MtB Italy Tour 2011: we hit the road again

The Mind the Bridge Italy Tour 2011 is about to start.
We have not yet defined all the dates and venues of the tour, but we know where and when we start: Rome, February 11th, at 10am.


During the Social Media Week (SMW)in Rome, Mind the Bridge organizes(in partnership with Augmendy)the Startup Lab, to be hosted in a really special venue: the Ministero della Gioventù (L.go Chigi 19).
An amazing line of speakers (including Alexis Ohanian, Reddit cofounder, Euardo Carlos Espinal, Seedcamp Partner, Alberto Onetti, Mind the Bridge Chairman) will discuss how to create successful web startups and provide hints to launch great companies. Giorgia Meloni, Minister of Youth, will join the discussion moderated by Marco Montemagno.
At the end a Gym sessions, with 5 startups lining up and presenting their business idea and plan.
See you there and stay tuned for more information about the next dates!

Genefinity graduates from the GYM

[written by Stefano Maggiolino]

I am Stefano Maggiolino Managing Director of Genefinity Srl of Trieste, a company that, as we say here in the U.S., is defined as "Applied Research Company".
In other words we develop technologies to prototype, pilot plant and then we analyse if it better to enter in the market directly, sell patent, license the technology or create a spin off to develop the business. These opportunities depend on the technology, the market or the investment needed to start the projects.
We have already created a spin off to developed a new technology for photovoltaic panels and we are in the market directly with a fashion product: 2D jewels.

I arrived in San Francisco with the prestigious victory of "the Start Up of the Year" awarded in May 2010 in Naples.
The prize was a small amount of money and the chance to reach San Francisco and Silicon Valley with the help of the Mind The Bridge foundation. We are a company that operates in thin films with different fields of application as you can see from the first few lines, one in particular is a novel technology to deposit the circuit sensors for glucose analysis, biotech / medical devices field.
My first time here in the U.S., honestly, was kind of hard!
I thought and acted too often with the mentality of doing business with "the Italian style".
Eventually I realized that, if we wanted to "play" here, we have to do it with the rules of the game of the "far west".
So I started to envestigate, analyze and try to understand how the US the business world really works and learn the rules of the game. Here Mind The Bridge help was crucial.

As a first rule that I feel I communicate to others is to "Americanize" the company you want to build here because the different cultures, the way we do business and approaches with other Americans are rather simple and linear between indigenous and between foreign and indigenous.
For this, the the mentor assigned to us by MTB, Charles Versaggi, was crucial. Our mentor is an experienced communications and marketing professional in the biotech sector with decades of experience.
Although he could easily be my father (sorry Charles!) there was a harmony and complicity in a collaboration that would probably be very difficult to obtain in Italy with mentors or other consultants.
The thing that gives us confidence to continue this experience (although now I'm about to leave US), is that Charles himself believes so much in investing in us.
My second humble advice is to analyze well throughout patterns of investors and present the project in a way that is, at the same time, simple but compliant with their schemes.
In our case, we are now looking for seed funding to continue our pilot.
Soon, we'll have to switch to mass production, and there, we'll need to raise real money (a few millions).
In addition to the technology, we have developed strategic plans to approach the market and we have a couple of customers in China and Korea that are at the validation stage of our process for their sensors.
Our vision is more ambitious than ever. But didn't someone said "you have to dream make big dreams"?
That's what we are doing.

Thanks Mind the Bridge!

See you soon guys!

- Stefano

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!