These People Help Young Entrepreneurs In Europe

As I wrote in my previous post, Hub Vilnius is a great place for networking. That's were I met Mindaugas, Linas and other guys who work with  "Verslauk!" (in English it would be "Do Business!" I guess) initiative.

Verslauk! is a non-profit initiative to support entrepreneurs in Lithuania - they organize business plan competitions, conferences and similar events aimed at people who want to or already started their own business. Every year in autumn they make their big business plan competition and give out money (up to 20 thousand Litas or approximately 5800 Euro) and various (stuff that helps to start business) other prizes to winners. In 7 years Verslauk! helped to establish 57 businesses, that have created more than 150 workplaces. If interested - like Verslauk! facebook page.

Anyways, those lads invited me to IT Startup Conference "Going International", which they were intensely organizing at the time. And I went. Short (and boring) description of the event: "Going International" was held on 20th of December in LR Ministry of Economy. During the conference successful Lithuanian IT projects operating in international markets (Mokipay, ImpressPages CMS) and new IT startups were introduced. Speakers from Denmark and Iceland shared best practices of expanding IT business to foreign markets and how IT startups are developed  abroad. Photos can be found here.  

Rando Pikner

Long and cool story with presentation descriptions and links:  conference was started by presentations of 3 new startups: first one by Alan Mendelevič, founder of „AdDuplex“ - new ad exchange network for Windows Phone 7, second by Mantas Pakamorė, a multilingual hosted content management platform called „ContentAir“ and third by Rando Pikner, co-founder of „Utilimon“, energy management solution for reducing utility costs. From those first 3 guys only Rando delivered a really nice presentation, was clear then describing  „Utilimon“ and gave some nice insights on going international etc. For „AdDuplex“ and „ContentAir“ I had to check their websites to understand what was that they are doing, not to talking about how they are different from competition etc. Well, good luck to them all. Click here for Mantas presentation, Rando presentation and Alan's presentation (update - added later).

[BTW, Rando is from Estonia, he came to Lithuania to participate in StartupHighway - "...a European start-up accelerator, aspiring to be the best of its kind in the wider CEE region." Rando's Utilimon was selected as one of 4 final StartupHighway startups and received seed funding, but lets leave that for another post.]

Mindaugas Rutkauskas

After coffee brake Mindaugas Rutkauskas, UAB  „Mokipay Europe” Executive director, „Antigravity ventures” Project director gave a great presentation about Mokipay.  Mokipay is one of the most innovative and prominent project in Lithuania this year. It is an NFC (Near Field Communication) based system of mobile payments. The NFC technology identifies users when their phones, which have  Mokipay stickers on them, are placed on a reader. This project attracted enormous attention not only from early adopters in Lithuania but also from serious foreign venture capital funds and companies, because mobile payments  are now  one of the hottest topics among innovation and technology professionals. BTW, as far as I understand,  Mokipay is not associated with odnoklassniki.ru, similarities in logos is just a coincidence :)

Thomas Solupajev-Ronlev

Continued by Audrius Jankauskas from „ImpressPages CMS” - free and open source content management system. Audrius made a career at GetJar, already has built and sold his web startup, developed and sold web development business with 2 other ImpressPages CMS co-founders. He shared his personal experience in building web startups, advantages and disadvantages of building business from a small country etc.

Thomas Solupajev-Ronlev, Chairman of Danish Chamber of Commerce and partner in 1.Q consult (a Lithuanian-Danish consulting company established by Danish partners) in his informative presentation "Think Global, act Global" spoke about ambitions that drive people to startup - work for fun or aiming to become a global success, how to determine if project has a global potential and how to utilize it. Then how to plan your startup going global from day 1, prepare for going abroad and who can help. Click here for Thomas's presentation. 

Zenia Worm Francker

Zenia Worm Francker presented "Venture Cup“ business plan competition that takes place every year. So, Venture Cup is a kind of business plan competition in which entrepreneurs with unique business ideas compete for investment capital. Run by non-profit organizations in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland, Venture Cup competitions are the largest business plan competitions in the world. Used to promote entrepreneurship within Scandinavian universities and to generate high-growth start-up companies within Scandinavian society, the various organizations award more than half a million euros across Scandinavia on a yearly basis. If your not from countries - no problem, for Venture Cup you need only one person from teem to have connection with Danish university. For more info check out Zenia's presentation. Also, like Venture Cup Denmark Facebook page.

Thorlindur Kjartansson

Final presentation was by Thorlindur Kjartansson, Chairman of the board Innovit Entrepreneurship Center. Thorlindur is also the founder of i2, consulting and marketing strategy company. Innovit Entrepreneurship Center was founded in 2007 in Reykjavik, Iceland.  Innovit is a privately held, non-profit company who helps enthusiastic individuals and startups to manage their business ideas.  Innovit works closely with the University of Iceland and University of Reykjavik to inspire Icelandic students to the world of entrepreneurship. 

Thorlindur's presentation "Road Map for Success – Icelandic startups" was about how you need to think if want to make a global startup. He talked about importance of shaping your idea for sociability, planing and having proper business plan, how crucial it is to have unique skill set and gather a  good team.  See Thorlindur's presentation here.

I hope you enjoyed this small report from Verslauk! IT Startup Conference "Going International" as much  as I liked the conference and will leave me some feedback ;)

Verslauk! Do Business! 

Eddy

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