Tag Archive for: investors

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Flight8 Demo Day April 2020

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Congratulations Entrepreneurs of Flight 8 Flight 8 Certificate

On April 8th, 2020, Entrepreneurs of Flight 8 of the World Innovations Forum  Entrepreneurs Acceleration Program (AEP) presented after completion of a 3-month accelerator program at the online Demo Day in front of Angel groups and Investors from Asia and Europe.

The selection of Flight8 startups started in South East Asia. In November we have been on the Asia Tour in fall 2019, where we met and interviewed several entrepreneurs in Vietnam and Cambodia who presented at our local pitch events in Saigon and Phnom Phen. Our Asian Ambassadors introduced us to 2 Pitch Event winners in South Korea and a company in Nepal who all joined the Bootcamp in Vietnam.

With the location support from the Saigon Innovation Hub, we conducted an intensive onside accelerator boot camp with ten teams from Nepal, Cambodia, Vietnam, and South Korea. The first week covered key topics of entrepreneurs’ experiences i.e.  Deep Innovation Design Method, identifying the uniqueness of a company, the need for speed, vision development, building a disruptive business model, customer experience, traction development, growth hacking, going global and capitalization of a company throughout its growth path. The intensity and necessary focus also showed the energy and willpower of the participating entrepreneurs.  Unfortunately, some teams simply didn’t make it and we completed the week with eight hardened teams.

The Bootcamp in Vietnam was well received and good preparation of what was coming: a 12-week online marathon to turn respective companies from a great idea into an execution path to make it a reality. The goal: a unique genuinely innovative business that will be hard to copy and have the attributes to be a stand-alone business for the future. During these 12 weeks, three more companies had to give up for different reasons, lack of focus, realizing the idea would not sustain the pressure the market will put on or realizing entrepreneurial requisites are different than they thought.

Five remaining teams proved that they would do whatever it takes to bring their business through any type of storm and received the World Innovations Forum Accelerator Flight 8 certificate after presenting their companies in front of roughly 60 Angels and VCs at our the Online Demo Day.

 

 

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Working in South Korea

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One week with great teams, jar dropping innovation spaces and top notch universities.

Our work in South Korea, with our ambassador and team was very exciting. South Korea is certainly no longer an “emerging country”. It bypassed many of the developed countries.

Startup ecosystem of the superlative. South Korea’s brand new Innovation hub is certainly the most mondain, most modern and best equipped incubation campus in the world. Startups, scaleUps and SME’s on hypergrowth don’t miss anything here. Whether its a photo and video studio, conference rooms of any size, offices of any shape, restaurants and countless other amenities. This is very hard to top.

Introduction to the Seoul Innovation Ecosystem, it’s focus to take business global and its quest to build more Samsung, LG or Hyundai type companies.

Entrepreneurs Workshop at the University of Seoul. A variety of students, even from foreign countries participated to learn all about innovative thinking, the innovation paradigm and how most innovative companies became the core of a country’s economy.

Investor Workshop for South Korean Angel Investors, Venture Capitalists and institutional investors.

A great view onto Seoul by night from one of the largest towers in the South Korean metropoly

Private World Innovations Forum Dinner with industry leaders from both Asia and Europe. We were discussing how Innovation is not just a way to build new technologies but innovation being the economic foundation of any leading nation.

And a final Entrepreneurs Event with pitching contest in the Seoul Startup Hub. This incubator just complete the expansion and is now good for almost 1,000 startups. Five selected startups pitched in front of an audience from the SSH and showed their ability to innovate.

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Whats all about this “vision” thing

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Do you really need a vision for your business? You don’t NEED anything, it’s YOUR business! But here is what a VISION can do for you.

  1. You don’t “create” a vision for yourself
         Hopefully, you already envision where you want to take your business. And if you don’t have one, ask yourself why you are doing it? Why would you risk your employees careers? Why would you risk your investor’s money? Why would you risk to waste the time of your customers? Why would you jeopardise all the people’s time and money you will deal with?
    But given you have your vision, here is what it can do for you:
  2. Have a vision to attract co-founders
    If you have a very interesting case or cause you may attract people joining you on your journey that you would never ever be able to hire otherwise. You will need top notch people to create an amazing business – any business. You only can get those if you have a powerful and very meaningful vision.
  3. Have a vision for your customers
    Customers get asked to buy a gazillion products every day. Why should they buy yours? There is always a cheaper product around the corner. If not today tomorrow somebody gets up and makes it even less expensive than anybody else in the world. But your amazing idea and long term view of the impact of what you and your exceptional team is doing, will help your customers also tomorrow, next year and the years to come. Customers buy either the cheapest or the most compelling product or service. And if it is your vision to make sure you will be always the cheapest – well than that is your vision.
  4. Have a vision to attract top talents
    As a startup you usually have a very tough time to attract these amazingly smart top talents who seem to walk on water, get things done while others still wonder what the best way would be or try to consult others how to even start. You want talents that are almost impossible to employ by anybody. You look for people, where everybody is afraid of to even train them because they would be hired away in no time. But if you have an impressive vision and show a way to get there, you find the very people you even need to get there. And you find people who know it’s them to shape the organization, it’s them who makes it happen. You may ask: Why don’t they do it on their own? Because what you bring to the party is an amazing VISION that makes them tick. Of course, they will ask to get a piece of the cake – and that is totally ok.
  5. Have a vision for your market
    People in your industry or market should know about you and your amazing business. You will never have enough money to advertise. But your amazing vision will be carried around by media and other people. Let them know how you change the world for the better by doing what you do.
  6. Have a vision to attract investors
    If you have no vision where this business can grow to, why should anybody invest? Why should people risk their hard earned money, no matter how much they have, to put it i your business and not in some of the other 1 million startups around the world? Your vision gives the indication of the opportunity down the road.
  7. Have a vision to attract anybody who matters to you
    There are millions of businesses out there. All competing for a tiny slice of the market. Most struggle to keep their business alive – because why them and not somebody else. Do not use the buzz words of the day – don’t even TRY to be attractive. You ARE attractive when you explain what matters most yo you and why you believe what you are doing is important to many others – more important than what is out there today.

You can only lead a market if you can actually ‘envision’ where you want to lead it to. And a very personal super positive ‘side effect’:  You even have a MUCH more fulfilling life if you know what it is that you really really really care about and make it happen — no matter what, and no matter how impossible it may appear. In the end it makes the difference between LIVING or just EXISTING.

@AxelS

 

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Global Pitching & Fundraising Training

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Money is globally available – just understand how to attract investors. Top tech companies started all over the world. In Microsoft Seattle, Spotify in Sweden, SAP in Germany, Samsung in Korea, Sony in Japan, Acer in Taiwan, Atos in France, Euthereum in Switzerland…

All have one thing in common: The somehow learned how to attract investors, had their story down and knew how to talk to investors – where ever they are.

Over the past 4 years we had startups from all over the planet in our accelerator and 50% got funded (the highest funding rate in the startup world).

Now we are starting to run free pitch events – ONLINE. These live events shall allow any entrepreneur, wherever they are on this planet to attend. No more traveling for entrepreneurs training.

Next training June 5 in all time zones! read more

We envision a world where prosperity is possible for all nations by increasing innovation and entrepreneurship locally.

Since we can’t get every entrepreneur in the world to come to Silicon Valley – Silicon Valley needs to come to the world – for free.

Please help spread the word, in particular in those countries where entrepreneurs don’t have easy access to capital. http://s3buzz.com/ntd5xx

 

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Are you a passionate founder?

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Forget it, passion is for pussycats. You need to be obsessed.

 

You heard all that many times. But what does it actually mean? What constitutes such a great founders team?

  1. Team means team. A founders team is not one founder with a few people joining him or her somehow but multiple founders with more or less equal equity share in the startup. Together thay sculptured and shaped the concept of the business. It takes teamwork to make a dream work.
  2. The best founders are obsessed, not just passionate about what they do. They make any humanly possible effort to make their idea come true. If they have to move to a different country, they will. If they have to sell everything they posses they will. If they have to live in a shed and have just barely enough to survive they will.

    Passion is for pussycats – great founders are obsessed

  3. Great founders are truly intelligent. Meaning they have the skill to solve a problem by simply thinking through most of its permutations even though neither they nor anybody else ever ever found a solution for a similar problem.
  4. Having assembled a team of very diverse skills and behavior. Having a generalist working with two specialists (CEO, CTO, CMO). A doer, a a visionary and an detailed subject matter expert are best.
  5. Bold thinking. Not just a hypothetical billion users or billion dollars but an intelligently constructed ways and a reasoning why and how to get there. Having a reasonable idea about the technology development, the societal trends and industrial movements over the next 10 years, The ability to draw the future like a picture.
  6. NO respect for anything. Breaking all rules except the law. They do what they think it takes to achieve their goal no matter what anybody in the world tells them to do.
  7. Complete independence of capital.  Great founders make things happen with nothing. To the contrary those who need somebody else’ money to start are definitely not great founders. The only money they need is to grow their company faster than organic growth.
  8. Top founders are people who can easily attract others: Attract co-founders, attract customers, attract talents, attract investors…
  9. At least one of the founders in the team is a marvelous communicator. Has the ability to get the message out in a simple way and crafts those messages, so that others can share it as well. Founders are not living in offices and labs but in the market.
  10. High sense of urgency. Great founders do things significantly faster that their competitors. They have no time for anything but run. From idea to prototype, less than 6 month. from prototype to production less than 6 month. From being in the market to first major market share wins, less than six month, from first market share wins to first international business less than 6 month…

 

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