Singapore challenge, another informal chronicle

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Singapore, Orchard Hotel, here we are again.
The asian leg of the startup challenge (painting this animal as a strange three legs one) was again a great success.

We were not distracted at all by the nearby Orchard Tower, we stayed focus, and deliver what we can call a great event, even covered by BBC Asia (see the pic if you don’t believe it, with an unusually blushing Nektarios acting like a pro in front of the camera!)

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Given the dozens of articles in the press mentioning that, you all should know by no that these are the results of the challenge:

Startups:
PassportFX
Pocketbook
z-crd
Innovators:
GIEOM
V-Key

you add a .com after all of them and you have their website (this is me lazy and not willing to embed the link… Sorry, my energy Is slowed down by a almost broken ankle in a volley tournament just after landing from Singapore).

Vibes in the room were great.

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And feedback from the startup and the crowd was touchingly great. Smiles everywhere, energy, willingness to help, great team. I believe our highly technological promoter score tells the same ;-)

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There is no time to rest, New York is just behind the door, and we are full speed to deliver the last regional challenge.

Special mention to Nektarios and Ioana, to whom goes the vast majority of the credits for the organisation and the production of the challenge. Ioana celebrated her 30th birthday in Singapore, and I learned it will stay memorable!
Nektarios kept everything in order, dealing with a million glitches that nobody saw and this is exactly the reason why this teamwork is truly grand.

Finally, a piece of artwork: Ioana spent some jet lagged hours in playing with her iPhone 5 (that we, miserable old iPhones 4 users looked with envy) and here’s the result:

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Please take good note of the frame ;-)

With that, New York is calling. We have work to do!

Stay tuned

Matteo

The informal chronicle of the Innotribe Startup London Challenge

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I have just recovered from the last week in London, where – once again – we had a blast in the Innotribe start-up challenge!

By now, you all know the winners, and you can find them in the Innotribe blog

So, congratulations to

Azimo
Kwanji
Paymandate

In the Startups category and to

Virtual Piggy Ltd.
Waratek

For the Innovators!

Special mention for StudentFunder has won a 6 month drop-in membership at Level39!
(The special mention has nothing to do with the elephant costume Juan Guerra used for the presentation!

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The morning started with the usual mentoring session, where 6 coaches (including yours truly) trained the entrepreneurs to make their “magic” pass in their 6 minutes pitch.
Great energy, some stress, not enough food, good vibes, and time flying!

In the afternoon, in a crowded Level39 conference space, the event…

In pure Innotribe style, few pictures …

Great production crew … (Not all in the following pic, but special mention to Ioana, the best recruit of thes Innotribe year!)

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Great startups … Really … And to make justice, I ll publish a pic where they are all in…

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Special mention as well to Nektarios, the master of ceremony and the man behind the great Organisation of this (and the next ones) event…
Here’s a pic with both of us on stage, just after he said he would translate my English for the audience … How kind! What he does not realize is that I actually make my Italian English unique so people is forced to concentrate haha !

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What else?
Well, my iPhone rebooted all by himself the day after … And I ve lost all the pics of the event I wanted to use for my blog … So will update when I will collect more …
For now, back to work… Singapore is coming !

Stay tuned

Matteo

If I were you, I would apply… Now!

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This is the last week to submit and complete your applications to the Innotribe Startup Challenge.

As my title says, here’s why I would apply If I was the founder of a financial industry related start up, no matter how grown up my company is:

1) it’s free

2) it’s reasonably quick to submit my application

3) regardless if I am selected or not for one of the challenges, there are 100+ judges from all over the planet looking at what my idea and my company are all about

4) judges give me feedback

5) if I am selected to one of the three challenges (London, Singapore or New York in this order) I can pitch in front of at least 100 people, vastly from banks and financial institutions (and it’s free, again)

6) I get exposure on the Innotribe channels, and free PR is always good to have

7) cherry on the cake: I can be @ Sibos in Dubai. And my ticket is paid for.

As Professor Yunus often says, there is an entrepreneur in each human being, and will blossom if the right enabler will cross his path.

Stay Tuned

Matteo

Innotribe Startup Challenge: are you in the right spot?

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Now, for those who are NOT familiar with Innotribe, Innotribe is the innovation arm of SWIFT, established four years ago to enable collaborative innovation in financial services (as the mantra below the logo says). In this context we promote, invest, connect, and give resources to projects with an interest for the financial community at large, or a subset of it (be that subset geographical, business or solution based). We tend to focus on projects in which SWIFT could play a role and on those which fall within the core or adjacencies of the SWIFT pillars.

The Startup Challenge is something else: it is about bridging the gap between financial institutions and early stage and growth stage start-ups, spiced up with venture capitalists and Financial Institution(FI) entrepreneurs.

This means at least two things:
- The remit of the challenge is not (only) collaborative, but also opportunistic for the banks who want to take advantage of this platform and become investors, clients, early adopters or pilots for one or more of the showcased ideas.
- You can apply to the challenge even if your idea has nothing (or very little) to do with the SWIFT business core

A few examples:
- Consumer apps or products (for payments, personal finance, finance management)
- Bid data (behavioural, reputation, credit scoring, business intelligence, social that is applied to finance)
- Mobile apps (retail or B2B) related to financial technology
- Securities services
- Cyber-security, KYC, digital identity apps, wallets, flows aggregators

This list is by no means exhaustive, and if you are still unsure whether your start-up is eligible for the Challenge consider the following:
- Is your idea potentially disrupting a “traditional” service offered by a financial player today?
- Could a bank or another financial player be your partner, your customer, or your enabler?
- If you have a “technical feature” like a plug-in or a significant technology tool improving the way an existing IT service is performing or functioning, do you have a concrete FI proposal that a banker or a CIO could understand in 7 minutes?

Failing that, ask us! Reach out to the Innotribe team (@innotribe) or through Innotribe.com and we’ll advise you on whether you should apply.

So go to http://www.innotribestartup.com and take your chance!

Stay tuned

Matteo

Innotribe Start-up challenge 2013: GO!

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Sitting on the floor (carpeted at least) of the Eurostar lounge. All trains delayed, and I miss my jeans and sneakers … But …

… I am very thrilled to announce that the 2013 edition of the Innotribe startup up challenge is now alive and kicking, and application window is now open, until march 3rd, on www.innotribestartup.com.

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There is some fine tuning compared to last year’s challenge, the main change being the fact that we have a single application window for the three challenges (London, Singapore, New York in this sequence) and the grand finale will be in Dubai, at Sibos.

In case one or two out of the 6 billions people on the planet who don t know that, last year Playmoolah won the Osaka grand finale … I am saying this just because I found this cool picture and I wanted to publish it ..

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Some numbers of last year: 600 applicants, 300+ eligible, and over two hundred millions dollars generated in buy-out or round one financing amongst the start-ups who attended the three challenges.
200+ online judges (we thank them in advance for helping us pre-screening the companies) and 100+ financial institutions attending the competition.

“And so what?” Some of you may ask, including some of my own colleagues.

As strange as it might sound,the start-up challenge is actually a triple win:

- for start-up it s obvious (I hope): no way they can get visible/talks to so many potential customers or partners in one shot
- for banks it s compelling: no one does the hard job of identifying the best and brightest and and they come over to listen to the pitches and cherry pick the ones closer to their strategy or their needs
- for SWIFT, it does align with its mission of community enabler, positioning Innotribe as the shared utility for innovation, and give the space for a dialogue that would be unlikely to happen without this initiative

This year we have more judges, more banks to reach out to, more PR coverage (I have done two interviews just today about it) so hopefully we are set to have an even more compelling challenge.

You have a startup, in the financial services space, your company is less than three years old? You can apply. Early stage or Innovators, the limit is 1M EUR turnover OR investment.

In the coming weeks dates will be confirmed, we do know already that the first challenge will be in London mid April, then one month later Singapore and mid June New York.

The carpet is more and more uncomfortable, but I m glad I took the opportunity to share this important piece of news ;-) !

Stay tuned

Matteo

The Israel’s lesson on how to engage with start-ups. Three amazing days!

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This is the first post of 2013, and this year’s adventure has started with one of the most mind blowing trips I have done in the past years: Israel, certainly the beginning of a love story.
Last time I was there was in 1997, landed in an airport that does not exist anymore (it s brand new) but once there, I felt immediately the vibes and the charm of this country, unchanged.

My dad on Facebook wrote me “you are at the center of the universe” – and he said that because of his fervent religious faith, but no matter if you believe or not, you feel immediately you are somewhere that makes your soul more sensitive.

Let me start by saying that my 3 days on site coincided with the worse weather of the past 20 years, with rain, storms and wind all over. Roads closed, flooded, expected snow in Jerusalem, and this is what the sea looked like from my hotel room:

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The objective of my visit was to beginning to explore the start up Eco-system of the country, which is second only to Silicon Valley (in terms of quality of the incubators)
Israel produces more start ups then Japan, India, Korea, Canada and UK altogether. Surprised?

A recommended reading is
“Start-up nation, the story of Israeli’s economic miracle”, if you want to know more about the story.

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I had the honor to meet Yossi Smoler, from the Chief scientist cabinet, the founder of the government program helping incubators and start-ups to grow.
It s incredible how such a small country succeeded in providing such a vibrant space for entrepreneurs.

One of the incubators, “thetime” explained me how they works, and I took a picture of the most important slide of the presentation:

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Uri Weinheber, CEO of Thetime (www.thetime.co.il) took me through how they select, fund and coach the promising start ups within the government program.
What is AMAZING is that the whole cost of the nationwide program is below 100 M USD, and they have 16 incubators working in it, each mentoring from 3 to 7 start up a year, many of which produced historical exits.

I would like, one day, to partner with some of the bright minds of my country I have the chance to have met already and do something like this in Italy (to start with) … But this is another story.

We had a very successful seminar as well with local fin tech start ups, and despite the horrible storm that made some of the trips to Tel Aviv very difficult, turnout was very good.
Of course, the idea was to promote the start-up challenge for which we will open the applications next week.

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My forecast is that we will have at least 20 start ups applying to the challenge, from Israel only, compared to close to zero last year.

Another place I would like to mention is Jerusalem Venture Partners because I think they have a concept very similar to SWIFT Campus 2.1 but applied to start ups. Again, great example of how a CITY converted a poorly (and kind of dangerous neighbors too at that time) into one of the most vibrant start up places of the planet.

Will end this first glimpse of what I have experienced with a NEW IDEA that occurred to me there and then, during one of the first meetings.
I am sure you are familiar with http://www.couchsurfing.com.
how about apply the same concept for start ups?

Imagine we could link a dozen of incubators around the world and make a program for start ups willing to test another market (or others markets) with a low risk approach.
These companies could be hosted by the incubator on the other side and get introduced to some local prospects, get to know the opportunities and the constrains of another market, and eventually decide if expand their operations or not.

- it s good for the start ups (obvious)
- it s good for the incubators (new opportunities, increased deal flow)
- it s good for the ecoSystem (job creation, economical development)

I spoke about this with the leaders of all incubators and the government I met, and guess what… They found the idea absolutely great!

I wanted to share it on my blog so the day it will happen I will refer to it as something I published when it was not even a PowerPoint (which I will try not to do… This is the beauty of this world)

Now I go off the grid of few hours, the short night flight from Tel Aviv left me with some need to rest a bit.

I would like to thank all the people from the Israeli government and the Israeli embassy in Belgium who helped in organizing what I hope will be the first of numerous trips over there… I left with the feeling we only scratched the surface.

Stay tuned

Matteo

The Grand Finale of the start up Challenge

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There are zillions of articles and blogs about the Innotribe Start-up Challenge finals @ Sibos in Osaka, so you all know playMoolah and Gust won.
Let me put here, for reference, the Banking Technology article.

The reason I wanted to blog about it is not the news, but the vibes and the way forward.

First of all, the challenge put together a beautifully crowded room, our Innotribe tent, and – not only because it was the last day – the air you could breath in the room was special.
I felt very proud for what we achieved.
Kudos to Nektarios (@nekliolios) for having put so much energy, wisdom and structure to the Challenge during the whole program.

What we achieved?

Well, I would start by a number of financial industry professionals feeling something different, sparkling, intellectually challenging, and simply worth to take off line in conversations that will lead – I am positive – in business opportunities.

Also,the Innotribe start-up challenge generated over 120 M EUR in VC funding or in acquisitions, if we take into the account the participants to last year challenge in Toronto.
And this is not what matters. It s just a number.
The fact that Playmoolah (even before Osaka) struck a deal with OCBC and integrated their program in all the branches of the bank in Singapore, for example, is what makes us proud. And willing to do more.

What is more?
Let me share the objectives for the 2013 challenge.
We will of course run the Challenge again, with London, New York and Singapore as designated locations.
The opportunity is to leverage the Challenge in other locations, with specific innovation themes and in specific Eco-systems. Think Africa for Mobile or Latin America for Remittances. Our network is not as strong there as in the rest of the world, but trough the Challenge we would open the door to innovators, VCs and FI professionals.

The call for judges Is open as well.
Go on Innotribestartup.com and register with your LinkedIn account. We would love you to get the word out as well as helping Innotribe in screening the best and brightest.

Stay tuned

Matteo

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