Heard@ Founder Institute: How Promising Entrepreneurs Globalize Silicon Valley

Yesterday the graduation ceremony of the Founder Institute was held in the World Mobile Centre. Four companies succeeded in finishing the program and are now recognized as promising entrepreneurs. Their companies will become an example of how Silicon Valley is being globalized and nurtures potential worldwide. The four graduates are:

Ansquick

In other words: answer quickly. In business a lot of wrong decisions are made, leading to terrible mistakes. Ansquick can provide quick and cheap market research by answering your questions and discovering daily trends with their online database. They target specifically SME and their USP is simplicity.

Pypna

Want to kick start your music career? Pypna is a fast growing online talent scout with currently 11.000 daily visits. The talent is in charge, because the company adheres to the principle “crowdvisit”. The talent should generate a certain amount of views and then Pypna will help the talent with records, clip and concerts.

ECrowd

Anticipating on the trend “crowdlending” and “crowdinvesting”, Ecrowd is a marketplace where projects can be financed by companies. It is not aimed at the individual, but at the project. Hence, crowdfunding for companies to fulfill projects and assure stable cash flows afterwards.

Skrim payments

Payments made easy by an enabling software. This eCommerce platform can process all international payments.

Just 4 graduates from the Founder Institute? That’s not many. In May the program started with 19 persons, but most didn’t reach the point of proving to be successful and consequently had to leave the program. Those that survived are able to scale up internationally. The Founder Institute, with local representations in 45 cities, is an incubator program of 4 months made out of 3 stages: idea refinement, business setup and launch planning. With the help of an international mentor pool, they facilitate the road to grow to a promising entrepreneur. In total the Founder Institute has accelerated 1000 companies, resulting in +10.000 job. Of those that succeed, 42 % find financing in the first 12 months and 89% still exist a year after graduation, and are even growing.

Oriol Bes (director at Founder Institute Barcelona) explains that not everybody can be an entrepreneur: “You have to need the entrepreneur DNA to make it.” But at which age the gen is activated, does not really matter. The average age of the participants is 34,5 years.

Graduate Matthieu van Haperen (CEO ECrowd) explains the main added value: “You get feedback from inspiring mentors every week. It means a lot of work and constant improvements, but it really benefits your company. Additionally, as a foreigner in Barcelona, it also helped me to develop a big network.” One of the mentor, Marti Manent (CEO derecho.com) adds that ‘the perfect formula for an entrepreneur does not exist, it’s an art.’ But of course, there is advice that might help. He warns for 5 mistakes :

1) Choose partners too soon (no insight in needed capabilities)

2) Stay on the initial idea and get stuck with the initial concept (no further development / improvements)

3) Rely on what the experts say and not on your intuition (feedback is good, learning as well, but you must believe in it yourself)

4) Believe that it’s good enough (you should be sure it is perfect)

5) Having no revenue model in place (not generating a revenue stream is the end of business)

The below picture presents how to position the Founder Institute in the Barcelona Ecosystem. Note that you have to invest yourself to be part of the program. The first selection is that you intrinsically want to be an entrepreneur. Do you feel you’d be a good fit? They are now accepting applications for Winter 2013.