July 27 2011
Heya guys and gals!
Awesome news from the STARTeurope HQ: Facebook’s Chris Hernandez will join us at the STARTUP WEEK 2011 as a speaker. Yeah, we’re cool like that. Speaking of coolness: yesterday we received some love from our partner TechCrunch Europe! If you want to attend the WEEK, there are still some early bird tickets left – so betta go getsum!
Behind the scenes, we are pulling some strings and you can expect a few more bombs to drop in the near future, so hold your pants tight! Is there anything you would really love to see at a startup conference? Something that has never been done before? If you have a idea worth sharing, we are more than happy to hear your thoughts on how we could make this WEEK the best week of 2011!
More at http://www.starteurope.at/jobs/
The internets:
Interesting interview with Douglas Edward, the first marketing manager at Google: the confessions from Google Employee #59
German VC firm Earlybird postulates that European VCs outperform their American colleagues
Finally! After a lot of buzz and a long stealth mode Jumio finally lifts the curtain! Read more here
Events coming up in Austria this week:
When: Saturday, July 30th, starting 6pm
Where: Stiegl-Ambulanz, Alser Straße 4, 1090 Vienna
What: Designer machen einen Screenshot ihrer Arbeit in einer maximalen Größe von 400×300 Pixel, laden ihn hoch und lassen ihn von anderen Dribbblern bewerten und kommentieren.
You have an event coming up which should be featured here? Stumbled upon something hot (like really hot)? Want us to post your job offerings? For suggestions and hints, please drop a mail to julian.sametinger@starteurope.at
July 20 2011
Aloha!
Check this out: one of our speakers of the STARTUP WEEK 2011, Constantin Bisanz (founder of brands4friends, €150 Million exit to ebay) is out there in wild waters with temperatures in the 2-3° range to cross the Bering Strait on a freakin’ Kiteboard! Holy shit, that’s what I call pushing it to the limit – good luck with that Constantin!
While Constantin is out there in the Bering Strait, we’ve been sitting in summery Vienna and curated another version of your favourite read, STARTeurope’s Weekly Mashup.
More at http://www.starteurope.at/jobs/
The internets:
Google is looking for the new Google…they invested $583 Million!!! in startups within the first three months of this year!
Bubble here, bubble there. Someone once said: the best sign that you are in a bubble is when all these ivy-league MBAs quit their consulting and investment banking jobs and join startups
Thinking about selling your product through its price? Try selling on value instead!
Events coming up in Austria this week:
When: Wednesday, July 20th, starting 5pm
Where: The Hub Vienna, Lindegasse 56, 1070 Vienna
What: Pirates, mermaids, sailors! The Summer is here and we celebrating the SUN season on Hub Vienna’s deck! Get on board!
You have an event coming up which should be featured here? Stumbled upon something hot (like really hot)? Want us to post your job offerings? For suggestions and hints, please drop a mail to julian.sametinger@starteurope.at
July 18 2011
The guest post is written by @nwstein, an international marketing manager and consultant who moved to Vienna two years ago from London, where he worked predominately in the Sport and Entertainment field. This post is in reply to @thomasdoane‘s guest post “Next Tech Boom“.
I tweeted that I believed that the blog from @thomasdoane was not exactly what I was thinking about the possibility of a Tech bubble being in full swing. One major problem I had was the comparison of Groupon and Google, this is very poorly chosen as the Google IPO was after the Dot Com bust.
I was then asked by STARTeurope to do a contra blog, something that I thought that I might not be in the best position to construct an argument as I am somewhat of an outsider to the Start-up group. I have since back peddled on that and find myself writing this blog.
One thing that makes me write this is the fact that human arrogance never ceases to amaze me. Every generation thinks that they are better than the previous one yet we still go through boom and bust, trough and peak. The cycle will continue as long as we hold on to the most flawed trait that we have Greed. We separate ourselves from the animals in many ways but while power is such an elixir to the masses, we will always have this issue.
Enough of the doctrine of Nick, though it is a worthy detour in this argument I will now give my reasons for a few of the truths (in my mind anyway) of the reasons we are currently in a bubble.
Those of you who know me will know that my technical knowledge, while better than the average Joe is not to the high standard of the majority of participants at a STARTeurope event, therefore I have the advantage of seeing the Start-up world from a different vantage point. For every useful new idea being implemented, there are 50-100 absolutely useless ideas or straight out copies that bring nothing new to the market.
The same mistakes are being made that the Dot Coms made, there might be a lot of talent in the schools and Universities worldwide but it is 100% theoretical and that causes an issue when a real life business problem arises and without the knowledge of how the rest of the business world works. This leads to the “Talent” tending to fight the flow and use up more energy trying to solve the problem in a “unique” way only just to find out that the tried and tested method was the best in the first place. There is too much shake the system and not enough reverence to the fact that 9 times out of 10 other people know more.
All of the recent IPOs have shown that people are banking on potential and not on reality, where have we seen this before? Please take a few seconds and go to Wikipedia and look up boo.com, it might wake a few people up. Also, the housing boom, commodity boom, the list is endless. Potential is a risky bet. 
Make a list of the recent IPOs and then list their worth against their revenue it will make for a sobering realization that unless you are running a Start-up with a purpose, solving a real problem that there is a high likelihood that there is a storm brewing. There are two things I would like to add, Warren Buffett has stated a similar level of caution about the overvaluation of Start-ups recently and the second thing is an investor tip that I have heard over the years. “When you hear the general person in the street talking about investing in something then it is time to get out”. This goes well with Mr. Buffett as one of his principles of investment is to bet against the general flow, when everyone is talking about stocks, it is time to get into commodities and vice versa.
I hope that we do prove that we are more prepared and “intelligent” then the Dot Com lot were, I am a pessimist by nature and the fact that so many investment banks are backing the new wave of innovation does not instill me with confidence. I am not saying that they will bet against their investments but it has been known to happen before.
July 13 2011
Oi!
During the last weeks the working beasts at our STARTeurope HQ in Vienna have constantly added key elements and a lot of value to the big picture of STARTeurope. It’s unbelievable to watch all this happening…boy we are blowing up like a mofo! Expect something big to happen in Q4 /2011 and as y’all know the world is ending in 2012, but not because of the Mayans but rather because of the shock STARTeurope will send throughout the world in 2012.
We’ll share some of the awesomeness with you: right now in the sweating hot city of Ljubljana, our pals from blossom.io, railsonfire and finderly are having a shot at winning Mini-Seedcamp Ljubljana. Yeah right, our startup community is betta than yours!
On to the Weekly Mashup:
More at http://www.starteurope.at/jobs/
The internets:
Alex Rosen, a former tech noob, on why you should read Hacker News even if you don’t have a clue or the power of sponge learning
Ever wondered what was the key to the great success of the entrepreneurs behind PayPal? Check out this great Quora discussion for some deep insights.
Thinking about funding? Uhuh, try this one: the anatomy of a (un)fundable startup
A Brit who made the pilgrimage to Silicon Valley to live, eat and breath the world’s leading hub for technology startup innovation, writes about how he’s been largely unimpressed and disappointed by the quality of startups over there.
Events coming up in Austria this week:
When: Tuesday, July 19th, starting 7pm
Where: Metalab, Rathausstraße 6, 1010 Vienna
What: A regular meetup of people interested in DevOps
When: Wednesday, July 20th, starting 7 pm
Where: Metalab, Rathausstraße 6, 1010 Vienna
What: A regular Meetup for Python Geeks
When: Friday, July 22nd, starting 7 pm
Where: Metalab, Rathausstraße 6, 1010 Vienna
What: An introduction to Bitcoin and a platform to exchanges thoughts and ideas on Bitcoin
You have an event coming up which should be featured here? Stumbled upon something hot (like really hot)? Want us to post your job offerings? For suggestions and hints, please drop a mail to julian.sametinger@starteurope.at
July 10 2011
The guest post was written by @haritashtamvada, who won the STARTup Live Vienna #4 with his startup Warrantify.
I
started my entrepreneurial journey in Finland (there is more to that country than just Nokia) where I was pursuing my doctoral studies. I’ve had this idea itching in my mind for a while back then (thanks to the wonderful weather ‘up north’ it gave me ample time to think about it). As a young college grad with virtually no ‘shadow’ to bank on (read: work experience) I took the plunge and set out on solving a problem which I believe almost any consumer who has ever bought a consumer electronic device would instantly connect to: Paper based warranties and receipts and the pain of managing them (all of a sudden you realize that Murphy came up with the Murphy’s law looking at those receipts, you lose them when you want them the most!).
After a bit of pondering and convincing my professor, I quit my doctoral studies and started working on this idea which eventually took the shape of Warrantify.com, to basically challenge the fact that we don’t need ‘paper based’ warranties and receipts. They are obsolete. Instead make it digital. And we’ve set out on starting what we call is a ‘paperless movement’. The beauty in the problem we’re solving is, even your granny would say “Oh yeah, Finally! Someone’s doing this!” *sigh *.
I guess, things started looking bright for my startup life when I decided to participate in the STARTup Live #4 event at Vienna, Austria conducted by STARTeurope. I think people were wondering, what on earth is this guy from India, who studies in Finland doing here in Austria? But I guess, the beauty of such events is your nationality doesn’t matter – it’s your idea and the ability to make a convincing case around it, which matters. After a weekend of brainstorming at the event which by the way, had some amazing and highly motivated folks to help us investors, angels, people from diverse backgrounds, the guys who’ve been-there-done-that, all-in-all a great mix of innovative people making it a fertile ground for you to really test your idea and get the right feedback. Eventually, our team went on to win the contest and kind of validated our belief that this could be a viable business opportunity and more so for me personally as it gave a HUGE morale boost, the much wanted ‘psychological push’ which gets you going. May be that was the turning point of my entrepreneurial career? Since then, we’ve made good progress in building our platform, getting consumers as well as retailers on board…
So how has the journey been so far? Super rough. Educating. Enriching with a steep learning curve. But looking back, Entrepreneurship is not for the faint hearted. Period.
You’ll come across lots of moments when you’ll feel like “What the heck, the bank balance is near zero and I need to get my hands on that cool gadget out in the market last week” and worse still, you really want to hire that hacker guy to do the awesome coding he does, but cannot pay him, although you’d hand out that check if you really could write one. The ‘Angels’ are looking for ‘traction’ and something ‘concrete’ (which is highly ironical in the sense that you need those funds to build something concrete). Trust me, I’ve been through all this. At the end, you’d have to take a call, is this for me? Can I handle the rough terrains ahead?
In recent times lots of people think being an entrepreneur is ‘sexy’. Well, the hard truth is the road ahead has a LOT of scary turns and bumps, which make people drop out mid-way, often dejected. But starting up is a long journey and success is not an equation or an end result, it’s a continuous process. There is no magic formula to succeed in the tumultuous road ahead but my experience of being an entrepreneur so far has taught me that hard-work and persistence pays. You need to believe in your vision. Having a good team makes it easy to travel the distance AND keeping things bloody simple helps. As Naval Ravikant once tweeted “Persistence beats timing. Execution beats luck. Not immediately, but eventually”, I think it speaks volumes about why believing in what you do is important. If you don’t believe in it yourself, how would you convince others? Easier said than done, but I think the mantra to succeed in a startup is – stick to the basics, do things right AND talk to your customers. It just works!
July 6 2011
Mirëdita!
We’ve been to Prishtina again – this time, the location was the same (American University of Kosovo) BUT the format was quite different than the traditional STARTup Live. We called it a Casting and well…we were looking for the (potentially) hottest Web- and Mobile Startups in Kosovo.
Sounds interesting, huh? Get all the goodness here:
http://www.starteurope.at/3944/roundup-of-startup-live-casting-prishtina
Want to see a STARTup Live happening in your town? Drop us a mail and we’ll work something out!
Sooo…what’s buzzing these days?
Tripwolf howls for Mobile Application Developers for iPhone and Android: http://goo.gl/fo7NT
Play.fm turns up the music and is offering good vibes for Blackberry Devs, iPhone Devs, Web-Frontend Devs, Backend Devs, MySQL Experts and Interns: http://goo.gl/Ys9vb
TunesBag.com wants to groove with Mobile Applications Developers for iPhone and Android: http://goo.gl/YdtqZ
Finderly is looking for a PHP Developer to build their ship: http://goo.gl/j98Ix
Yasssu wants to conquer the world with an International Sales Manager:http://goo.gl/qRxh9
Hack the world with IP SQUARE as a Software Developer: http://goo.gl/Ns7On
More at http://www.starteurope.at/jobs/
The internets:
Aaaight, Google + is still the hottest thing right now but facebook isn’t sleeping at all: they just have launched three new products!
Fred Wilson is having a few thoughts on European Startups
Sandboxer Dave Radparvar of Holstee on how one single picture can boost your startup like hell or how you can’t plan the extraordinary
The guys from 500 Startups explain how to recruit rockstars like Ari Gold from Entourage.
Events coming up in Austria this week:
When: July 8-10, all the friggin’ weekend long
Where: Metalab, Rathausstraße 6, 1010 Vienna
What: How the environmental movement lost focus and why we urgently need an informed, science based environmentalism.
When: Wednesday, July 13th, 6-8 pm
Where: TheHub Vienna, Lindengasse 56, Top 17-18 (court entrance), 1070 Vienna, Austria
What: How the environmental movement lost focus and why we urgently need an informed, science based environmentalism.
When: Friday, July 15th, 10-12 am
Where: TheHub Vienna, Lindengasse 56, Top 17-18 (court entrance), 1070 Vienna, Austria
What: How the environmental movement lost focus and why we urgently need an informed, science based environmentalism.
You have an event coming up which should be featured here? Stumbled upon something hot (like really hot)? Want us to post your job offerings? For suggestions and hints, please drop a mail to julian.sametinger@starteurope.at
June 30 2011
Hello world!
From the beautiful city of Vienna, we’d like to herald great news for you: we have scored new awesome speakers for the greatest startup event in history, the STARTup Week. From next week on, we’ll also have additional troops moving into the office to push things even harder.
Besides, we are working like maniacs on pimping STARTeurope behind the scenes. No spoilers yet, but we’ll keep you updated here and boy, you’ll gonna love our plans to take over the world.
So what’s hot this week?
You are a Web Developer? Yasssu wants you! http://goo.gl/3ysYD
Finderly hopes to find a Business-Allrounder-Intern: http://goo.gl/ig3w1
Groupon Vienna offers a special deal to a Sales Manager: http://goo.gl/0Bqp5
Garmz wants to dress up their website and is looking for a Junior Web Designer http://t.co/q4xaMTG
More at http://www.starteurope.at/jobs/
The internets:
The hottest topic on the internets right now definitely is Google + . With all the buzz around it, these people who were saying that they like G+ and its features, but it lacks the people were maybe missing the news that 500,000 Android devices are activated every day . If you have already tried G+ and liked it, then here’s your guide on how to invite your entire graph from facebook.
We think you should also read this:
If you are in a startup and you are working 24/7 like most entrepreneurs then you might be doing your startup more harm than doing good
Mark Suster shares 10 Marketing Lessons for managing marketing at an early stage startup
The founders of Grinnit have shut down their business and as every entrepreneur should know how to deal with failure, every entrepreneur should read their 5 takeaways from folding a startup
Events coming up in Austria this week:
When: Friday, July 1st, starting 10 am
Where: Lindengasse 56, Top 17-18 (court entrance), 1070 Vienna, Austria
What: Join us on Friday and learn more about how community based energy systems can give access to electricity for people in developing countries!
You have an event coming up which should be featured here? Stumbled upon something hot (like really hot)? Want us to post your job offerings? For suggestions and hints, please drop a mail to julian.sametinger@starteurope.at
June 20 2011
Hello folks,
It’s time for the latest Monday Mashup! From now on, we’ll also include the latest job offerings from our network – if you are a startup and want us to post your job offerings, just drop us a mail and we will happily support you.
So what’s hot this week?
Groupon Vienna offers a special deal to a Sales Manager: http://goo.gl/0Bqp5
Finderly hopes to find a Business-Allrounder-Intern: http://goo.gl/ig3w1
You are a Web Developer? Yasssu wants you! http://goo.gl/3ysYD
Garmz wants to dress up their website and is looking for a Junior Web Designer http://t.co/q4xaMTG
More at http://www.starteurope.at/jobs/
The internets:
Europe gets geeks: the EU is defining its digital future
How changing the name of a webapp can quadruple your signups
Privacy, Publicness, and the Web: A Manifesto
How to license your intellectual property
Must see: Mike Lee’s killer keynote on understanding product & design of successful apps
Events coming up in Austria this week:
When: Monday, June 20th, starting 7 pm
Where: sektor5 coworking spaces, Siebenbrunnengasse 44, 1050 Vienna
What: “Die richtige Vorbereitung zum Bankgespräch oder für den Förderantrag.” Bei uns plaudern Bankenprofis und Fördervergeber über die TO DOs und DONTs für erfolgreiche Kredit- und Fördervergabe.
Online Stammtisch
When: Tuesday, June 21 at 7:00pm
Where: Villon Weinkeller, Habsburgergasse 4, 1010
What: Gathering of online enthusiasts for good food, good drinks and discussing the latest online trends.
Atlassian User Group Austria
When: Wednesday, June 22 at 4:00pm
Where: Museumsquartier, Raum D – Museumsplatz 1, 1070
What: Quarterly meeting of the Atlassian User Group Austria.
Design Thinking Workshop
When: Monday, June 27th, 5-9 pm
Where: TU Wien, IKN Seminarraum
What: Do you want to learn how to create great user interfaces and an extraordinary user experience for your mobile products? For our next MoMo event on June 27 we have got a very special treat for you: Two fantastic experts from Germany, Ahmet Emre Acar and Werner Alexander Jansen, will hold a workshop at TU Wien and introduce a small group of 20 MoMo people to the process of “Design Thinking”, a method from Silicon Valley that teaches to balance analytical and intuitive thinking – the rational and the emotional – for the solution and prototyping process when creating products.
If you want to work with Ahmet and Werner you have to apply via email (contact@mobilemonday.at) until June 20th and let us know why you want to be part of this workshop. Applicants with the best answer will be chosen. We will let you know if you are in via email.g on tools, services and projects dealing with Visualization, Apps-creation and Portals/Catalogs for Open [Government] Data.
You have an event coming up which should be featured here? Stumbled upon something hot (like really hot)? Want us to post your job offerings? For suggestions and hints, please drop a mail to julian.sametinger@starteurope.at
June 3 2011
Key facts
- Date: May 27th to May 29th 2011
- Place: MS HQ, Vienna
- Participants: 110
- Guests: 82
- Mentors: 21
- Experts: 6
- Idea pitches: 27
- Venture teams: 19
- End presentations: 13
- Nationalities: 8
The fifth STARTup Live Vienna!
How come we are always amazed that this stuff works? Strange, after two years, but that’s how it is.
As we set out to organize our fifth event in our birth town, the third event in six weeks, we were tight on resources strapped for energy and rich in passion. We had all we needed. And oh lordy, did it kick ass? O yes it did. O yes indeed.
Out of the 27 pitches, 17 of the pitchers had been schooled during the pitch training. This showed and resulted in 19 groups forming on Friday evening. We had teams formed in the areas of e-biz, social, mobile, music, construction and dating. Most of them no longer “chilling alone” *snicker* but joining up with guys from all over the place: bizzies, techies, designers, vets(!), teachers…
Friday evening we were also joined by Markus Wagner and Oliver Holle who talked about their lives as entrepreneurs raising money, moving to the US and exiting their company 3 United a few years back. Also, Oliver has just launched Speed Invest, a new early stage fund of €10M! It was publicly announced for the first time at our event!
Their view on the subject is a tad different from what Daniel Mattes mentioned in Hagenberg:
- acting without a biz plan is not always the best way to go about it.
- But, before you try to plan, do get out of the building and TALK to the potential customers.
- Do not act upon your vision without validating the need, solution and willingness to pay!
- After that you plan.
- After that you execute.
To make sure it sticks: Verify your theories. Then do what it takes.
Sometimes plans help. But in most cases you can’t keep’m anyways so why bother with the details?
The scene in Vienna has changed over the last two years – peergroups, Steakups, incubators, us, Sektor5, media, funds… Blimey, it’s all coming along quite well! Every year it seems a Viennese startup wins Seedcamp. We have some of the biggest and baddest (in a good sense) VC’s investing in Austrian startups. This lill town is letting go of it’s crappy bureaucratic shackles and beginning to work it from the right direction: startups helping each other.
Saturday morning we were joined by Can who gave a presentation on the biz model canvas and after that by Andreas Klinger giving a talk about what he has learned in the last few years of building garmz.com. Check out the presentation here! It’s a good one.
Also, Jamila and Linda from mFarm, a mobile startup from Kenya visited us and told us what they have been doing since winning IPO48 in Nairobi in 2010.
The founders talk which took place on Saturday evening was full. We had three awesome people to pepper with questions, telling us their real war-stories. Bruno Haid (founder & CEO work.io, founder of System ONE), Alexander Kirk ( cofounded netvibes and now working on his own projects) and Chris Clay (CEO and cofounder of soup.me). Awesome knowledge to be gained from simply daring to ask more personal questions. How does private life and startup life work? Hehe yeah I still wonder that 
Prizes
The winners were selected by the experts panel consisting of investors, tech geeks, CEOs and startup coaches. The prizes we managed to pull together this time were
Mentor Driven
During the weekend, mentors and experts came by and supported the teams – founders, serial entrepreneurs, experts in marketing, biz modeling, public funding and grants, sales and law, investments, design, backend architecture, social media marketing and many more.
Among the mentors:
- Bruno Haid – product, strategy, grants, design
- founder & CEO work.io
- founder System ONE
- Andreas Klinger – social software
- cofounder garmz.com
- cofounder Die Socialisten
- Christof Strasser- Lawyer
- hvk.at
- Alex Pinter – marketing, sales, strategy, negotiations, grants
- founder & CEO insposo.com
- Isabella Frey – Grants
- Coach ZIT
- Martin Sirlinger – finance (grants), marketing & sales
- Founder ciinvest.at
- Coach mingo.at
- Lukas Bürger – design
- cofounder De White Sign
- Michael Handler – tech- payolution.com
- Thomas Friedschröder – Enterpreneurship, Innovation, Businessmodels- phantasiemanufaktur.at
- Michael Kamleitner – social media, web, technology in general
- cofounder & CEO Die Socialisten
- Helge Fahrnberger – product development, social media, social software, maps, online journalism
- cofounder Toursprung
- Dietmar Dahmen – marketing- Creative director DDB
- Niko Alm – Media – www.mikromischkonzern.eu – www.super-fi.eu
-
Gerald Stangl – UX and Design – co-founder & chief’o'UX @ mySugr.com
-
Sebastian Heinzel – Marketing, Team-Building
– co-founder and CEO of tripwolf
-
Matej Ftacnik – Developer
– Co-founder and CEO of iNOVA sys
-
Alexander Trieb – Finance, Mobile, Technology, Management – co- founder of tripwolf
-
Manfred Wuits – tech, web-developer, backend – CTO of adverserve.com
-
Can Ertugrul – Business Development, Presentation Coaching – Business Analyst at i5invest – Business Development at payolution
-
Stefan Kalteis – Finance, Business Development, Startup valuation – Co-Founder and Former CEO of 123People – Business Angel & Partner at i5invest – Co-Founder and CEO of payolution
Expert Rated
The guys that decide on which team wins the weekend is always a mix of different disciplines.
Two of the original experts couldn’t make it due to missing flights and disease. Stefan and Marius joined the panel instead – Stefan actually cancelled a flight to come join the panel. Wow! Thanks!
On the experts panel of STARTup Live Vienna #5 were
Companies and Ideas
Winner of the best STARTup Award
- Name: Roof Node
- Pitcher: Franz Böhm
- Tagline: Rural Broadband
- Description:
Roofnode is a wireless broadband technology. Wireless station on customer’s rooftop. High-performance, robust and secure wireless mesh network for internet, telephone and television services in rural areas.
Getting to the event Franz had a patent, idea and prototype. What he totally lacked was biz and design. This was supplied. During the mentoring rounds he proved time and time again how he was able to adapt. Respect. He also won the respect of the panel of judges!
Congratulations! Enjoy STARTUP WEEK 2011!
Winner of the best new venture
City Pulse
- Pitchers:
Michael Rottman
Daniel Horak
Benjamin Bachhuber
Alexander Quast
- Description:
Using location services and aggregating checkins et al they will make you able to see where the hot stuff in town is going on. NO, not like foursquare does (I KNEW you’d ask that, so did we!). Network is there, designers, techies, the team is set to go.
We were really happy to welcome these campers into Sektor5 for two months! Congrats!
Winner of the crowd’s choice
- Name: Finderly
- Pitcher: Katharina Klausberger
- Description:
By connecting you with experts, department stores and geeks as well as your friends these guys intend to make it easier for you to find products which suit you. We’ve followed this team over the last year (they approached us as they had the idea) and they have made immense and fast progress. Respect.
The crowd’s favorite is chosen via SMS-voting and the team (very fitting) for a new multi-function printer by Konica Minolta! Yay you!
Winner of the medias darling award
- Name: Teenage Rockstar
- Pitcher: Christof Straub
- Description:
These guys have been around for about two years. Born out of passion for music and the realization that his daughter didn’t really have a good place to show their talents Christof launched TRS. All content is screened by him and his guys’n'gals and they have achieved their goal of building and helping the young musical geniuses of Austria. And you know what? They used ~no friggin social media. What does it say in your own marketing plan? Oh, facebook group? HA!
The presentation shown on Sunday was great – the progress working on social media integration in their service was too. Hope to see it launched in two weeks.
The fit with the price is almost too good to be true – €30k in marketing budget to work with young enterprises!
Newsletter Platform
- Pitcher: David Lehner
- Description:
There are a gazillion newsletters for every lill thing out there. Many suck, a few are good. How can you keep track of the best ones?
The team is developing a platform for managing, rating and suggesting newsletters suitable to your needs.
World Taxi
- Pitcher: Filip Boskovic
- Description:
This gang of two set out to change how taxi drivers pick up guests and to help their customers communicate where they are going. To be able to use the service abroad, they intend to work heavily with SMS and offline maps.
Looking at the developments of Uber, http://www.uber.com/learn, we know that there is a very valid although dangerous market here. You don’t wanna mess with the cabby union 
Lingibli
- Pitcher: Milan Schnorrer
- Description:
In three simple steps, which take no more than 5 minutes of your time, you will start learning a foreign language.
The team came together a few weeks before the event, but realized they kinda needed a designer. Supplied. The new slide deck and app sketches look amazing. Looking forward to seeing more from them!
- Name: dreamaTV
- Pitcher: Manuel Gruber
- Description:
This was the second time the gang attended STARTup Live Vienna. Since last time much has changed. The team of 8 has set out to give you, me and all other innovative people their own show. The experienced media producer team has developed a number of formats which they intend to spread via among other formats digital TV.
At the end presentation they demoed their newest format “ Laber’s Lab ” which had been shot during the weekend. Oc these guys brought their own equipment including a 50″+ TV showing their stuff!
- Name: Circus Offers
- Pitcher: Jorge Luis Rodriguez Morales
- Description:
A promotion management tool which enables you to keep track of your facebook, groupon, twitter, dailydeal, meindeal+++++++++ promotions without the headache of visiting them all.
The group was represented by one guy, but 3 others are working in other parts of the world, the furthest away being in Paraguay. They already have a pretty damn big customer called mmmmm nah I can’t say that!
Sign up to be informed of their progress!
Default Detection – D2
- Pitcher: Domagoj Dolinsek
- Description:
The handling of documents, images, comments, tasks and recordings which you have to live with being an engineer at a construction site is idiotic.
Domagoj who has experience in the field and know the problems personally set out to change this with a tablet app. It would integrate with the existing documentation and comms platforms but simplify the process – seeing to it that building projects do not succumb under their own weight in red tape.
- Name: Tarif Agent
- Pitcher: Philipp Etzlinger
- Description:
TarifAgent helps people to distinguish between the many options mobile carriers provide and find the best option for you, minimizing communication costs to the minimum by analyzing your personal (Smart-)Phone-usage.
Philipp has joined us before, but this time we got really impressed with what happened. On Saturday they got the feedback that the process of getting your stuff optimized was too long. Took it to heart and reduced it from a month to 4 days. Backend, process, frontend. The update of the app will be launched soon!
Well done guys!
GetInspired
- Pitcher: Adam Okruhlica
- Description:
We all know situations where we definitely need to be creative, but we simply can’t get to the right mood. Are you a writer who needs some inspiration to evolve a story? Or a designer who needs to come up with a fresh idea or spice up an existing one?
Let the diversity of inspirers work on your hitch, or become one of them and inspire others. Simply submit your hitch, in a few words or images, lay back, and follow the mind-stream of the community. Once you feel inspired again, share out kudos to those who inspired you most. The more kudos you have, the more hitches you can have solved.
Over the weekend the team put together the central parts of the system. Still lacking a kickass UI, but they’ll get there.
Another Live is over, but we are happy to announce that the next event is taking place in Pristina in a few days, another couple of events are planned for Porto, Hungary and Germany. Requests are dropping in like crazy. At the end of the summer, we will be ready to handle them well enough to go forward with these hundreds of requests!
We intend to launch our stuff at STARTUP WEEK 2011 which we are organizing with Initial Factor and TechCrunch EU! Be prepared!
Thanks to our partners
Thanks to all our partners who made this possible. Supporting a crazy bunch like us cannot be easy Nah honestly, you rock. Without supporters such as these guys below, we wouldn’t have been able to reach 1800 people, help in the formation of over 20 startups and have such an impact in the Kosovar, Austrian or Portugese startup communities. Thanks.
Co-working space partner
Internet powered by
And special thank you goes out to our friends Martin Seimen of planetm.at and Axel Blank of blanck.at for helping us with keeping the participants alive through the weekend. Also a great hugh to Stefan Dworak who shot us a ton of wonderful pictures.
[foldup title="Ressources"]
Presentation by Andreas Klinger
Presentation by Can Ertugrul
[/foldup]
May 18 2011
Key facts
- Date: 13th of May to 15th of May 2011
- Place: FH Hagenberg
- Guests: 66
- Mentors: 9
- Experts: 4
- Idea pitches: 12
- Venture teams: 8
- End presentations: 7
- Nationalities: 3
The first STARTup Live Hagenberg!
This was bloody great! Often we see people planning and thinking stuff through, trying to figure out in minute detail what they could/should/would do and pla pla pla… This time around, we mainly had demos of stuff which was built in a weekend! This is what we LOVE!
The setting at the FH Hagenberg was great. A hint to TU Vienna: they have soft chairs. This place exists since a couple of years back, thanks to Bruno Buchberger who also gave a talk on Friday evening. This I know for a fact: it’s the only place which is actively looked at by M$ USA. That’s pretty cool, and the place communicates it. Nice.
Another great guy we met was Gerald Reisinger, the CEO of the universities of applied science in Upper Austria. What he and Bruno have built in this region is pretty epic, and in both situations it’s a work of passion. Respect.
It was a busy weekend. On Friday evening 11 pitchers took the stage, resulting in 8 groups. Most of them slapped their laptops open asap and started working. Just the way we like it.
Saturday. Mentors arrived. One team folded. This was really sad because I saw the potential in it. Would have been a hell of a lot of work, but it always is to get something big off the ground.
In the evening one of our buds from last years infamous 2-day-appearance at the European Forum Alpabch joined us. The one and only Daniel Mattes. Core points were also mentioned in the summary by Elisabeth in her article in OÖ Nachrichten. Summarized, these would be the bulletpoints:
- Product first
- Chasing money is a waste of time until you have proof
- And even then, don’t waste too much of your time doing so. Build your stuff
- Focus on big ones
- Make mistakes
- Learn from mistakes
- Persistence is what makes successful companies
- And some other items which would be bad for us to print
In our usual manner the interview also got personal. How did his wife react, when he said “Honey! I’m gonna do another one!”? Actually, she seemed to be ok with it… Respect. I think my girl would kick me out. Ofcourse, I didn’t exit JaJah for $200M.
We were thoroughly impressed by the productivity of the teams, pulling out prototypes and platforms left and right. Damn. Vienna has a ton to learn from these guys! From now on, maybe we should punish anyone who only has a presentation If you don’t bring a tech demo, I’ll puncture your left lung.
The winner was selected by the experts panel consisting of investors, tech geeks, CEOs and startup coaches. The winning team, which was really impressive, got tix for the STARTUP WEEK 2011, taking place in Vienna in October! The whole team will be able to participate in the conference! Also a couple of subscriptions to OÖ Nachrichten werde handed out!
Mentor Driven
During the weekend, mentors and experts came by and supported the teams – founders, serial entrepreneurs, experts in marketing, biz modeling, public funding and grants, sales and law. We changed the recipe and decided which teams should speak to whom. This we cannot always do, but since we had a pretty good insight in what the teams were doing and what their needs could be… The results were many small sessions with several mentors and deep discussions with a few. The input was implemented during the last 24 hours of the event.
Among the mentors:
Expert Rated
The guys that decide on which team wins the weekend is always a mix of different disciplines.
On the experts panel of STARTup Live Hagenberg #1 were
Markus Wagner
CEO @ i5invest
Lukas Zinnagl
CEO @ Diagnosia, Editor @ TechCrunch EU
Harald Katzenschläger
CEO DreamAcademia
Gerold Weisz
Head of Transfer Center, Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences
Companies and Ideas
The teams were reaaaaaaaally impressive this time around. The fact that most of them demoed their products and stuff on Sunday sets the bar high for the Vienna event! This was the result of the weekend.
Consulting Ace
- Name: Odocu.com
- Team:Robert Kron
Johannes Weinert
Alexander Berger
Michael Schöllhammer
Christian Feldbacher
Bernhard Aufreiter
- Description:A promotion platform focused on small to medium businesses. By allowing their customers to create their own promotions and integrate a countdown+counter thing on their own webpage – in one line of code – they already have 10 customers.
During the weekend, these guys slammed their keyboards and produced an Android app which shows you the next promo, allows you to buy it and download the promo code. Quite bloody impressive for a weekend!
- Name: Launchboard.me
- Team:Thomas Ilk and two guys coding out of Vienna
- Tagline: No fuzz web app launcher
- Description:Put their fingers to the work and kicked out a prototype in a weekend. LOVE IT!
Here’s directly from their launchpage:
We are sick of it!
Seriously, isn’t it annoying to you, always having to check through tabs and bookmarks and what not to find your way to all the online services and web-apps you are using? And having to remember them all by heart if you are on another computer but yours? It certainly is to us, that’s why we have come up with a solution for that problem.
A blend of apple devices’ springboard and the google default page most people use, Launchboard.me allows you to easily access all the online services and web-apps you use, at any time from any computer or device. All you have to remember is your very own Launchboard.me domain. Launching soon!
Us busy-bees have, as you can see, been busy once again. But it doesn’t end here. With STARTup Live Vienna and STARTUP WEEK 2011 more or less around the corner, we’re still buzzing.
Thanks to our partners
Thanks to our crew, Timo, Thomas and Daniel who put their souls into the weekend! Thanks to all out partners who made this possible. Without you, this would never have happened.
Platinum Partners
Gold Partners
Supporters
Media partner
Co-working space partner
