill the startups on the critical business aspects after the 5-min presentations (alas, no-one in Prezi yet!).

And to pick the most promising ones.

Solid presentations across the board.

Here's what they finally came up with:

Results:

1) Timbuktu Labs:

An award-winning Ipad magazine for kids and parents. Engaging the content (they partner with the relevant Reggio Children center), engaging the 2 female c0-founders (creative, energetic and competent)

2) Kitotech:

a revolutionary bandaid proprietary technology, integrating chitin nanofiber. Enhanced healing and minimize scarring (I need it now!) Kick-ass team (HQ in Seattle).

3) BrainControl:

A mind blowing technology (seriously!) to provide simple commands with your thought (a helmet reads your EEG signals). Serious kick-ass stuff.

In gaming or military could be a killing.

Pasquale (CEO), instead, has decided to use it to provide some comfort to folks with multiple sclerosis, ALS, etc. Why? Because that's what drives him!

Chappeau (he didn't get the first place because "marketing matters a lot", investors said...)

To all our startups: a pretty darn good job.

Now it's time to go out and prosper!

Italian Innovation Week in Silicon Valley

Introducing startups from Italy to the sophisticated audience of Silicon Valley has historically been challenging.

Let's face it.

Italian technology? Too exotic, too naive, too remote.

Besides some sporadic fortunate landings, the "road to Silicon Valley" has been a remote possibility for Italian startups.

So, what the heck is going on now?

Just this week a plethora of events is promoting the booming of the Italian startup ecosystem:

- The Italian startup renaissance, a VC prospective: Andrea Baldini (Early Bird VC)

- Welcome party + MTB GYM Open House

- The Connected Vehicle and the Internet of Thing (SVIEC event)

- The Italian Innovation Day (Berkeley, 2/23)

So many events, that we moved from our first timid attempt last year of a day dedicated to Italian innovation, to a resounding Italian Innovation Week in Silicon Valley!

Why?

The bubbling up of Italian innovation that is manifesting itself in the last couple of years is now also spilling over outside its national boundaries.

Mind the Bridge has been beating on the startup-made-in-Italy drum for quite sometime.

But we're not alone now.

Qualified parters such as Intesa Sanpaolo, (Fernando Napolitano's) Italian Business & Investment Initiative, BAIA, Top-IX just to mention a few.

We are all pushing in the same direction.

What does it take now to become the next Israel or India for Silicon Valley?

2 words: quality and quantity. We need both.

We need to maintain high standards of startups representing us and constant volumes.

It's clear we've graduated to the major league.

Our track record so far: from ~ 20 companies in the last 2 years more than half have experienced a mind blowing acceleration:

we had

- 2 exits, 1 winner of Le Web, 1 winner of SeedCamp, 1 winner of Microsoft Bizspark, 6 raised (further) VC money

A success rate that is hard to match even by the best in class.

Now we need to harness the potential and start bringing home some big-shot successes.

Italy is ripe. We are too.

Getting ready for the Italian Innovation Day (2/23)

We're getting excited about the upcoming Italian Innovation Day, which will be held on Thursday, February 23, at UC Berkeley, starting at 4:30pm.

The startups are working hard to polish their presentations and wow you with what they have to offer. Come see their new products and services, which this year cover a really wide spectrum, from areospace technology to mood-matching music and an iPad magazine.

And we are really delighted to announce that Peter Arvai, CEO and co-founder of Prezi will be the keynote speaker. Peter knows first-hand what it means to build a bridge between Europe and Silicon Valley, and how to take advantage of it to make a company succeed.

With offices in Budapest, Hungary, and San Francisco, and over $14M of capital raised since its launch in April of 2009, Prezi is one of the best known examples of transatlantic startup.

Peter will share his experience and talk about the do’s and don’t’s of starting and growing a company with offices and talent working many time zones apart.

And of course, it wouldn't be an Italian Innovation Day without some great food and wine, catered by our friends at C'Era Una Volta.

Italian Innovation Day is made possible by the work of a lot of outstanding and committed volunteers, both in Italy and in the United States. A big "thank you" goes to all of them. And another one goes to our sponsors, who are making all of this possible with their support.

Next steps:

• Sign up here: hurry up, it's almost sold out!
• Agenda
• Location and directions

We look forward to seeing you at the 2012 Italian Innovation Day!