On 11th October 2013, around 50 startups will be present themselves to students at FORUM EPFL (a recruiting fair organized by a dynamic student organization). Idea is to startups recruit their next employees and show students that startups are a viable career path. On October 10th, a special keynote will take place (with me speaking about “Why to start-up”) and with a successful serial entrepreneur sharing his startup stories until now. So it will definitely be a great time to network and meet the western SWitzerland startup scene… But here are the startups you’ll be meeting at Startup Day! Medtech / Biotech / Pharmaceutics MIMETISE MINDMAZE QLOUDLAB SAV-IOL SOPHIA GENETICS BIOGNOSYS NANOLIVE Prexton Therapeutics Drugdesigntech Energy & electronics CELEROTON CLEANFIZZ LENR CARS Neurobat (energy / electronics) Information & Communication technologies CASHSENTINEL Agile Gibbon Informatique Service at home ATRACSYS CITIVIZ COTERIES DACADOO …
The Evolution of the Geek
“Geek” is sometimes considered as negative, but it has changed since the 2000’s. Here’s an excellent infographic published on social media marketing blog Flowtown
Startup competitions, don’t waste entrepreneur’s time!
If you’re a first time entrepreneur, you’re discovering new startup competitions on an almost daily basis. Some reward startups with money (sometimes great, sometimes just… ridiculous), some with a business travel and finally some with prestige. You get some press coverage, local, national or sometimes international, with every competition when you’re among the lucky nominated or awarded startups. You think that you wonderful amazing project will convince the jury, without any doubt. Yeah, you would not living your startup every minute you breath if you were not convinced you’re on something with a great business potential! But, the maths are simple. You have often a 1% chance (or even less for international competitions) of getting selected. And everyone who has ever filled an application form knows that it’s extremely time consuming. Every competition has another, different application form. Yes, everyone is reinventing …
The Startup Kids – a film that any wannabe founder should watch!
In April 2011, I stumbled upon a film project published 5 days ago on Kickstarter by 2 Icelandic girls. A documentary on young entrepreneurs’ stories from around the globe. They were looking for $ 7’000.- to be able to shoot the film and publish it. If you know my passion for startups, you know that I needed to be in. So I backed the project with $15. Three weeks after, Sesselja and Vala had convinced a total of 364 backers for more than three times what they expected. What a great crowd-funding story! I was excited to watch the documentary and was regularly asking the girls when it will be finished. Sesselja and Vala interviewed founders around the globe, like Drew Houston (Dropbox), Alexander Ljung (Soundcloud), Kristina Segerstrale (Playfish) VC Tim Draper, and many more. Finally, the film was made public at Reykjavik International …
Launch time
As most of you probably know, I’m working hard with an amazing team in my own startup, Coteries. We’ve been quite a bit out of the radar and most of you don’t know what we are up to… Now is launch time! We are now 2 days away from our official launch. We will be launching our first mobile application for musicians on Thursday, July 18th, 19h00 (CET). You now better understand why I’ve also been less active in blogging on startupolic… I couldn’t dream of a better timing to launch: recent news in the music industry are just validating our concept. And we are ahead of what they say. Crazy, no? If you’d like to be one of the first to discover what we are doing, why not registering to our newsletter? I’ll take a break after that (at least …
De Vigier Award ceremony, with Nick Hayek!
Every year in June, the De Vigier foundation organizes its award ceremony in Solothurn. This foundation was created by the famous William A. de Vigier to support young entrepreneurs on their way to success. This edition was the last year as president of Moritz Suter (you know, the business man who founded Crossair). To celebrate the end of his engagement by De Vigier foundation, he successfully convinced Nick Hayek – the “king of watches” – to do a little presentation. For people who don’t know him, he’s the CEO of watchmaking giant Swatch Group. Normally, Nick Hayek never does public presentations. You know, this passionate entrepreneur doesn’t want to show off. But he finally accepted to do a short pitch for Moritz, but also for the region (Swatch Group employs thousands people in the area). I was really pleased to be invited again …
How can I help?
My followers on twitter probably know I’m a huge fan of Mark Suster, a 2-times entrepreneur turned VC based in Los Angeles, who blogs to share his knowledge on Both sides of the Table. BTW, you should definitely follow him if you’re an entrepreneur! Mark had a great post last week named Why you should give before you get. And Brad Feld, entrepreneur, angel and VC that you’ve certainly have heard about, even made “give before you get” his life motto. It sounds to be common sense in my ears, but it’s often not for many people out there. Everyone advises you to go networking. But what is really networking? Is it only exchanging visit cards or shaking hands? No. And the stupidest thing you can do online is to add people you don’t know on LinkedIn without telling the other person …