#techpeaks

TechPeaks is over.

We made a lot of progresses in these 4 months, we became part of a really good network, we improved our product but now, even if the acceleration is ended, we have to maximize the efforts we did, in order to be prepared for the next winter season.

We would love to cheer the 5 startups that won the grants and say them good luck for everything!

- Diabetes Lab, data analytics software solutions for people with diabetes. - Leevia, photo petition platform. - Matic, boost card dealer sales. - Pronto, unapologetically simple takeaway. - Ski.pass.go, e-commerce platform that brings dynamic pricing to ski industry

And now what will happen? As we announced in this blog post, I will move to Silicon Valley for the next 6 months thanks to a scholarship, while my co-founder, Francesco, will reach me later.

There we will understand the US sports equipment rental market and learn eventually how to make it work with the Italian/European one!

September will be full of news. Don't miss it.

Only 16 days left before Demo Day (18th of July). The anxiety starts being visible among all the TechPeakers. And from now on it will be only about pitch training and obviously hard working.

Last week we met for the second time Evan Nisselson, mentor not only at TechPeaks but also at 500startups, Seedcamp, NYseed, Tetuan Valley and Mind the Bridge. In his opinion our vision is great but we need to focus on a single niche and validate it.

We also presented Upendu to others two great mentors:

Patrick De Laive, a serial entrepreneur in the web space, and co-founder of The Next Web, a leading tech blog/news site and one of the most important innovation festival in Europe.

Vito Lomele, who we met also during our previous acceleration, founder of Job Rapido. He has a life-long experience on online services and digital marketing.

And they together were amazing. You can read the live twitting of their talks here.

We still have a lot of things to learn, not only for the Demo Day. Would you help us? Please, fill this quick test/survey (3 minutes long):

Upendu Test

We designed it to better understand you and your needs. In the next newsletter we will share with you what we have learnt. You can't miss it!

In the last week we have had our fourth mentoring session that strained our confidence.

One of the mentor, didn't see the problem that we are solving. Even if he had bad experiences renting a scooter in Rome, even if he had to pay 200€ for a damage that he did not cause, even if he risked to lose his flight because of the discussion, he doesn't care because American Express refunded him after one call.

Well, *maybe* he is not our target.

Another mentor Shira Abel, an expert in marketing, and supports companies, from large to startups, gave us different advice from the previous one, like: how to make money from the day one in order to last until an investor will come. She also helped us in building a marketing strategy to pursue this goal.

It's hard to carry on a vision but, as Shira told during her talk, persistence is the key. We are learning a lot from our interviews, from our mistakes, from the process itself so something good will come from all this work.

Marketing for Startup: here you can find the all presentation on Slideshare

The third mentor who came last week was Rebecca Paoletti, an expert in the media sector, and more specifically in video. Unfortunately we did not have the opportunity to talk so much to her because she left after the first day of mentoring.

All these sparks, both positive or negative, are helping us. One month to demo day. One month left to demonstrate our value. Challenge accepted!

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This fifth week started greatly with a wine tasting in the Ferrari's wine-cellar. It was our prize after winning the 2nd place at the Lean Startup Machine workshop. Trentino territory is investing a lot in its riches and they are very proud of them.

Back to the office, the next day, we participated to a workshop about team dynamics. Diana Chernyavska followed us for an entire day helping all the TechPeakers better understanding our personalities and how to deal with conflicts inside a team. Diana is an HR professional, working with companies of all dimensions. She focuses on people skill development and relationship management, among the others.

We basically discovered that inside our team we know each other quite well but there is still a lot of work to do in managing conflicts and listening. Also the part of the workshop which concerned the hiring process will be very helpful in the near future.

On Saturday here in Trento there was an event called Block and Wall, a lot of climbers invaded the city and started climbing the buildings in the center.

Unfortunately that day we had to end some deliveries for this week and we didn't have the possibility to take advantages of this event but we will explore for sure also this sport in the next weeks together with the others that we are now approaching: biking, SUP and surfing.

This week we will review our last version of the pitch with the TechPeaks board. They are preparing us for our first meeting with the international mentors. It's very stimulating for us to demonstrate each week our progresses!

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In this third week many things happened. 

First, we participated to a barcamp focused on tourism. Here we shared what we discovered during our researches and interviews about winter sports equipment rental trends. The main points of the discussion concerned the trends and the customers. For the former, the rent is an increasing trend compared with the purchasing and Italy is a less mature market compared with France and Switzerland where rent is five years ahead. For the latter, we discovered that the best customer segment is very dependent on the sports considered, so there is a no an unique solution.

We had the occasion to try our pitch with Evan Nisselson who is one of the TechPeaks mentors (he is also a mentor at 500startups, Seedcamp, NYseed, Tetuan Valley and Mind the Bridge) to get his valuable feedback. But this was not the only valuable feedback, because every techpeakers was encouraged to participate in this pitching session and wear either the role of investor or of the customer and criticize each pitch. The feedback we received was that the target we are addressing were unclear. We have also to communicate better the milestones achieved and the number of users we have access to, thanks to our current partnerships. Here in the pic it's possible to see how Evan corrects us the posture required during a pitch.

During the rest of the week we worked on the organization of a trip by bike in order to test Upendu for what concerns biking, but unfortunately a series of bad luck related to Francesco's health forces us to give up one day before we planned to do the trip. Here a "must have" selfie at the hospital. Don't worry Francesco will be ok in few days.

Last but not the least event of the week was the Prowinter in Bolzano, landmark fair dedicated to winter sports rental industry and services. We participated on Friday and we spoke to a lot of famous brand (such as Tecnica, Rossignol, Salomon, Nitro, Burton) gathering a lot of (not always coherent) feedback. This fair was really useful to understand the problems of their businesses and how they think. We presented also two versions of Upendu, a sort of A\B pitch test in order to see the different reactions from the businesses involved in the fair.

In this week, already started, we will take part to the LSM (lean startup machine), the world famous workshop to learn to build a successful business in three days! At the same time we will be really busy in the validation of some hypothesis came thanks to the Prowinter.

We still can't believe how many things could happen in just one week! Stay tuned!

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And the second week has finished. We are starting to settle not only with the city but also with all the stakeholders involved in TechPeaks, such as Trento RISE, Trentino Sviluppo, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Fondazione Edmund Mach and others.

This week started with an inspiring lesson by Evan Nisselson, who is one of the TechPeaks mentors (he is also a mentor at 500startups, Seedcamp, NYseed, Tetuan Valley and Mind the Bridge). He is not only a mentor, but also an entrepreneur so his advice was closely related to his story and real experiences.

He asked us to write down our goals for TechPeaks, keeping in mind the difference between "must haves" and "nice to haves". Take a look at ours:

A lot of Evan's quotes were remarkable, but one of them was particularly helpful for us:

"NO" is never "NO", but just "NOT NOW".

We strongly agree with this statement and are already acting with this attitude. 

The rest of the week passed quickly with a number of ICT Days. We participated in some conferences strongly related to Upendu, like #TravelNEXT and Sport Techno Lab. After these events, we believe that Upendu could take advantage from a such strong network in Trento.

The official inauguration of TechPeaks #2 was on friday the 4th of April at the new science museum by Renzo Piano: MUSE. It was preceded by a presentation of Greg Horowitt, one of the authors of "The Rainforest, The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley". He made a comparison between the ecosystems in Trentino and in Silicon Valley. In Trentino there are a lot of things that still has to be done, but at the same time the territory already has a lot of potential.

As we don't want to lose any opportunity, we also participated in the barcamper inside The Startup Revolutionary Road Tour 2014 and in the "Talenti per l'Impresa" class in Turin. We'll update you about these respective events. 

The third week has already started and it will be really busy: a barcamp, a workshop, pitching and more! Don't miss the next episode!

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We're a team of two (Levente and me) in Békéscsaba, Hungary.

We've came up with Beatbee, an automagically working social jukebox in November.

We've found out about some real tough competition in December.

We've put the project on hold, possibly for ever.

I've started working on a "Beatbee box" (see photo), a different, but similar idea (still a social jukebox) during the holidays. I couldn't let it go, and as it turned out, Levente couldn't either.

We've pivoted the Beatbee idea in January, and now we're entering it to the TechPeaks PitchSlam in Budapest, and also the real deal: TechPeaks 2014. Stay tuned for more info, or check out the Beatbee blog at: