Summer is almost over (hum… I’ve not seen if the was a Summer season this year, except that the business stopped from mid-July to mid-August!). It’s now time again to participate to startup competitions and attend big events. Europe is lively and I think there isn’t any inferiority complex anymore toward the US. There are actually probably too many events you could participate as a startup entrepreneur. The key is to attend the right ones, the ones which can bring something to your startup! You’ll find here a little selection of relevant startup events you should consider attending this Fall! Pioneers Festival (Vienna, October 29-30th 2014) This 2-days festival (with an extra additional day before, for investors only) is gathering year after year a great panel of speakers and investors in the city. Pioneers is inviting super smart speakers like Fred Destin …
Swiss startup quotes – enter the game!
For its 10th anniversary, the well-known (in Swiss startup ecosystem) program venturelab is starting a competition to find the best entrepreneurial quotes of the year coming from Switzerland. If you’re older than 18, living in Switzerland, you can submit up to 3 quotes about entrepreneurship (in English, of course!) and from a Swiss based entrepreneur. There’s even a something to win: a voucher of CHF 250.- valid in one of 7 startups gone through the venturelab program. Really cool! But in the end of the day, do we really care about the prize money? This initiative is simply awesome! You have until Thursday 14th of August, at 12:00 to submit your quotes (you’ll then have 5 days to vote for your favorite quote on the Facebook fan page of venturelab). Here are the 2 quotes (from myself, as a Swiss based entrepreneur …
Take a break – enjoy Summer!
Back to you soon… Don’t hesitate to explore my archive!
10 hottest digital creative jobs
During my trip as a Venture Leader in Boston and New York, I’ve tried to collect as much knowledge as possible about the US market. We’ve been to the Boston tech jam, which is basically a big party where tech companies are trying to recruit talented guys (companies which have a booth there are no more startups). One company was distributing flyers about what earn creative people in the US, depending on their location (infographic displayed above). My friend Adelina once published a really popular post about the salaries of developers and designers across the world. This kind of content is often popular, as everybody want to know how much it could earn! I thought this content could be valuable to people who think that Switzerland is always too expensive to do tech (web, mobile) startups. Sure, this country is expensive, especially …
Book your booth at Startup Day!
For the sixth time in a row, the student association FORUM EPFL is organizing a special day dedicated to startups on October 8th 2014, in Lausanne. The Startup Day at Forum EPFL aims to connect EPFL young engineering talents with promising startups from across Switzerland (and abroad!). Last year, more around 80 startups were present and some hundreds people (students, innovators, and even some investors were present) visited the booths. The Startup Day will take place on Wednesday 8th of October and will benefit from the quantity of presentations happening on this day. Giant companies (like Google!) will be present on this specific day to hold a presentation… and organizers of FORUM EPFL have certified me that everyone who’d like to attend these presentations will have to go through the startup’ stands. This will be possible thanks to the relocation of the forum …
Learnings from the Venture Leaders’ experience
As you may know, I had the chance to be selected as a Venture Leader 2014 (I’ve written about it here – Gregory had to cancel at the last minute and was replaced by Samuel Welten, founder of Sunbeat). I came back from the trip to Boston and New York 10 days ago, and thought that what we’ve learnt or experienced could be profitable to everybody. For the first time, the Venture Leader team was not travelling “only” to Boston. We’ve spent 7.5 days there and 2.5 in NYC. The experience is simply unique. It sometimes looks like a school trip, in the sense that Jordi, his team and Swissnex organized everything. We didn’t need to bother with hostel, program, taxi, training, etc. During these 10 days, I was surrounded by 19 of the brightest current Swiss entrepreneurs (delibaretely not mentioning our amazing mentors/guides). …
SALES: the challenges of selling your product as a startup
It has been quite a long time without any post from me… I hope you haven’t missed me too much! I’ve been extremely busy these last weeks with travelling (music summit in Ibiza, the Venture Leader trip) and so on… But I’m back again to blogging! I’ve been thinking a lot about sales in the last weeks. During my flight to the US, I’ve beed watching « The Wolf of Wall Street » (OK, I know it was released 6 months ago… I’ve never had time to watch movies !). It’s a really interesting story, especially on the selling point of view. Jordan Belfort (Leonardo di Caprio) is an expert in sales. It’s amazing to watch the techniques he’s using (even if we can argue that he’s selling with a really shortsight view). While teaching his friends how to sell anything, he used a …
How to modernize Swiss Army (even without new planes !) – Part II/II
Now that the debate about the choice of a new airplane is over (Swiss citizens have rejected it), at least for a while, I think that Swiss governement and our politicians have to really think about the future of Swiss Army. It’s one thing to say that Switzerland needs new airplanes. It’s something else to redefine a real mission for this organization. And to improve its efficiency. For people from abroad: Switzerland has a system where young men are obliged to serve their country, either with a militarian or civilian (1.5 times longer !) duty. For the ones who choose the military duty, they engage themselves for 21 weeks (for the ones going to university, they will miss at least 6 weeks in the begininng of the cursus!), followed by 7 yearly « repetition courses » of 3 weeks. Or 10 months in …