Workshops, meetups and scouting activities: encouraging startups from XEU outreach country Poland to apply for Idea Challenge was the aim of september activities of the Berlin Outreach team.
With these activities, new ideas were scouted, new locations were discovered and new partnerships were built up. These stakeholders supported the contest and spread the word within their local community. As startups, mentors and coaches always meetup at co-working spaces, these were the ones to focus on when planning the events.
When the final submission numbers of Idea Challenge were published, Poland showed to be the one with the strongest submission numbers from XEU Outreach countries without EIT ICT Labs node.
These are the identifed new partners to bring EIT ICT Labs expertise in innovation and entrepreneurship to Poland:
3.9. We Found - World Women Startups & Entrepreneurs Foundation (Meetup in Warsaw)
The world’s first global female startup community helps women to develop sustainable businesses from scratch by educating in personal development, business and tech. Their platform provides access to experts, mentors and investors.
16.09. Mission: ToRun @Hanza Café
Connecting experts providing financial mentoring, co-working and coaching in Krakow and Torun: Luka Sucic from hub:raum Krakow, incubator and accelerator of Deutsche Telekom, led a workshop „From idea to business plan“ at Hanza Café in Torun. Patrick Young, financial expert, is currently developing the café into a co-working space and founded the startup group Mission: ToRun. Two startups attending the workshop have been qualified to apply for the Idea Challenge.
17.09. Reaktor Warsaw
Besides presenting Idea Challenge at Open Reaktor, the monthly meetup of the Warsaw startup scene at the co-working space, lithuanian startup Bliu Bliu attended the event. As ambassador for EIT ICT Labs coached startups, Greta Arlauskite represented the Berlin Residency team.
25.09. Hive61
Poznan’s startup and business community meets up regularly and invites speakers from many different fields to share their knowledge with the local startup scene in Poznan. The Hive event series was started in Krakow as Hive 53 and becomes know more and more popular across Poland.
26.-28.09. Startup Weekend Poznan
This startup weekend edition focussed on fashion and tech, and after pitching the ideas, the teams had 54 hours to develop a business model, code, design and validate the market. The final pitches in front of local entrepreneurial leaders pointed out some interesting teams. Berlin residency coach Lindsay Eyink, formerly of apple, attended the event as workshop leader and mentor for UXdesign topics.
