MTB launches SeedQuest, new accelerator program

Many great things have happened, since our inception 5 years ago. Today, it marks another critical step forward in our quest for the promotion and support of Italian Innovation in the world.

Speaking of quest... today we are unveiling our brand new accelerator program (drum roll)... Seed Quest.

Seed Quest is the natural evolution of our 5-year old business plan competition, now encompassing the sharp developments that have shaped the early startup world since we started: less focus on waterfall business planning more on early traction, more hands-on mentoring and, yes, a little seed funding to cover the expenses of a fully focused product development (that means no need to work on consulting services on the side to pay your bills, folks).

Does that mean that we want to be a different animal then, from the "give back to the community" foundation that you've known?

Not a single bit. Our hearth and soul remain the same. More than ever, we remain fully committed to our mission: providing support, inspiration and guidance for the new generations of Italian entrepreneurs. We are convinced, though, that we can do better to help develop more success stories.

And only success is the real sugar that fuels the entire ecosystem.

We can leverage Silicon Valley to help re-create the success of  Glancee, Cacetech or Timbuktu.

There is no other effective way to support longer term a startup than putting your money into it.

And that's what we are going to do.

We are committed to providing friendly terms to portfolio startups and we are working to line up more follow on investments from later stage investors.

For the record, a good chunk of the potential returns from the investments (plenty!), will go back to support the foundation activities, and help spread more entrepreneur-virus!

It took us sometime to get here, but we are convinced that, with you, we can go a long way.

-
For details
 seedquest.mindthebridge.org

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).

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!