A word from Startup Pirates @ Maringá
Message from: Renan Freitas - Lead organizer at Startup Pirates @ Maringá
Hi everyone, I write from Maringá, Brazil. We conducted a Startup Pirates program here from April 26 to May 03.
First of all, let me explain about Maringá: it is city from the interior, with population of almost 400 thousand people, an agribusiness based economy, a strong IT sector focused on ERP technology and still few startups based here. But we have politicians aware of the need of innovation and technology.
Since here few people are engaged with this entrepreneurship purpose, we started working to build a startup ecosystem since last year to motivate and promote an easier way to create new startups. The biggest challenge - and our vision to the future - is to transform our town in a startup reference for brazilian entrepreneurs.
In the beginning of this year, our partner SEBRAE (a non profit organization focused on promoting entrepreneurship and helping business growth) gave us the responsibility to organize a Startup Pirates here, to mobilize entrepreneurs to build new startups. It was the second edition of the program in Brazil.
For me, especially, was an awesome experience to be part of the organization team. I must admit, for the most part of the time, I wished to be part of the participants to experience all of that.
This feeling is part of my admiration to the Pirates, that transformed our ecosystem and gave us a new look about startups.
There were some unexpected experiences and learnings that we carry on forever. Maybe this is not news for you, but like the famous sentence, “old but gold”, I must tell them here to share our learnings:
People are everything in a startup! Just forget the brilliant idea for a moment and pick up the right partners. If you choose the wrong person to be your partner, everything goes wrong. At the program, it was explicit and some teams just broke up because people thoughts didn’t match. On the other hand, teams with poor ideas in the beginning, but with powerful people, just pivoted and finished the program with awesome ideas.
If people is everything, put them to validate their ideas with focus on customer behavior. They just pivoted because they focused their work on people, understanding exactly what they expect and what they will buy.
The transformation that Startup Pirates program provides goes beyond the room. It transforms the whole ecosystem with new startups, new engaged entrepreneurs, new mentors and new experiences. After the program, we had an exponential growth on engagement of people with the ecosystem.
Engagement makes the difference. If you have the right people, then engage them with a purpose and you will have big results, like pirates. Picking up the right mentors to build the first part of the program makes the whole difference.
And at last, but not least, the program doesn't finish in the end of the week. It’s important to follow up the teams to make the projects happen and to support them with new events, new opportunities and more interesting content. It’s part of the motivation too.
I must admit, it wasn't easy to organize the whole Startup Pirates. Even with a team supporting us, we had to work hard and dedicated a lot of time of our days to make it happen. But after that, the learnings and experiences organizing, mentoring and meeting new people rewarded everything.
Thank you Rafael Pires and team for the opportunity to bring Startup Pirates to Brazil, the program causes large changes in people's lives.
Message by: Renan Freitas - Lead organizer at Startup Pirates @ Maringá