OpenCoffee@Blagoevgrad




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  • 2013-01-27 20:17:05
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The first ever OpenCoffee event organized by the StartUP@Blagoevgrad team happened Saturday, January 28, in Piano Bar Limited. As StartUP President Ivaylo Shipochky put it, the beginning was “humble but promising.” [caption id="attachment_10641" align="alignleft" width="125" caption="Polina Yancheva, president of StartUP Foundation"]Polina Yancheva, president of StartUP Foundation[/caption] In a friendly atmosphere  the guest speakers Polina Yancheva, President of StartUP Foundation, and Dilyan Dimitrov, co-founder of Eleven venture fund, shared their experiences from the newborn entrepreneurial environment in Bulgaria. “Right now in Bulgaria things are happening more and faster than anywhere in the world,” Dimitrov said. He pointed out that the two most amazing things are going to be events like StartUP conferences and the newly founded venture funds, which help innovative businesses in their earliest stages. Yancheva opened the informal discussion with a story of how StartUP came to Bulgaria. As in many other scenarios involving the word “entrepreneurship,” she and four other people realized that working for a big company or a government office was not exactly their dream. That is how in 2007 they launched the first StartUP conference in Bulgaria. The event was held in the University of National and World Economy in Sofia and managed to attract 808 people, while not more than 100 were actually expected. The StartUp foundation hosts events in Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna, Blagoevgrad and Gabrovo. The OpenCoffee format has been practiced since 2008 with the idea to have more regular meetings with business people, potential angel investors and anyone interested in developing their own ideas into something marketable. The laid-back form of communication and the venue, which would traditionally be a bar or a café, allows for an open discussion without the pressure of the actual conference. Dimitrov explained in detail how getting funded by a venture organization in Bulgaria works. The concept of   Eleven is quite new to the country and was established in April 2012 by co-founders Daniel Tomov, Ivaylo Simov, Jonathan Bradford and Dimitrov himself. The Sofia-based fund is part of the Accelerator Venture Fund program, which operates worldwide. [caption id="attachment_10642" align="alignright" width="125" caption="Dilyan Dimitrov, Eleven venture fund"][/caption] Any small team of people with a business idea is welcome to apply for funding through a questionnaire of 30 questions. 25 of them get shortlisted to pitch their ideas in front of a jury, and eventually 10 to 15 teams end up joining the program. So far around 1000 ideas have passed through the hands of the Eleven team. Next, all the selected teams are invited to Sofia and are given 3 months and €25,000 to develop a marketable prototype of their product. During this period, the teams are subjects to intensive mentoring by business professionals from all walks of life, who give them feedback on the development of their ideas. After the first stage is done, some of the teams might end up getting additional funding of up to €200 000 to start marketing their products and later get assistance in finding future investors. It all sounds very good, but what the venture fund jury is looking for is whether the teams have “enough talent to start from an idea and build it up,” as Dimitrov said. Another important factor he pointed out was that contestants should have “some kind of unfair advantage and knowledge of the market they are aiming at.” He explained that the best chance for success occurs if there are both business people and technical people among the co-founders, so that they can develop the projects themselves and spend as little on outsourcing as possible.  “Most importantly we want people to be committed,” Dimitrov added, “It is 25 K we are giving them, so we need them to be 100% into their projects.” Among the ideas that are getting approved more frequently are the ones connected to IT like different mobile and computer applications. Some of the approved projects mentioned were an application that helps people to pick what to wear, one that tutors them in a new language, and a program that is supposed to connect all their digital devices together, so they can access all their files anywhere at any time. Dimitrov said Eleven is a strong supporter of “crazy ideas,” because they find a way to work more often than not. Even so, the first time they had an application process for funding the Eleven team had things like vegetable exchange, traditional sausages, and even a 2-kilo toothbrush that can clean all of a person's teeth at once. “We would not scale things that cannot get to the stores and scale easily if done right,” Dimitrov said. There are currently more than €22 million invested in venture funds in Sofia with 12 million from Eleven, 9 from LaunchHub and 2.5 million from VoiVoda, so the entrepreneurial picture is beginning to take form. “We are important for organizations like Eleven because we educate the people that go on and apply for funding from them,” Yancheva explained. “Even if they don’t end up becoming entrepreneurs, with the StartUP event we want to let young people in Bulgaria think in the entrepreneurial spirit, be creative and consistent in what they are doing,” she added. What she mostly wanted the AUBGers to get from the story is the belief that "Things happen!" if people are really devoted to the issue. StartUP@Blagoevgrad is planning to have an OpenCoffee event every month with different guest speakers. The team is already planning on some changes so that more people can attend the next talk. With the support of the StartUP Foundation this year’s conference in Blagoevgrad will be held on March 23 and 24.