Applications are open for Free Electrons – the first truly global acceleration program, that connects the most promising startups with leading utilities in the energy sector. The program seeks to find solutions in the mobility, clean energy, smart grids, and digitalization.
On March 13th, the startups selected for the bootcamp (happening in Dublin) will be announced.
Just like the last edition, the program will have 3 modules: the first in Columbus, in the North-American state of Ohio, in May; the second in Hong Kong, China, in June; and the last module will happen in Lisbon, in September, when a winner will be announced – winning a $200.000 prize.
In its 3rd edition, Free Electrons already has a successful history: several pilots began business partnerships between the startups and the utilities and last edition’s winner, SOLshare, is revolutionizing the energy market in Bangladesh, where over 50 million people still can’t access the electrical grid.
These 10 utilities of the energy sector have, together, around 80 million clients and are located in more than 40 countries – which gives mature energy startups the chance to go global by accessing these partners.
You only have one chance to make a good first impression. We very quickly (in a matter of seconds!) access others in terms of trustworthiness, reliability and hostility. This thought can be very daunting when you’re meeting with possible partners or investors – the good news is that you have anywhere between 1 to 20 minutes to make the best first impression.
There are three areas where you should focus on – yourself, your business and your audience – to make a first and lasting good impression.
Put your best foot forward.
Investors are looking for talented individuals they can trust with their money, and they need to feel confident in your capabilities as well as your personality.
Social Expressivity – These are the expressions that we, as humans, will notice in each other’s facial expression, so try to smile to create empathy and not convey hostility, and look in your interlocutor’s eyes as it helps to establish trust between you.
Good posture – Bad posture might be construed as lack of confidence in yourself or the business, so make sure to straighten your spine and shoulders (in a relaxed way) and give them a firm handshake. You can also lean in towards your interlocutor to show that you are listening and your focus is on them.
Look the part – If you want to impress upon your audience that you’re an expert at something you should look like you are. We know that looks don’t mean much as competencies go, but in this occasion your audience will have a short amount of time to decide how they feel about you, so your look will play a role in it. If you’re in a very meticulous business, you don’t want a shirt stain to give the impression that you are not detail-oriented.
Clean communication – Practice your speech before you go and, if possible, test it with colleagues beforehand. Your discourse should be organised and clear, so your audience can follow it easily. Confusing sentences can make your investors go into a rabbit hole of questions that will stray you off the presentation of your ideas the way you wanted to convey them.
No one knows your business better than you.
Show that you know your product and business better than anyone else could.
Know your numbers – You should know your business inside and out as well as the market and competition. If possible, know your numbers by heart, as this will show how involved and knowledgeable you are. If not possible, then include them in the presentation in a impactful and meaningful way.
Show your reasoning – Don’t make bold statements without any backing up data. Always show your investors how did you came to that knowledge and help them be on the same page as you.
Have answers – Try to anticipate what will be their questions and have answers ready that can be tailored for specific questions. Sometimes, your business or market may be too innovative and you might not have all the answers yet. In that case never lie – experienced investors will see right through it. It’s better to be honest – admit that you don’t have all the answers and show them what your company is doing to correct that.
Show off your team – Let them know which problems did you encounter along the way and how did the team solve it, and show them that you are team with the right set of skills that works well together to solve problems.
Focus on your audience.
You want to impress your investors but the best way to do it is to make it all about them.
Know them and their role – In the day of google and social media, there’s no excuse to not recognize your interlocutors upon first meeting. Do a quick research to get to know them and the projects they usually invest on. If they’re corporate, understand their role in the company. If possible, find some of their interests or hobbies that you can bring into conversation to create a good rapport.
Build a conversation – Speak with them and not “at them”. If they direct the conversation towards a specific topic, make sure you show them that you listened and incorporate their concerns into your ideas.
Express your gratitude – Be polite and thank them. After all, they took the time to listen to your ideas.
Easy, right? It seems like a lot of tiny details, and some of these things you might already do naturally or they might be something your mum once told you (they are very good at these, moms). The important thing is that you feel prepared and confident that you’re on the right track for a great first impression.
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The second edition of The Journey is in full throttle!
Brought to you by Turismo de Portugal and fully dedicated to the development of innovation in the Tourism Industry, The Journey is a 3-month program with a global reach. It aims to bring startups dedicated to solving problems in the industry to work alongside Turismo de Portugal and local industry players: Grupo Barraqueiro, Geostar, Pestana Hotel Group, SATA Azores Airlines and NOS.
This second edition is focusing on four big key points:
Personalizing the customer journey
Creating a seamless traveling experience
Improve customer care
Promote conscious travelling
As an important growing industry, tourism is perfectly positioned to create the right conditions for startups and innovation to thrive in Portugal, as pointed out by the president of Turismo de Portugal, Luís Araújo.
“The idea for this project, once again organized by Beta-i, is to reinforce Portugal’s positioning as an entrepreneurship and experimentation platform for startups. At a moment when the digital world both consolidates and conditions the sector’s sustainability, Turismo de Portugal keeps focused on creating a friendly environment for innovation, through several initiatives to support entrepreneurship.”
The bootcamp, which took place last week, gathered 20 selected startups from around the world. Beta-i gave the startups the tools they needed to prepare a business case adapted to the needs of the partners and pilot case plan of action. The week included presentations, workshops and a round of speed-dating (one on one meetings with the corporate partners), motivational talks and sharing of alumni experiences.
The Finalists
These are the 14 startups that are conducting pilot-projects with The Journey’s partners.This exciting phase will develop over the next two months, with the final results being presented on november 20th, at Lisbon Tourism Summit.
Get to know them:
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[item title=”aPieceof.me”]A platform to find unique souvenirs and sustain local commerce and trades
[item title=”Omikuji”] Omikuji is a Software as a Service company committed to democratize the use of Big Data and Advanced Analytics solutions within small, medium and big-size business based on cutting-edge cloud based technology and custom-made data science.
[item title=”Social CxN”]SocialCxN is an automated Influencer Marketing Platform that was designed and developed to make the influencer marketing industry more transparent, collaborative, and efficient for both Brands & Influencers.
[item title=”Timescenery”]Timescenery is a social trip planner and marketplace, making trip planning frictionless and social, especially for multi-leg itineraries, such as road trips, city hopping, business travel or any kinds of trips with busy schedule, including different places to visit and logistics.
[item title=”Venture With Impact”]Venture with Impact brings working professionals to cities abroad in groups of 20 or less. Venturers are provided with living accommodations, workspace, 24-hour support and culturally immersive activities for a period of one month. Venture with Impact participants are matched with an NGO or social business to work on a project that aligns with their professional skills, interests and remote work schedule.
[/item]
[item title=”Wall-i”]Wall-I.TV is the most advanced cloud-based Digital Signage OS, able to provide segmented content for the audience consuming the information and versatile enough to be adaptable to the presentation of contents within different context requirements.
So many icons have talked about failure and still it’s the biggest deal there is. Johnny Cash said: “You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space”. Icons talked about it, people quoted, maybe even wrote it on Facebook and immediately forgot when they saw someone failing.
Back in 2013, Ekaterina Walter, a contributor for Forbes wrote that “it seems that failure tends to be more public than success.” And she is right, it’s not a matter of perception, when people are successful they’re untouchable, people don’t speak a lot about them out of respect, but when everything goes south people become an easy target, the backlash is totally out of proportion. It looks like everyone who never tried feels free to criticize, to say they’d do better – again, they never tried -, they laugh at their misfortune, but it’s actually hiding something deeper. Their fear of trying.
No one is to blame for this reactions and everyone is to blame for this reactions. For centuries society has condemned failure, if you fail at school you’re no good, you’re not intelligent enough, you’re not going far. Teachers say it, parents say it, friends say it and enemies say it. It’s still a part of our culture, a demanding culture averse to flaws.
According to Marco Ermidas, anthropologist working at Beta-i, “society in general has an extreme difficulty in dealing with what’s negative or isn’t pretty enough, the flaw is always pointed out”, adding that “the future expectations and the need to be an overachiever also helps adding pressure”.
The biggest problem with failure is that not everybody reacts to failure the same way and it can actually take a toll on people. The embarrassment caused by it can lead to depression. But of course no one thinks about that when they’re comfortably sitting on their couches playing judge.
Also, when asked about how society saw women’s failure, Marco said that “it makes a difference to be a woman, men are more easily forgiven and society believes it’s almost certain they’ll succeed again in the future, while women do not have that benefit of the doubt, it’s harder to forgive a woman’s failure”.
The same can be applied to startups. People look at startups as a trend led by a group of entitled kids who have nothing better to do with money so decide to have a startup and not happy get money from the government that could be used on other things. What follows? Backlash.
How to overcome failure?
Even if you don’t fail, but you happen to be on the same business that someone failed recently, you’re going to be a failure, because people will make a general assumption by inferring from a specific case. So, you too should be prepared.
Marco believes that failure is like grieve, you have to go through all different stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Because losing something you’re very fond of is exactly the same as breaking up, for example. You’ve been through break-ups and you know that it takes time.
Never, not even for a second, blame yourself. Something might have failed but that doesn’t make a loser out of you. It’s not a death sentence it’s a bump in the road.
And finally but not less important: face failure, embrace it, admit it, speak about it. Better yet, make fun of it and learn from it. If you need inspiration to do it – let’s hope you never have to – read this farewell post from a startup.
The second edition of SIBS PAYFORWARD, an acceleration program done in partnership between SIBS and Beta-i, has already selected the startups for its Bootcamp, from more than 100 startups from 20 different countries. The number of startups applying is impressive, in comparison with last year, considering this edition was mainly focused on startups with Open Banking API solutions.
This change from the first edition reflects the “hot topic” in Europe right now and its challenges: PSD2. What is amazing is that the program was able to captivate startups from the United States or Asia where this topic isn’t that trendy right now. This shows not only the success of the first edition but also the current importance SIBS open innovation approach has worldwide.
The 10 startups attending the Bootcamp were chosen after being carefully evaluated and are focused in areas such as: analytics, clients, payments and security. The lucky 10 are:
Coinscrap Finance
It’s a smartphone app that allows users to round up their daily purchases and automatically save the spare change into financial products such as saving insurance, life insurance or pension funds.
Gofact
It aggregates invoicing, expense management and bank account management.
Gofact works with integrated solutions in identity, communication and management. A cloud billing solution made for the micro-entrepreneur.
Infin8
Infin8 created the only mobile banking app that people will ever need regardless of how many banking products they have in different banks. The goal is to carry out all daily banking needs from a single app, making people forget about the financial jargon.
Limitless App
It’s a mobile app which aims to help banks and other financial institutions help Millennials save their own Money. The money is transferred to a dedicated “savings” account rather than invested. Then, some of savings will be invested into risk appropriate, low-cost funds so that clients can achieve their financial goals even faster.
MoneyGarden
It’s a financial platform which offers to users a holistic approach to personal financial planning and wealth management. It also offers a consolidated view of all income, spending and assets. It also shows to customers where they can save money and help them to better invest their money.
Nextgen
It’s an integrated and an inter-operable financial inclusion solution which uses multiple base hardware solutions (SIM overlay, the secure microSD card and a low cost NFC reader for an 360 degree offering on enabling financial inclusion at the last mile and for the masses).
SEZA.ME: FinPin Technologies
It provides a secure and simple new way of secure logins to potentially all existing password protected accounts by leveraging a mobile phone for primary authentication where possible and for secondary authentication where necessary.
SimbaPay
Choose the country to send money to, add the mobile or account number of your recipient, add the amount you’d like to send and include a personal message. SimbaPay, manages the money and risk of the transfer.
Spin Analytics
It brings digital transformation in Credit Risk Management by leveraging predictive analytics, AI and ML techniques on Big Data. It helps business and financial leaders to reformulate their challenges and Convert Data into Actionable Intelligence. Its product implements Credit Risk Models’ development and maintenance by leveraging predictive analytics, AI and ML techniques on Big Data.
Sstrategy
It has a platform called Debit2Go which aims turning enterprise data and transactional banking operations into loyalty & business outcomes. Sstategy enables turning customers into subscribers through the use of SDD (SEPA Direct Debit Scheme) linked to the Subscription Economy phenomena.
During the Bootcamp that is taking place from February 26 to March 2, the selected startups will have the opportunity to learn about payments and tech financial solutions, SIBS’s core business, besides having access to the people who work at different branches of the company developing the services the company has both in Portugal and abroad. As if this wasn’t enough the startups will also be part of the biggest Open Banking ecosystem in Portugal.
The bootcamp also includes individual coaching, which means learning how to pitch, workshops and mentoring sessions, considered crucial for startups to improve their business plans as well as adjust their products to the market where SIBS works.
After this 10 weeks of acceleration awaits the startups with the main goal to integrate them at SIBS and that can turn into business, partnerships and even investment.
Everyone involved is eager for the Bootcamp to start. Maria Antónia Saldanha, Brand and Communication Director at SIBS, says “we are very excited with this new phase. The selected startups are all very interesting and we’re looking forward to see how it goes during the bootcamp”.
Manuel Tânger, Co-founder and Head of Open Innovation at Beta-i, has an advice to the startups that made it this far “look at what SIBS is doing and look at the opportunities both inside and outside Portugal where SIBS operates”. And Francisco Carvalho, Program Director, says that “the goal is a high number of conversion rate after the bootcamp, because that means that the quality of the startups, are, like we believe, really high. We’re aiming for seven pilots”.
