A competition of startups has been held in the Rietumu Bank premises in cooperation with Tech Hub Riga Academy within the framework of the conference “Silicon Valley Comes to the Baltics”. Earlier over 50 applications were submitted to the competition from different countries – the Baltics, Russia, Belarus, Egypt and others.
The selection process has been held in three stages: first, out of 50 applications, the best ten were selected, and then five out of ten. These lucky winners were selected by mentors of the project, among them Members of the Board of Rietumu Bank Eugene Dugaev and Renat Lokomet. As well as a remarkable person in the world of startupers – Sean Percival and other experts in this field. And only at the third stage, during the international conference “Silicon Valley Comes to the Baltics” did the mentors take the final decision and determine the winner of the competition.
To present each project, only three minutes were allocated, during which speakers had to fulfil a grandiose task – to convince mentors of the efficiency, profitability and originality of their idea. Primarily, young participants of the competition went to the stage, offering ideas from various fields: starting from new payment systems for e-commerce and up to phone applications to help us start singing! Already developing startups, which have their own websites and implement their own ideas into reality, were mainly presented.
Following each presentation, questions came from the audience, where, among others, mentors were also sitting. The presentations turned out to be brief but substantial, and the questions in many cases helped to correctly understand the goal of the startup projects. The experienced mentors noted pluses and minuses of each presentation, giving valuable advice.
Upon completion of the morning ‘pitches’, Sean Percival took the floor. In his speech, he not only told his own successful business story, but also shared some secrets of the marketing strategy with startupers. “Every failure is a huge experience. In the event of startups, it is not only experience, but also loss of cash, disappointment. To understand which decision out of 10 will work, all of them have to be tested and only one selected. Only in this way does success come,” says Sean.
The further programme was even more saturated. Young and talented persons were given master classes in the most important industries for developing startups and were provided with an opportunity of communicating with investors.
The final results of the competition were announced during the biggest conference in the Baltics devoted to the technological subject “Silicon Valley Comes to the Baltics”, held on Saturday, 7 November.
Further information on the conference is available on its website
www.sv2b.com Eleonora Gailisha Mass Media and Public Relations
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