Many thanks to Montaña Rodriguez, IMBA 2014, Monelias, for her review of the trip!

A group of students and coordinators from Venture Lab, mentors and establish startups that work closely with IE BUSINESS SCHOOL with all our energy and dynamism went to NY to observe the incredible opportunities and the top entrepreneurs that are based at the City. Every day each of the startup companies, accelerators, investors gave us their advice in order to push our ideas to become real opportunities

Let’s start this adventure a NY Seen by the eyes of entrepreneurs….

Monday 3rd March 2014

BILLGUARD “Believe in your idea”

• Company Billguard: From 2010 personal finance security startup harnessing the “collective vigilance” of consumers to protect everyone from unwanted and unauthorized charges on our bills.
• Speaker Yaron Samid: CEO of Billguard and Founder of Pando. Yaron is also the founder and organizer of TechAviv, the global Israeli startup founders club.

11 am, first meeting at NY start snowing in the big city minus 3 degree.  We all entered into the amazing building where the Billguard office is placed, simple design but trendy, clean open space, you can feel the atmosphere where ideas can became companies.

The welcoming from the passionate and humble Yaron, CEO of Billguard that had his heart half in Israel half in USA left no one of us indifferent.  He emphasized how culture of becoming entrepreneur in Israel is different from any other country, Israelis want to either start up own business or work on applications, whereas in Spaniards as an example, even thou mentality is changing thanks to schools and companies, remain more conservative.

He took his personal experience, as the best example to give us a definition of what a simple product or a company is, and how not all ideas were born to became companies. Started with Pando Networks, acquired by Microsoft in March 2013; and as a second product Desksite they made the mistake of not testing enough the demand. Billguard has being his third company and the most mature and innovative idea where he believes can be a stable business in the future.

Everything depends of the maturity of the founders and the idea itself. He has being learning an adapting along the years and now has a desire to growth the company himself or gave it to people that could really take care of all the value that has been created, mainly the capital value.

During our conversation Yarun kept mention a sentence from Fred Wilson that we will all of us remember. “Don’t listen to venture capitalist listen to your heart”. Once you have develop and tested your idea listen to EC Emotional capitalist that would be there to be part of your dream but be sure you have tested your idea before. Your dream would become more real the higher you have validate it.

“Be presented that failure will be there but always remain with passion and never give up”

Thanks Yorun. That was an incredible startup of the week, smart and simple conversation to start the NY dream´s trip. Let’s have a break at Chelsea market before entering into our own meetings…. See you tom and as Yorun said remain passionate.