Pioneers Festival to Gather World’s Brightest

Entrepreneurs, Investors, Media and Startups 

• Stephen Lake (CEO Thalmic Labs, MYO), General Pete Worden (Director NASA Ames Research Center), Peter Platzer (Founder Nanosatisfi), Adam Cheyer (Founder of Apple’s Siri), Phil Libin (CEO Evernote) and many more confirmed
• Space Operations – Private vs. Governmental, NASA vs. NanoSatisfi: An aerospace discussion moderated by WIRED’s Olivia Solon
• MYO founders present their new Gesture Control Technology in the European Premiere
• Charles Adler (Founder Kickstarter) and Tom Hulme (IDEO London) delve into entrepreneurship and its implications for society

Vienna, September 10, 2013 – From 30-31 October, the Pioneers Festival will bring together well-known national and international entrepreneurs, Venture Capitalists, tech-enthusiasts, media representatives, and pioneers in a variety of fields to celebrate a new age of pioneering in Austria’s capital city. The event gathers more than 2,500 participants, focuses on entrepreneurship and innovative future technologies, and provides an event location that has housed some of the most powerful people not only in Austrian, but also in European history – the Hofburg Imperial Palace in Vienna.

The program for the Pioneers Festival is drawing nearer to being finalized. This week, Pioneers Festival would like to announce more speakers and a sneak peek of this year’s highlights.

 Operations in Space – Private vs. Governmental

When the first man landed on the moon, it was the government who put him there, not a private shuttle or his own funding. Until now, aerospace operations have been primarily restricted to governmental institutions, but over the last few years we have seen more and more private initiatives in this field. Director of NASA Ames Research Center General Pete Worden and NanoSatisfi Founder Peter Platzer (named a “Champion of Change” by President Barack Obama) will take the stage to discuss the future of operations in space. With WIRED magazine’s very own Olivia Solon moderating, an in-depth discussion about aerospace is guaranteed.

MYO’s European Premiere

Thalmic Labs CEO Stephen Lake and his two co-founders will showcase MYO, an incredibly powerful Gesture Control Consumer technology, live on stage and for the first time in Europe. What is gesture control? Just imagine playing an instrument without it physically in front of you, or simply swiping your hand through the air to move to the next slide in your presentation. Five months ago, the Canadian startup launched a trailer that spread rapidly around the globe; today the video has more than three million Youtube views. Thalmic Labs then participated in the most recent YCombinator batch, after which MYO raised $14.5 million, aiding them in bringing their product to the market.

Bird’s Eye View on the State of Entrepreneurship – What’s going on?

When it comes to entrepreneurship, this will be the mother of all discussions at the Pioneers

Festival. Critical, provocative and honest, topics like the power of the individual, Lean Startup and the purpose of entrepreneurship are planned. Kickstarter Co-Founder Charles Adler and Tom Hulme, Design Director at IDEO London and Founder of OpenIDEO, will join together on stage to state their views on what they see as the status quo of entrepreneurship. This discussion will be one of the highlights of the Festival, delving into entrepreneurship and its implications for society.

Many wonderful speakers from last year’s festival will be joining again. Co-Founder of Siri Adam Cheyer is included, and said of the event, “I came to inspire, but came away inspired. Amazing presentations, parties, and most of all people – unforgettable!”

Participants also have the unique opportunity to join Evernote’s CEO on stage in our Meet & Greet with Phil Libin. Those interested can apply here by posing the three top questions they’d like to ask Phil live on stage.

Tickets for Pioneers Festival 2013 are available here.

Further information:www.pioneers.io/festival

Press accreditation: festivalpress@pioneers.io

  IE Venture Network
Join IE Venture Network Thursday, 26^th  September 2013!

This weekly pitch slam is an invaluable resource for early stage entrepreneurs, a forum for engaging the entrepreneurial community, promoting your startup, and at best securing an investment from our Investors in Residence Wayra, Highgrowth Innovation, Big Sur Ventures, and Sodena.  The Venture Network is unique in that it is a very informal gathering where startups can meet investors in an informal setting over beers and snacks and focus on what’s important; building relationships.  The Venture Network is a great way to perfect your pitch, get feedback on your product, and meet the local startup community.

The Venture Network´s resident panel of startup experts include:

• Liz Fleming, Deputy Director Venture Lab
• Catalina Labiano, SODENA
• Dieter Staib, Business Angels
• Luis Arcos, SIEMENS
• START DMC

 The three startups that will present their project in 7 minutes will be:

Carla Basurto, Holimpo

Holimpo is a platform on the cloud for medium hotels in LATAM to increase their visibility and sales, supported by a management system (PMS), automated processes (ERP/CRM), and accessible from pc and mobile devices. (More information at https://angel.co/holimpo)

Carlos Polo, per·pet·u·all

There is a mobile app where you can magically update all your friends’ phonebooks with your latest contact details. That seamlessly updates your smartphone’s contact list when your contacts change their details. The app is called per·pet·u·all.

Robert Rolin, Optimize

Optimize is an administrative/consulting service dedicated to very small, small and medium sized companies that wish to outsource their administrative tasks and obtain qualitative comments and proposals for the management and future development of their business. The service will be offered in Belgium at first, aided by the Primes-Services structure

 IE Venture Network will be held every Thursday, from 7pm to 9.30 pm, at “AREA 31” María de Molina 31, CP: 28006 Madrid

Venture Day Brazil brought together over 150 students, alumni and local entrepreneurs at the Telefonica Wayra center in Sao Paolo for a competition that pitted 12 IE projects against locally funded projects and which resulted in IE projects tied for 1st place and taking the 3rd and 4th places.  The winners were Garmfit from the GXMBA class of Nov 2012.»

Smoobility:  Instant access to your files on any device.

Many times I found myself in underground or in a plane unable to read my documents stored in some cloud storage services, or if I didn’t bring my laptop home I just couldn’t mail those presentations I had been working on.

It’s sometimes difficult to access and use your documents as your would like, specially in the multi-device world we live in today.

I had the opportunity to interview Christophe Cubat and Jorge García-Luengo, who propose a solution to that problem: Smoobility.

Smoobility is a platform that helps multi-device owners organize their digital world, and access their documents seamlessly from any context, even when they find themselves offline.

How does Smoobility work?

Smoobility lets its users organize the documents they have located in different devices and cloud storage services so they can keep a unique organization across their digital world.

It also makes all those documents available from any device. We achieve this by using a predictive engine that identifies the most relevant content according to the user’s needs, preferences and habits. It decides which files the user will need and downloads them to the device in advance, so the user can always access the document he wants, even when he’s device can’t access the network.

What is your business model?

The users need to make a subscription to the software. Initially, we will charge a monthly fee, however, the business model is evolving and this will be adjusted accordingly. We are more focused on the value proposition at this stage of development, and charging the customers is mainly a way to validate your service.

How long have you been working on this idea?

Christophe had the idea during his PhD obtained in 2005, but the context was not ready at technical, social and business level. With the raise of cloud computing and multi-device owners, the time had come to fully develop the idea, and one year ago Christophe decided to commit at 100% to Smoobility.

In the spring of 2013 Christophe was looking for a co-founder to take in charge the Business Development. As a result, Jorge joined Smoobility four months ago, and both are working together to build up the enterprise.

What role do the members play in the company?

Smoobility is a project with two heads:

Christophe, CEO and CTO, PhD in Computer Science, is in charge of technical strategy and product development. He participated to the FittingBox startup creation where he was software architect. Then, he was Innovative Bid & Program Manager in Thales for four years, running collaborative innovation projects for the European Commission with international partners.

Jorge, Chief Business Development Officer, MBA from IE Business School, is responsible for business and development strategy. He has worked in Real Estate and Banking industries as well as a Consultant for SMEs and startups.

In your opinion, what are the most important personality traits to be a successful entrepreneur?

Christophe: Humility, listen to other people and be open to criticisms. Knowing that you’re not perfect is important. We need to be confident, but not egotistical. Be flexible to adjust to new information and changing circumstances, but with a clear vision of what you want to achieve.

Jorge: Balanced, sense of balance between being a visionary person and a good listener. Having the ability to see what others cannot see and maintain clear focus as well as the capacity to listen what others are willing to share with you, and learn from.

Who is Smoobility target market?

The target market is e-professionals and knowledge workers. This professionals work in different environments, in their clients office, at home, in their own office, with partners, and they value their time expensively. They also use at least three devices, they value the mobility that comes with tablets and smartphones, but they prefer their laptops and desktops to accomplish certain tasks.

What is the stage of project now?

We have a prototype.  We launched the beta in July and we’ll be including more control groups in the Beta in September. The high fidelity MVP will be published for public distribution in October.

What have you learned from your experience as entrepreneurs?

Christophe: We have to be able to identify our strengths and weaknesses and focus on which you are really good. Learn to delegate. It doesn’t mean losing control.

Jorge: To find a partner with compatible working way. In startups, you expect that good things happen every two months, so you need a team that works well and pace of startup. You have to believe that things happen; you must have resources to do them.

Next steps…

• Grow the team by including two software engineers.
• Validate the version, which is coming out in September.
• Launch Friends & Family in October.

Contact:

contact@smoobility.com

  IE Venture Network
Join IE Venture Network Thursday, 19^th  September 2013!

This weekly pitch slam is an invaluable resource for early stage entrepreneurs, a forum for engaging the entrepreneurial community, promoting your startup, and at best securing an investment from our Investors in Residence Wayra, Highgrowth Innovation, Big Sur Ventures, and Sodena.  The Venture Network is unique in that it is a very informal gathering where startups can meet investors in an informal setting over beers and snacks and focus on what’s important; building relationships.  The Venture Network is a great way to perfect your pitch, get feedback on your product, and meet the local startup community.

The Venture Network´s resident panel of startup experts include:

• Concepción Galdón, Area 31 Director/Venture Lab Operations Manager
• Alberto Gómez, ADARA
• Gonzalo Tradacete , FARADAY
• START DMC The three startups that will present their project in 7 minutes will be:

Jaime Otero, LeTrendy

LeTrendy is the leading online store selling stylish and technologic accessories for Smartphones and Tablets. By merging editorial content and e-store, LeTrendy will challenge the traditional online store concept, using LeTrendy Magazine as its main channel for attracting new clients and advertising products which had not been previously marketed in Spain.

Luis Zunzunegui, GIFTYBIT

GIFTYBIT is “Social Gifting” and “Instant Messaging”. It’s a new way to nourish your friendships, no matter where they are. Send your best wishes and participate in birthday gifts with one click. Be the best friend possible… in a much easier and more meaningful way than you think.

Louis de Broglie, Social Insurance Platform

The Social Insurance Platform objective is to assist insured at every step of their insurances experiences based on social dynamics.

IE Venture Network will be held every Thursday, from 7pm to 9.30 pm, at “AREA 31” María de Molina 31, CP: 28006 Madrid

Author: Angélica Medina

People Sports: “last minute” platform for professional sports clubs

I had the opportunity to meet Laurent Chabbal, CTO and Co-founder of People sports, who told me about the innovative business idea which he has developed jointly with Matan Ganani, CEO and Co-founder of the company.

People Sports has developed an online platform, which will allow professional sports clubs to release unsold game tickets for sale. Either via auction or at a special last minute reduced price.

Where did you get the idea for People Sports?

Matan had the initial idea. He didn’t understand why there are so many empty seats in stadiums, including games of famous clubs; although most of the Spanish are football fans.

The statistics showed that at least 20% of seats are empty in each game. What is the problem? He saw that in France, it was worse and in Italy even more. He also identified that in Germany they doing well and noticed that the prices are cheaper compared to prices of other leagues (20 Euros on average with an occupation over 90-100%). So the problem seems to be the price.

He thought: I should do something to make people buy ticket at best price.

He also realized that there is competition in first and second market, but they do not add value for the clubs, so there is an opportunity!

He participated in Venture Lab with this idea:  to offer the clubs a platform to sell unsold stadium capacity last minute, either via auction or via reduced price. Clubs also has the benefit to get new customers segment: whom are interesting in football and those who only stop by price.

Laurent is in charge of IT platform (back end, front end), payment platform and operational matters.

Matan is responsible of business, marketing and legal matters.

What are basic features that you have to participate in the market?

We are developing a Website and Mobiles Apps (first Android and then iOS).

We also use technology as Geo-location, app-notification an email to notify events which goes on sale.

We use a bid process to get the tickets. How does it work? User indicates the price and number of tickets that he wants. When the user bid, he accepts automatic debit on your credit card when he wins the bid. There is not purchase re-confirmation. But, if you do not win, you do not pay!

Once users have done their bids, People Sports lets the club determine minimum price. It occurs 24 hours approximately before the match.

All the money collected from sales goes to the Clubs (minus a 5% commission for People Sports) and People Sports charge to users a service fee of 2.5 Euros per ticket sold.

One of the top causes to don’t buy by internet in Spain is security issue. How do you guarantee security to customers during payment process?

People Sports will use secure credit card payment gateway service with Paypal as well as financial services products as Visa and MasterCard.

What features would provide further differentiation?

People Sports provide differentiation from the time when its launch: it will add value for the club (filling sports venues, selling the extra capacity, generating additional revenue from a new customer segment). We will expect to position People Sports like a partner to Clubs.

Who are the customers? Are the football clubs or fans? Who is the buyer who makes the final decision?

Clubs have the final decision, but both of them are customers. People Sports works as B2C business to fans and B2B business to clubs.

What do you plan to do to proof the concept? Are you going to include apps (mobile-based)?

We are going to start with clubs from the Spanish League (La Liga).

At the beginning, we will release web platform and Android app and months later we’ll launch iOS app.

What would be included as part of the Spanish domestic market expansion, e.g. other clubs, additional kind of sport clubs or just football?

We want to negotiate with more football clubs and then we will include other sports clubs (e.g. basketball). Afterward, we plan to move to USA and maybe France (football and rugby) and Italy (football). Initially, we are going to see how it works in Spain.

What are you most excited about at the moment?

Get money to continue the business, via venture capital financing.

The sense of have the control to evaluate suppliers and the pressure to satisfy investors is a challenge. It is a huge responsibility but it is exciting because we have to use our knowledge and experience to move forward and develop the idea.

We got investment from Business Angels and invested our savings. In August, we went to the first round financing to raise sufficient capital to launch the product (there are 5 to 10 potential investors).

It has been hard to get investors but Matan is doing well to reach the goal.

You need to have good luck: luck to have a team that works well, luck to get financing and luck to make the business works.

What advice would you like to give to people who want to create a startup?

Have an idea that will be measured in terms of revenue. Actually, we changed the initial idea due to the revenue model.

Have a good idea with a simple business model to persuade investors.

The team is another key factor to success. Have complementary profiles, respect the perimeter of action of each other and be prepared to cover the position of your partner as a team.

Be flexible, responsible, and to control the ego.

Is there anything you would go back and do differently if you had the chance?

Yes, we do a proof of concept. Maybe, we would test the concept of auction or bid, with a small group. Nowadays, we only have basic feedback from clubs and potential customers, but we are optimistic!

At the moment, we are working on contact the clubs with the support of a Sport Marketing Agency in order to make a pitch for the clubs and to convince them to use the platform.

Author: Angélica Medina

BiDrink: Mobile app to find the best place to party and to enjoy a drink

Everybody has been enjoying with friends and wanting to have a drink in a place close to where they are and sometimes they don’t know where.

BiDrink proposes users an alternative to search places to enjoy a drink using geo-location via mobile app with amazing dynamic offers and cool events.

BiDrink is a mobile platform that connects the night life locals and the consumers.

Would you like to know more about this tool and its creators? Andrés Pazos, Co-founder of Bidrink, tell us a little bit about this innovative tool.

What is the product or service?

We connect the night life locals and the consumers.

It is based in a real time application that includes features as the «inverse bids» and the personalized stock drink offers.

This is a marketing channel incorporated in a mobile application to allow the consumers to find the best place to party according their taste and to enjoy a drink via the Partyfinder tool.

Also, we have BiDrink Money: Loyalty fee redeemable to travel, drinks, etc.

Who is BiDrink customer?

BiDrink is focused on entertainment venue as a marketing channel. We provide them technology and they have the control over the pricing strategy and offer.

We also satisfied the leisure needs of end users or consumers.

To PR, it is a complementary channel.

What are basic features of BiDrink?

• It works in real time
• It has special features as «inverse bids»
• Fill a venue through strategies like segmentation based on bids
• Average price indicator
• Pricing tool to set up and manage strategies in an automatic way
• QR validation
• PartyFinder as a search engine to find night life locals and events
• Receive notifications of your favorite places
• People may add (“I like” or +1) and share on social networks
• BiDrink Money

How will BiDrink make money? 

The service is free to end users or consumers.

The night life locals have to subscribe to the service and pay a fee. The pricing is dynamic depends on services and promotions.

What kinds of investors does the company have?

At the moment, the business is self-financing.

We will seek financing on October, when the app will be launch.

Who are your current or potential competitors?

• Platform develops as a hobby.
• Tools allow static and generic discount. However, it seems to may cannibalize existing revenue.
• Apps online without offline support.
• Tools focus on the technology rather than on the client. For BiDrink, technology is the tool to improve the service.

What is the stage of project now?

We are performing internal testing.

We developed a demo to test the concept and look & feel with consumers on August as well as do a test with selective venues which we already contacted.

We plan to launch in Madrid in October to prove the concept and improve features and functionalities. Then, we consider growing including other cities. It also depends on fundraising to support expansion at national level.

Describe the role of each team member

Andres Pazos Morantes, Co- founder and responsible of Technology Innovation

Manuel González Frutos, Co- founder in charge of Marketing & Sales

Rodrigo Real Zoco, Development

Julio Hernández, Operations

How long have you been working on the idea?

Manuel and I have been working on the idea since January 2013.

We are working all together since June when we took part of Incubator.

What have you learned from your experience as entrepreneurs?

Constitution and consolidation of the team is essential to execute the idea and develop a business.

You need to have milestones to establish a roadmap, to monitor the plan and measure results and achievements.

Obtain feedback, listen, learn and go forward. Try to test your product as soon as possible and get feedback from the people.

In your opinion, what are the most important personality traits to be a successful entrepreneur?

Be passionate and confident

Fearless: don’t be afraid to failure and make mistakes

Self-Sacrificing

Be productive and goal focused, to execute the strategy and achieve the goals

Is there anything you would go back and do differently?

The execution of ideas is a key factor to success. I would have try to probe some concepts before and to make a nice logo since the beginning  😉

Contact:

www.bidrink.com
Apazos@bidrink.com