2011 here we come!

Wow.

It's been a busy year, to say the least...

Here are a few numbers that summarize our 2010:

• 22 events part of the MTB Italy Tour
• 9356 members registered community members
• 1473 members of our Facebook group (in 6 months)
• 35 startups mentored during our bootcamp, 7 attended the US roadshow, 3 startups moved to San Francisco in our GYM incubator
• of our alumni, one got acquired (Neptuny), two received more funding (Spreaker, Adant) and a good number of them are experiencing significant commercial development
• 354 people attended our Venture Camp event, with 12794 live streams (32% from outside Italy) up 64% from an already memorable 2009 event
• our YouTube channel has been in the top 20 most viewed channels worldwide (in education)

Reflecting back, Italy is a different country from what it was just a year ago.
The world of startups has finally gone mainstream. Blogs, events, business plan competitions are building a lively community now eager to start hatching some success stories.
The activities bridging Italy and Silicon Valley are being developed at such a fast pace that it is difficult to keep track. Try to align them to make the best out of their own competences will be one our common goals ahead.

Last but not least, my last thought goes to all the people that made this possible: our board of directors, our newly created board of advisors and in particular to our growing team of volunteers. They embody the whole spirit of our initiative.

Thank you all. Have a memorable 2011!!!

New Advisory Board @ MTB

While our 2010 activities are winding down and our board of directors is reflecting back on the successes and challenges ahead, we are getting fit for a memorable 2011.

To that extent, I’m very pleased to announce the set up of a new, outstanding advisory board.


Fabrizio Capobianco, old friend of MTB (and mine), already board member in 2009 and coordinator of our selection committee since 2009, mentor of several MTB startups, and main (and only) organizer of the Capo-startup-baseball night.

Professor Alberto Sangiovanni Vincentelli, an icon of the Silicon Valley Italian community... and any other community that values entrepreneurship! He's been a strong supporter of MTB since its inception. He attended every Venture Camp event we organized since our beginnings and inspired hundreds of young entrepreneurs. His performance with Severgnini in 2009 made history.

Lesa Mitchell, COO of the Kauffman Foundation, the world most relevant entity supporting entrepreneurship. Since our first conversation, not too long ago, Lesa demonstrated her personal strong interest in supporting our bridge, re-instated with her visit to our incubator @ Pier 38 a few weeks after my first visit at the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas city.

The support of such exceptional professionals in the entrepreneurship world is a testament of the high-quality work that our foundation has demonstrated since its inception in 2007.

I'm personally honored to have them on board.

If we needed to be re-energized for a new year full of activities, could we have asked for more???

Prizes and Winners

Training, mentoring and being plugged into a world of opportunities have always been at the core of what we do.
However, financial support if not bad either!
Thanks to our partnerships, for the first time, we are happy to distribute some prizes to a few startups.
The prizes consist of a mix of support for your trip expenses.
The details will be communicated directly to the winners.

So, here are the sponsors and the winners!

FONDAZIONE CARIPLO:
* eRALOS3
* Smania

TOP-IX:
* Risparmio Super
* MopApp

GENOVA HIGH TECH:
* Xapio

Congrats to all. You'd better start packing your things.
March will be California dreaming.

The WINNERS 2010 are...

... find out in this video clip...


Here is the full list:
-GetConnected MopApp
-Risparmio Super
-Eralos 3
-Smania
-Fubles
-Porco Vino
-Minteos

In addition to these 7 finalists we also issued a "Popularity Prize".
The MTB Community has voted:

with 457 votes (to-date) the winner is
Xapio.


So, congrats to them, but also congrats to all the participants.

Let's keep working together.

Shortly, we will announce the prizes supported by our sponsors. Right here.

Announcing the finalists: Nov 18

MTB People, we are almost there.

Following the presentation during the Venture Camp, the selection committee has deliberated and we did pick the finalists.
Yes, we are done with our selection... but we are not sharing it quite yet!
The full list will be made public just on Thursday (Nov 18). As tradition, we picked one of the main events taking place in Italy during the Global Entrepreneurship Week.
This year, we will show a video during the event: Firenze Crea Impresa (Palazzo Vecchio, Firenze)
If you still don't think that's a good enough reason to spend the day in Florence, fear not!
We will post it on this blog, and, likely, you'll find the news in the mass media...
In addition to the finalists, we'll communicate the several prizes sponsored by our partners (CARIPLO, GHT, TOP-IX)...
one more reason to stay tuned!

Torino, 16 Novembre 2010: UK-Italy Springboard

UK-Italy Springboard is a business plan competition addressed to Italian startup dealing with ICT, Cleantech, E-Health e Advanced Engineering.

To take part in it, a preliminary selection is needed and will be performed by UK Trade & Investment e Jstone according to the following issues:

• Team and skills
• International market strategy
• Innovation / short time to market
• Sustainable business strategy (unique selling points)

On November 16th, selected projects will be pitched in front of a judging commission composed by members from UKTI, Jstone, SETSquared, un Business Angel UK, Finmeccanica and other expert professionals.

The winner will have the opportunity to test the UK market for 6 months being introduced into one accelerator of the SETsquared Partnership at the University of Bath, Bristol, Southampton or Surrey.

The prize includes:

• Mentoring by senior entrepreneurs
• 3 reviews of the business plan
• Networking and funding events
• Services
• Support

If you are interested, send an English version of your business plan to ukitalyspringboard@gmail.com

I-REALIZE: Lean Startup Hack and Google Site-Clinic

The third episode of I-Realize saga focuses on the new entrepreneurial approach called Lean Startup. It will be on November 17th at the ToolBox Headquarter - Via Agostino da Montefeltro, 2 10134 Torino, Italy.

The background is again the Global Entrepreneurship Week, a special occasion to deal with the entrepreneurship theme.

Google, which will be involved as the main collaborator in the event organization, is probably the best interpreter of "beta release" and therefore there could be no better player to show in practice the Lean approach based on the "build", "measure" and “learn” cycle.

The event consists of a panel to go into the details of Lean Startup and a site-clinic powered in collaboration with Google, the right opportunity to put in practice the lesson learned.

In the panel there will be entrepreneurs, investors, bloggers and experts, which will try to define the picture of Lean Startup and adapt it to the Italian case.

Site-clinic rules: a number of startups will be pre-selected and their web sites will be inspected by Google team in their compatibility with search engine guidelines.

In the afternoon entrepreneurs could have one-to-one meeting with Google Adwords Team in order to understand how to improve the ROI using an appropriate Adwords campaign.

The event is free but you have to register yourself: startups can apply for site-clinic and Adwords one-to-one meetings through the registration form and the dedicated website.

You can find more information here: http://www.irealize.eu

Vote for your favorite startup!

The crowd matters.

Venture Camp '10 finalists are now under review by the entire Mind The Bridge Community, not only expert investors and tech gurus as standard, but also all the common people visiting our website.

In the "era of 2.0" people's ratings rule: that's why we introduced and set up a simple mechanism to collect crowd preferences about the 15 startups running the last mile of the Business Plan Competition and taking part in the MtB Venture Camp in Milan.

At the end of the event the startup receiving the higher number of preferences will be assigned the 1st MtB Crowd Prize.

During the event go to http://venturecamp.mindthebridge.org/presenting-startups,

read the short profiles and click the "FB Like" button under the startup profile you prefer to give your vote!

Preparing the Venture Camp - Go early birds!

-16 days to the opening of the MTB Venture Camp 2010. The heat is on!

The agenda is almost final, and it includes an amazing line up of speakers.

The event will unfold around three axis:

• Policy: removing the roadblocks that are in the way to develop more innovation in Italy
• Role models: learn from the success stories
• The new talents: our semifinalist startups

From US we'll have several personalities, starting with Steven Koltai and Richard Boly, both representatives from the Obama administration. Together with Shuly Galili (executive director of the California Israel Chamber of commerce) they will participate to the panel focused on how to learn from other countries that developed successful innovation policies over the last decades.

From the industry, we'll have Vittorio Viarengo, Giacomo Marini as representatives of the Italian Gold in Silicon Valley, Bernardo Hernandez, Head of Consumer Marketing at Google and angel investor, Javier Olivan, head of Facebook international development, Tony Espinoza, serial entrepreneur, super-angel and now head of MTV social gaming.

On the Italian policy front we expect the On. Alessia Mosca (parliament member) and, likely, On. Brunetta, our Minister of Innovation.

And many, many more...

During the evening, we'll have the pleasure to mingle and meet all these amazing guests.

So, you'd better hurry up and get your seat!

Today is THE LAST DAY to enjoy a substantial "early bird" discount.

We also offer a 40% discount per people under 30 (ID required). The discount code to use for this week is: 30less

Last year we got fully booked several days before the event (we have just 250 seats available), so you'd better hurry up if you are serious about getting inspired!

The other Italy

I just received this message from our friend Charles Versaggi that I thought would be interesting to share. It gives a good prospective on how second/third generation Italian-Americans are perceiving what's happening in Italy. It follows a pretty interesting debate raised a few days ago during the BAIA event "Transplanting start-ups in Silicon Valley: does it work?"

Buongiorno Marco,

As I work more closely with the Mind the Bridge Foundation and the Italian business sector, I'm learning more and more about the "other Italy."Underneath the romanticism of Tuscan villas and La Dolce Vita, lies another Italy I'm only now beginning to comprehend and understand. Starting with the enigma of Berlusconi and the 'sclerotic gerontocracy' he oversees, to the mass exodus of its educated youth, I can't help but conclude Italy is undergoing a socio-economic crisis that threatens its future stature as a 21st Century world player — and I'm not talking about the World Cup.

I appreciated the thoughtful comments you and the other panelists provided at last Thursday's BAIA event. Sensing you and others were only scratching the surface of an ongoing dilemma, I dug deeper and read your recent blog http://siliconvalley.corriere.it/2010/10/italia_si_italia_no.html and the string of TIME links that gave me an eyeopening overview of Italy's growing dilemma.

I agree with your three points recommending a global view. Indeed, we are all citizens of the world and participants in a global economy. But as an Italian-American who was conceived in Italy and born in the U.S., like a salmon that moves relentlessly upstream to its spawning grounds, I still have an instinctive yearning for my homeland. The dilemma of this first-generation Italian-American is that sometimes I'm not sure where home is. For today's bright Italian youth attempting to embrace a world view, I suspect the conundrum is all the more frustrating.

All the best,

Charles