Startup Pirates Battle in Porto

November 19th 2011:  Startup Pirates Battle in Porto will take place and the PionierGarge has an offer for two free tickets!

“Do you feel like a Pirate? Startup Pirates Battle, which is going to take place on November 19th in Porto, Portugal, is the right event for you!

• 32 startups fighting in pitching battle rounds to win an acceleration or incubation prize.
• A conference with inspiring speakers.
• A Startup Fair.
• Are you on board?”

If you are interested in taking part, contact publicrelations@pioniergarage.de, or register directly via http://battle.startuppirates.org/.

Startup Pirates @ Porto

On Saturday, August 27th 2011, the “Pioniergarage e.V.” represented by me, Norman Saade, travelled to Porto in order to participate in the first “Startup Pirate” event. From August 28th until Septemer 4th the participants were provided with valuable help in the process of building a own company.

When I arrived in Porto one of the pirate crew members welcomed me at airport and offered me a tour throughout the city center of Porto. My already very good impression of the Portuguese was confirmed at the evening when I got to know my friendly host who provided me a room for the whole ten days of my stay.

The event itself started on Sunday afternoon with a team building event where I met the Startup pirate participants who came from Portugal, England, Argentina and South Africa. Many of them were still students but also successful founders were part of the crew.

The actual program started on the second day with two workshops covering the topic of viral marketing followed by a yoga session which had the title “Developing Your Inner Leader”. After lunch a creative session took place. Here we started building our own idea, had the chance to talk about them before each and everybody could present their ideas to the participants. The aim of that was to gather teams out of the 25 participants which ended the next morning with seven teams, who decided to build a startup out of the strongest emerged ideas.

The following days were all off to Sunday with a similar pattern: In the morning one or two workshops or entrepreneurial talks that covered topics from “Business Plan for startups” to “Intellectual property”. After that the whole pirate crew went for lunch. The rest of the afternoon was dedicated to developing the startups in the teams. The day usually ended then with the yoga program which was always a big contrast to the rest of the day.

Mentors who themselves were successful entrepreneurs visited us twice. In this sessions we were able to tell them about our ideas and in the following conversation every team received individual constructive suggestions for improving the way they wanted to build the company.

The final day, Sunday, was all about presenting the now developed startups in front of a big audience. Also investors who were keen to provide financial support were attending. In the available ten minutes of presenting and ten minutes to answer questions every team showed the work they accomplished within the last week.

My personal summary of the event is very positive. Not only did I have the chance to get to know a lot of very interesting people from different countries but also the experience of working in a group with them was very valuable. On top of that, I was pleasantly surprised by almost all the workshops and entreupeneurial talks. I believe specifically the workshop “How to pitch”, “Business plans for start-ups” and “Failure” were very useful, the lectures from different entrepreneurs motivated me to set up my own company and even the yoga sessions, although I needed some time to get used to it, were helpful.

To sum up, a truly successful event that has a great potential to find in other European cities to host it!

Check out www.startuppirates.org for more information.