The HR generalist doesn’t know much about marketing, the branding guy doesn’t care much about finance, the finance folks don’t care too much about solutions sales, the IT guys often feel specifically hostile towards HR, and of course the HR people, dealing with the most important “asset”, are constantly fighting to elevate the function to a “strategic” level;

and here we go, the strategy question: for most, it has nothing to do with reality. “It’s worthless without execution”, “It’s not strategy, it’s the people that matter”, “management, management, management”, “It’s like metaphysics: who cares?”, “It’s just a way for consultants to make an obscene amount of money”, “What the hell is it anyways? Can you explain it in one sentence?”, “culture beats strategy” and the list goes on.

It seems like the question of strategy polarizes. Strategy gets developed, then escalated across the organization, buy-in from staff is BOUGHT often with a great show with star performers and perhaps an air show with fighter jets…yet: all efforts to “align” or “integrate” strategy with operations (if any!), strategy with people, etc. consistently fail miserably. ALWAYS. It’s a fact of life, there is no exception – if you find one and have a closer look you’ll see that it’s only temporary.

Why this is so is more interesting than what field (strategy or operations, or culture) enjoys priority. The purpose of this post is simply to shed light on the hierarchy of priorities and draw awareness to what is important and in what order. Awareness is step zero towards eliminating perception gaps from the organization.

1. Principle based concept (the purpose) is the foundation of

2. both strategy and leadership.

3. Organization is centered around strategy and leadership

4. Operations with its specialized functions is based on the organization.

Awareness of this hierarchy ensures some level of integration across the organization. Awareness of course is highly fragmented and the realization/unfolding never happens linearly along this vertical. Various aspects of the concept may appear simultaneously, having seemingly nothing to do with each other (without actual integration), until somebody connects the dots, and starts an effort of integration.

This guy must be the CEO. If not, the CEO must talk to this guy! If not, it costs more both on the top line and the bottom line, than most people have the courage to believe.

International Press

Six Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Seeking Venture Capital – Fox Business, January 17, 2012

Pitching venture-capital investors to launch or grow your business  is a delicate process, so you need to tread carefully. There’s an art to making a successful pitch, says Aaron Levie, cofounder and CEO of Box, an online content-sharing company  based in Palo Alto, Calif. He has raised $162 million in five rounds of funding and estimates he has pitched investors a few dozen times.

Egypt entrepreneurs see new dawn post-Revolution – Reuters, January 18, 2012

Two months after mass protests ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak last February, Ahmed Essam resigned from his job at a well-established software company to set up a six-person venture developing applications for smart phones. The economic turmoil which engulfed the country after Mubarak was overthrown played a part in his decision, says Essam, 28.

What next for the start-up nation? – The Economist, January 21, 2012

The young must shout if they want to be heard. In a stone hangar in the old port of Jaffa, 30 entrepreneurs have five minutes each to present their start-up companies to a panel of digital luminaries and an audience that includes potential investors. Not everyone in the room is ready to shut up and listen, so the hopefuls must battle against the din.

The flaws of private equity are not irreparable – Financial Times, January 22, 2012

In reputational terms, last week was not good for private equity. In the UK, Peacocks, a 120-year old clothing retailer bought out in 2006, succumbed to its weight of debt. In the US, the presidential contender Mitt Romney came under fire from Republican rivals for the low tax rate he paid as a private equity grandee. This was on top of the usual charges of asset-stripping, job destruction and so forth.

Successful entrepreneurs ‘must act without fear’ – ArabNews.com, January 23, 2012

Vision is the most important factor in driving entrepreneurship and continuous learning is extremely important for businesses. Entrepreneurship will thrive with locally appropriate solutions. In the emerging economies, entrepreneurship needs to be a national effort supported by appropriate eco-systems and policies.

Magyar nyelvű sajtó

Kreatív ötleteket támogat az Indulj.be – ITCafé, 2012. január 16.

Az amerikai Kickstarter sikeres működési modelljét gondolták újra az Indulj.be fejlesztői: a világszerte megszokott pénzgyűjtés helyett a kreatív ötletek megvalósítására koncentrálnak a most elindított szolgáltatásukban. A működési elv lényege itt is a tömeg erejében rejlik: az ismerősök alkotta közösség ereje az előértékesítés módszerével összevonva egy új szemléletű, kreatív értékesítői rendszert alkot.

Magyar 3D jönni Amerika – Népszabadság, 2012. január 21.

Sikeresen szerepelt a Las Vegas-i CES-en, és ezzel a világhír küszöbére jutott a Leonar3Do, a magyar fejlesztésű háromdimenziós „valami” (hivatalos nevén virtuális valóság platform és formatervező szoftver). A térbeli formák számítógépes megtervezésére, illetve valódi tárgyak digitalizálására alkalmas rendszer szerencsés esetben akár a XXI. század első igazán jelentős magyar informatikai innovációja is lehet.

Újraindul a JEREMIE program – Pénzcentrum, 2012. január 23.

Társadalmi egyeztetésre kiadta az új Jeremie kockázati tőke program idei tervezetét a Nemzeti Fejlesztési Ügynökség. A terv szerint két alprogramban összesen tíz alapot indítanak. A lehetséges pályázók várhatóan több kritikával is élnek majd.

Mobilos alkalmazásokban az egyetemisták jövője? – ITCafé, 2012. január 23.

Egy dolog biztos: 2011 az okostelefonok és a táblagépek éve volt. Az IT cafén rengeteg statisztikai adatot közültünk arról, hogy egyes cégek milyen sok készüléket értékesítettek, mennyire pörögnek az online alkalmazásboltok, és ezzel párhuzamosan hogyan csökkennek a klasszikus PC-eladások. Meg persze arról is sokat tudhatnak a tisztelt olvasók, hogy egyre több honfitársunk lát lehetőséget a mobilos alkalmazásfejlesztésben.

Világraszóló magyar sikertörténet: korszakváltást hozott a Prezi – Portfolio.hu, 2012. január 26.

Mindössze három évvel ezelőtt indult a prezentációs iparágat megújító Prezi, a magyarok által alapított cég azóta exponenciálisan növekszik, tavaly decemberben a Szilícium-völgy egyik nagy technológiai befektetője, az Accel Partners szállt be a cégbe 14 millió dollárral. A ritkaságszámba menő tranzakció kapcsán Árvai Péterrel beszélgettünk, aki a cég vezérigazgatója és társalapítója.

My questions were answered by Leo.

What’s your background?

My background is easy, there isn’t really one. I was in university studying for a business degree in my 2nd year, when I got involved with Buffer. I started a small Social Media consultancy in my first year, but never really got anywhere with it. What I did though whilst in my first year in university was to play around with a few startup ideas I started to develop. None however got me anywhere.

How did you hook up with Joel?

Joel and I first met at Warwick University when we were organizing an entrepreneurship event there. Since then we continued to stay in touch, brainstormed on a few ideas and I also was always very interested in Joel’s previous startup OnePage.

Who’s doing what?

Sure, so Joel always took on the technical aspect. That meant coding and sys admin operations. I am doing all the marketing. That is blogging, getting press and working with users on Twitter and Facebook. There are also a lot of biz dev/hustling deals involved for us, where we are working with web apps/websites to integrate the Buffer button. That’s another fun task for me.

Why did you decide to go to the Silicon Valley to raise money?

That’s an interesting one. We didn’t actually go to Silicon Valley to raise money. We were determined to bootstrap all the way as we were already pulling in some revenue. Yet, when we arrived, we had a super steep learning curve and the idea of raising money to accelerate our growth become a lot more appealing. So we went for it.

Silicon Valley is just the place to be for any startup I believe, the community, the pay it forward culture and the focus on building great companies can’t be found elsewhere I believe.

Have you tried to raise money in Austria, the UK or elsewhere in Europe?

No, we haven’t actually tried that at all. The investor scene seems to be quite different here in Europe.

Why $400K?

Great question. So initially, we aimed to raise more, closer to $700-800K. However, as we are already pulling in significant revenues of around $25K/mo we decided to shoot for less. The money mainly goes into hiring new people to help us make Buffer more awesome.

Why Hong Kong as opposed to somewhere in Europe?

Haha, you will laugh. We always felt that we already knew Europe and it didn’t really motivate us to spend our time here. We wanted to be somewhere buzzing, where new things are happening and where we felt we are more of the pulse of innovation. Hong Kong felt a lot closer to this.

What’s the future for buffer app (product development, additional rounds, team)?

Sure, so right now, we are mainly focused on product. We are looking to add other Social Networks in the future, such as LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+. We are also working on an algorithm that is smarter for figuring out when your posts are being sent out with Buffer, this could be a huge aspect for future success I believe.

We don’t want to take any additional funding if possible and are also keen to keep the team small. It feels we can focus a lot more through this.

Thanks and good luck!

CHINA SCORED THIS ONE!

Company info:

Buffer
Founded: 2010
Location: Hong Kong
Employees: 5 currently
Current Revenues: $25K/month

Conventional wisdom holds that quality is valuable and money should follow value. This should be a sustainable business model where everybody benefits.

But if we look at what’s happening in the online world it seems like this wisdom is turned upside down: money does not follow value, at least not directly. What’s being propagated is that value comes from quantity and that quality ranks second – at best –, or that it doesn’t matter at all. Quality content creators are pushed to succumbing to the demands of Quantity. Quality and garbage get thrown into the same hat and it becomes very difficult to separate the two, essentially devaluing quality in the process.

This in turn justifies the free model that is sustained by advertising. Advertisers pay for quantity while they are dreaming about laser sharp targets within well identified segments. „It’s a known fact in advertising circles that only idiots click on ads — and yet advertisers still think that click-through rates mean something” Felix Salmon, Wired.

Money is being made but neither the advertisers nor the readers get exactly what they want!

So the vision is simple: pay for value and get the garbage for free; this is the right thing. The internet enables volume which makes it possible that you don’t have to pay a lot for value while payment does not exclude advertisers either. Win-win.

Maybe this is why paid content is such a hot topic nowadays. Gigaom for example has raised just $6M to implement a paywall system

So we looked around here in the CEE to see who are brave enough to stand up and do the right thing against the fanatism of FREE…

That’s how we found Znak it! It’s a small startup founded in 2008 and financed by the founder Greg Golebiewski, a serial entrepreneur from the Silicon Valley, and through EU funds. They have around 10 people working in Poland and Portugal doing development plus some more doing business development in London and in Sunnyvale, California.

Znak it! is a pretty complex SAAS based micro payment platform that brings users, content providers and advertisers together taking care of the technical infrastructure, the pre-paid virtual credit system, curation as well as the business model that also engages advertisers in the ecosystem. Their focus is on payments in the 5c – $2 range. Unlike Farmville cash for example, Znak it! is platform agnostic: is works everywhere.

I spoke with Greg on skype the other day who explained that they are focusing on quality content, like statistical and financial data from reputable sources, popular bloggers and publications.

They are already running projects with content providers in Latin America, Israel and Germany. The range of content currently covered varies from text, video and games.

The video play is something like youtube but it’s not user generated content. The games play from Germany shows how to monetize games without subscriptions through a community of users. There is tons of potential also in fields like education, including “how to” sites for example.

To sum it all up I asked Greg to explain how he would pitch Znak it! to Glam Media, one of the biggest success stories in online publishing.

„Glam Media allows high quality blogs capture advertising from the world’s top brands. And this is great!

However, ads are only one way of monetizing digital content. As the New york Times, the Economist or GigaOM have proven, direct user payments can be substantial additional sources of digital revenue, via paid subscriptions, or better yet, through small on-demand payments. The Znak it! premium content curation and payment platforms delivers such solutions. We facilitate payments as small as $0.5 per access to a single high-quality article or a gallery of pictures, video and audio files, etc. without putting everything behind a paywall and losing ad revenues.

In addition to that we can effectively help the huge pool of niche/specialty blogs and online publications generating less than 100,000 uniques a month, earn money.

By adding our Znak it! platform to the Glam Media line of products, Glam Media could extend its already huge reach to tens of thousandths of new publishers and millions of new users, while giving them more options, more engagement and more satisfaction from their online experience.”

Znak it!

Founded: 2008
Funds: angel, EU ($200K)
Founder: Greg Golebiewski
Locations: Portugal, Poland

wwww.znak-it.com

International Press

Do small business owners need Tim Tebow like optimism? – Boston.com, January 4, 2012

If you’ve heard anything about the National Football League this year, it’s probably been focused around Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow. To hear him speak, you would think anything is possible through sheer will and determination. Sometimes, that’s true. It’s clear that almost nothing will derail his optimistic approach to his career, his teammates and his life in general. And in this day and age, good for him.

Facebook for your wallet: New business cards use network’s timeline details for same clean design – MailOnline, January 6, 2012

Facebook junkies rejoice: If accessing a user’s profile on a cellphone just wasn’t enough, now profiles can be printed and dolled out of wallets. A printing company has teamed up with the social networking site to hash out the sale of business cards that takes the timeline information from a user’s profile and places it neatly on a card.

The entrepreneurial lure — should you bite? – CNBC, January 11, 2012

Entrepreneurship is all the rage these days. What with the breakout success of social media, the coming of age of Gen Y, and corporate America not hiring, it’s not surprising that the question of whether to start your own company or join someone else’s startup is a hot topic.

What is surprising are all the popular myths, obvious platitudes, and downright bad advice from people who have no idea what they’re talking about because they’ve never walked the talk in the real world. So let me shed a little light on the subject.

Freeing Asia’s Entrepreneurs – WSJ, January 12, 2012

The annual Heritage Foundation-Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom is released today, and it’s hard to miss the broader conclusion that policy makers around the world too often are eschewing classical liberalism in the face of the ongoing global slump. But this is also an opportunity to ask a more hopeful question, and one of great significance for entrepreneurs and businesses: Is economic freedom on the cusp of a renaissance in Asia?

By ‘Going Digital’, Is The JWT Ad Agency Transforming Its Business Model? – Forbes, January 12, 2012

Over dinner a few months ago I spoke with David Eastman, the North America CEO of ad giant JWT and expressed my opinion that, over time, the new Interactive ad agencies will supplant the “traditional” creative shops like his. And, as clients shift their advertising dollars to the Internet, they will rely on digital agency specialists, I added. Eastman disagreed.

7 Social Media & SEO Tactics Businesses Will Adopt in 2012 – Search Engine Watch, January 13, 2012

What will happen in the year ahead? I’m no fan of making predictions, but there are some major social media tactics that we can expect to affect businesses in 2012. Some of these tactics already have been adopted by select companies, but this year we’ll see mass adoption of these tactics by businesses of all sizes.

Magyar nyelvű sajtó

Ügyfélszerzés: valós net-jelenléttel – HVG, 2012. január 3.

Az új ügyfelek megszerzése, az ügyfél-elégedettség elnyerése és az ügyfelek megtartása legalább akkora probléma a magyar kis- és középvállalkozások számára, mint a rendre előkerülő tőkehiány. A vállalkozók egyre tudatosabban keresik a megoldásokat az ügyfélszerzéshez, de a kisvállalkozások 55 százaléka nem rendelkezik weboldallal – hiába, hogy a hazai potenciál öt és félmillió leendő ügyfél is lehet.

Hálózatba kapcsolják a kis- és középvállalkozásokat – Magyar Szó, 2012. január 8.

A Háló Vajdasági Fejlesztési Alap igen mozgalmas, a következő esztendők tevékenységét megalapozó tervezési időszakon van túl. A körülöttünk zajló pénzügyi, politikai és társadalmi folyamatok óriási mértékben befolyásolják mindennapi életünket.

Pesszimista kkv-k – Világgazdaság, 2012. január 12.

A 2011. második és harmadik negyedévi stagnálás után a negyedik negyedévben jelentősen, majdnem 6 százalékponttal – 42,2 százalékra – esett vissza, majd 2012 első negyedében 39,8 százalékra, azaz több mint 2 százalékponttal csökkent az index.

Meghódítja Vegast a magyar virtuális gyurma – Index.hu, 2012. január 13.

„Próbáld nagyobb bogyóval” – mondom Balagénak, de a tanácsom sem segít: az amorf tömb a monitoron csak nem akar trollarcra hasonlítani. Ez az én bénázásaim után nem is csoda. Meg aztán, mi rajzolni sem tudunk, nemhogy szobrászkodni. De a próbálkozásunk a virtuális anyaggal visszarepít minket az időben: megint nyolcévesek vagyunk, amit érzünk, az a gyurmázás öröme.

Dubai magyar digitális sikersztori – HG.hu, 2012. január 13.

Amikor először találkoztunk a Dubaiban működő sentiomedia designstúdió munkáival, csak egy dolgot nem értettünk – azon kívül, hogy hogyan kerül egy magyar digitális fejlesztőcsapat a Közel-Keletre -: vajon miért nem mutattuk még be a hazai tervezők világszínvonalú eredményeit és sikereit korábban a magyar olvasóknak? Interjúnkkal most ezt az elmaradást igyekszünk pótolni.

A simple definition of a breakthrough paradox is when goals are achieved despite the fact that crucial things are not in place to accomplish them. When it happens, it always brings MASSIVE change.

HP needs a break-through paradox right now. Yahoo needs one. RIM definitely needs one – would be interesting to listen to Mike and Jim analyzing their mistakes. Chances are that you need one too!

Reaching critical mass quickly without (very often even with) outside financing qualifies as a breakthrough paradox for startups.

Building top performing management teams in emerging markets is a breakthrough paradox for private equity investors and companies.

Creating the right new concept for an organization facing a “strategic inflection point” and then aligning the organization to it, is a breakthrough-paradox; think about the print publishers’ dilemma.

Successful post M&A integration is a breakthrough paradox (the formula is missing).

Obviously a breakthrough paradox is rarely solved and when it isn’t … there’s no breakthrough. Things continue the way they were and they eventually die off or sink (further) into mediocrity.

More and more managers are in a situation where a breakthrough paradox is expected of them. To achieve breakthrough paradox is a systemic challenge, so tons of things are necessary for success and the whole thing must be treated… as a whole!

Three basic factors must be given attention to:

1. Awareness. Active awareness! Sounds trivial, but it’s crucial. Everybody knows that “we have a problem”; this is not awareness. Awareness means that not only do we know that we must treat this situation OUTSIDE of the domain of normality (box, whatever), but we (or at the very least the top guy) actually step out of our reality; literally. Thinking, perceiving, interacting, etc. outside. Not only outside the normality of the organization of course, but outside of the “strategic environment” as well.

2. Orientation; towards transcendence. This is also obvious but crucial. Let’s not forget that outside of the box could be under the box, next to the box or above the box. If the guys in the management team think below the box, chances are they have absolutely no awareness even of their own situation. It would be too easy to use examples of delusional behavior here. If the team steps out and stays next to the box, they won’t be able to bring in any necessary (vertical) perspective. This is what happens in most cases, when they bring in best practices from other industries. Transcendence means leaving the box below.

Note: opposite to common belief being oriented towards “transcendence” does not automatically mean losing sight of reality! The overwhelming majority of the so called creative types who are responsible for this perception are merely running circles around the box. The crazier ones venture somewhat farther, but still: they’re on the same level, lacking a higher perspective and thus they are lacking the right view and thinking!

3. Thinking.

In the box and below the box the dominant thinking pattern is “opposites”: either – or; we or them. Zero sum games. Thinking is highly mechanical and fear sets in as soon as the boundaries are reached. This thinking is incapable of transcendence and when it succumbs to fear, it starts focusing on smaller and smaller pieces and practically disintegrates the organization.

Outside the box on the same level (on the same horizontal plane) the thinking pattern is “analogies”: The way it works there, works here too. This thinking is much more flexible than and superior to the “opposites” thinking pattern and may achieve great results; however this thinking is still based on available facts and as such it rarely transcends the domain of analysis.

Thinking that is capable of rising above currently perceived reality (normality) maybe called “unifying”. The unifying thinking pattern is the foundation for synthesis, which is of course the foundation of any kind of integration in any setting. This thinking is not mechanical, it’s more than flexible: it’s powerful: it doesn’t confuse “combination” with creativity, but actually creates.

What happens when the 3 basics are in place: you’re aware of what you’re facing, you have the perspective and the appropriate thinking, maybe you even have the concept that needs to be implemented. Chances are that by this time you are crystal clear that you are alone and you must go against the current. By this time you have the type of commitment that comes from an unwavering certainty that this MUST be done.

At this stage it’s advisable to look at your situation and make a decision:

- if you are in a position that allows you to do such massive change, go ahead and do it: you can’t NOT do it.

- if you are NOT in a position that allows you to do such massive change: put yourself in such a position; if it’s not possible in your current company find or buy another one and start doing miracles!

“The markets changed: we must adjust/align the organization”.

“To survive we need to change our culture”.

Behind all these and tons of other typical statements there are hundreds of consulting companies who help you do just that.

It seems like management, ideas and the so called organization are in silos, in separate bubbles; they truly are! Organization is not the cause of anything: it’s a passive medium, suffering consequences at best.

This is precisely the proof that what management refers to as organization, doesn’t exist: there is just a bunch of people going to the office.

What happened before somebody -due to some outside stimuli, as a jerk-reflex- made this realization, this reaction, this call for change?

The organization was just “there”; not as a living entity aware of its environment and internal life, but as a dumb robot in a lab.

Implementing a new strategy, aligning to customers, changing the “culture”: nothing more than reprogramming the robot. Nothing will change! The organization will remain dumb, mechanical, reactive.

You must bring your organization to life!

Once you have a living organization, implementation, adjustment, change will be more organic, the organization will become more intelligent and you will find yourself at an increasing distance from the robots: from their point of view you are

- redefining markets

- redefining terms like strategy, innovation, leadership, culture, knowledge management, etc.

From your point of view you are simply operating from a different base, doing the right things, the right way for the right reasons, all in harmony.

Naturally, organizations typically start out as living entities, they just tend to die over time and what’s left of them is just a company; so

YOU MUST NOT LET YOUR ORGANIZATION DIE!

Please send us your stories about how you managed to keep your organization alive / OR to resuscitate them – both in startups and in mature companies!

We will post them here!

At the end of November 2011 we held Budapest Ventured, a cinema and discussion night, simultaneously at BME and Corvinus University. We screened Something Ventured, the ultimate movie about how Silicon Valley and venture capital were born, and how venture capitalists can boost businesses that change the world: just think about Apple, Cisco or Genentech. After the movie two dozens of successful regional startup entrepreneurs joined the interactive discussion with more than 130 students.

The campaign started with an interview series by our organisation team at both universities. We visited student associations and asked students what they generally think about entrepreneurs. The outcome was astonishing.

Almost all university newsletters joined to spread the word, we have received over 200 registrations. Several associations are already involved in entrepreneurship some way, as the following examples illustrate:

• a Student Innovation Center will be opened at BME led by Donat Dekanyi
• Spin Off Club led by Peter Szirmai and Gergo Freész, who regularly organise business plan competitions for students
• Simonyi College, Attila Kiss as president who are committed to spread the E Virus and organise several events.

Every time you see this movie you can always notice new sides of the stories. For example, even Steve Jobs could not make it happen without the help of Arthur Rock, who is the inventor of the term “venture capital” and without his partners who brought in connections to leading invesment funds. People and investors in the ‘60s in the US were as sceptic about venture startups as not so long ago here in Budapest, too. In the US the first company officially fueled by venture capital was Fairchild Semiconductors, founded by the legendary engineering team, “the traitorous eight”. Even for them it was hard to find the initial capital. Out of three dozens of potential investors no one was willing to give them funding. Finally Arthur connected them with Sherman Fairchild who himself was also an inventor and entrepreneur, so he made the first move and invested the first million to launch the semiconductor business. This is the company from where the term ‘Silicon Valley’ is originally coming! All the members of the tremendous eight started their own businesses later on, for instance Intel.

While Peter was presenting inspiring stories to economics students at Corvinus, David was entertaining engineering minds with anecdotes at BME. They introduced the entrepreneurial stars of Budapest to the audience: these pioneers had a very similar experience to  what their American predecessors had in the movie. Founder of Prezi, Adam is a great example: he was working on his zooming program for 8 years before he started the company with his partners; or Gyula, who is a lawyer by profession, but developed an online streaming service, UStream with his team. The idea conquered the US and is becoming increasingly popular in the CEE region, too. Or finally here is Sherry, who has Pakistani origins. He does not speak Hungarian at all, however, he has found a Groupon business in Budapest, Kuponvilag, and the company has just celebrated the anniversary of its market leadership position! They all struggled in the first and probably the most difficult phase of a company’s life, when everything was uncertain, existence was doubtful and they were happy for each customer that showed interest in their products or services.

The audience seemed to be enjoying the exercise as they rated the event at an overall 6.1 on a scale of 7. They have sent us encouraging feedback like:

“It was very inspiring. It was amazing hearing the first man who invented the VC word, how did the Tremendous Eight took the initiative to build up something from the ground.”

“The guests that attended were not only high profile but gave me some fantastic advice that I will keep with me on my journey as an entrepreneur.”

“I think the film clearly pointed out the best examples of venture capital use in history. “

“It was really motivating and unique, because if I read about these companies, I always read about the inventors and engineers, and not the people who are more relevant for me, the people who invested.”

“The organisation was good, thank you very much for the wine, I enjoyed it. I was able to use the networking session to collect some really promising contacts.“

“It was perfectly organized ! Everyone was very helpful. Thanks For Everything !!! You’re the best ! ”

Student associations, Spin Off Club, BEST Budapest and Simonyi College have joined the organisation and helped us make the event a great success. Gratitude goes to the Hungarian Venture Capital Association (HVCA) too, who supported our event.

We will screen the film in Prague next! Come and join us.

In our accelerator courses in Budapest, 13 venture teams made it to the finals. We reached out to the Venture Capital community and made good progress in creating a true ecosystem. We screened the movie „How Silicon Valley was born” as a European premier. Our active community expanded to more than 600 on Facebook, more than 300 people joined us on EEF Forum, actively debating entrepreneurship and entrepeneurial investing. We have a team of bloggers: they helped with 100 entries to attract readers and 10.000 unique visitors to our website.

“Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come!” We started here in 2009. Having proven that our initiatives and programs meet with a huge market demand, we decided to talk about our objectives more openly. We thank everyone who has contributed to the creation of a better entrepreneurial environment in the CEE region! However, this was only a beginning, your dedication in the coming year will be more important than ever! Stay commiteed and help us to address more people who need encouregment, coaching and mentoring for taking their fate into their own hands.

We wish you all a year full of personal enrichment and learning experiences.

Yours
EEF Team

The finals of its 6th Accelerator Course in Budapest, dubbed as the Jeremie Venture Contest took place on 5 December 2011 at Corvinus University. More than 100 young entrepreneurs showed up, witnessing the venture plan presentation of the teams making it to the finals. In the end, the evening turned into a highly successful networking event of the Budapest ecosystem.

The audience

Seven contender teams of enthusiastic entrepreneurs, aged 19 to 42 years, presented their ventures in front of a panel consisting of lead partners of Jeremie Funds. The atmosphere was charged with motivation and this is exactly what would-be self-employers are longing for. Entrepreneurial spirit, the so-called “E-virus” was all over the place and it can be caught easily if one is curious and courageous enough to attend and listen. “God has not created us as employees. Take your fate in your own hands!” was Peter’s introduction. “The four major factors determining a startup’s success are: encouragement, role models, teamwork and fighting spirit.” As one attendee saw it: “Venture Accelerator is a unique, unmatched program in Hungary, and it provides exactly what modern entrepreneurs need: inspiration and guidance, with focus, efficiency and authenticity.” The large audience and the electrifying atmosphere clearly proved that there is a great need for such forums in Hungary, people are starving for motivation. EEF’s courses feature the very best of role models: Prezi founder Adam Somlai or Marton Szoke who sold his IndexTools to Yahoo. In the absence of an experienced role model they never found their own company – even if they possess thrilling new ideas. And as the course has proven, ideas we do have in abundance!

Panel of Judges

Zoltán Piroska, serial entrepreneur, CEO of Greener One, Inc. a San Francisco based company sees a lot of space for growth: “Central Europe is 10-15 years behind the US in the evolution of start-ups. Hungary has a great potential to succeed, the quality of education is very high here.” He also underlined the importance of creating an “ecosystem”, a framework to test ideas and where funding is available. Zoltán is optimistic: “We are in the beginning of creating such an environment here” – he says. The challenge is to throw seeds on fertile ground and to add know-how and motivation as fertilizers to grow the plants. This is what EEF and the Spin-Off Club are experts of: bringing together bright youngsters with experienced business professionals. “Our role is not so much to select, not so much to criticize – but it is to build, support and encourage” – said Zoltán Bruckner from Primus Ventures, who sat on the Panel of Judges. Investors not only can kick-start fledging companies – if they spot an investment opportunity in an embryonic firm, they will not hesitate to make it grow. As Kristóf Bárány, Investment Director of DBH (another Jeremie Fund) commented: “Some of them are real startups, where an idea has emerged and they are trying to put together a business model. Two or three of the participants are close to being mature for investment.”

Networking in the Aula

Such an event is a perfect occasion to exchange ideas, to gain motivation and to learn, in order to understand how venture capital works. “I would like to know more about startup financing, especially about angel and seed investments. I loved the inspirational spirit of the sessions” – said one attendee. And he is right: events organized by EEF have a strong international flavor. A business cannot really be successful in today’s economic circumstances if confined within a single country: in reality, borders exist solely in our minds; the world has opened up and if someone starts a company, the target should be the international market. However, contenders had to face stark reality when it came to evaluating business plans. “I liked the mentorship and we received very honest opinions. Sometimes it felt harsh, we learnt how to deal with it and how to develop based on the judges’ comments” – said Tamás Haidegger, the founder of Hand-in-Scan, a startup company. Omar H. Gassama, the creator of DUSU, an IT startup admitted that they should have done more homework on finance and deep market knowledge is also a must. The evening offered a great opportunity to build lucrative business relationships too. As a participant underlined: “For me, the networking part was the best this year, I’ve met great people. What I find even more important than the event itself.” Professionals with different backgrounds, career stages and goals, with one common characteristic: they are all infected with the E-virus, the arduous desire to build companies, a commitment to make a change in their and other people’s lives. They took up on the whole world – and seemingly enjoy it.

The 7 Venture Teams