Many of the top names in Krakow Startup Community + government officials, student leaders, entrepreneurs, artists and entertainers are gathering for the first of a series Kraków Enterprise Mondays. 

www.eventbrite.com/e/krakow-enterprise-mondays-meetup-tickets-27662859357  

www.facebook.com/events/1117619791654625/

The focus is on giving students the opportunity to interact with and learn from the special guests.
The programme 
Icebreakers 
Welcome and opening 
Magic show
Short 1-2 min "Open Coffee Kraków style" elevator pitches from the guests:
who are they,
what do they do,
how can they help students thinking of starting a business
one piece of advice 
Q&A
networking and "Office hours" 
Open Mic (guitar and maybe standup Comedy)

Free Drinks are sponsored by J-Labs

​

Peter Cowley - who was last in Kraków for Bitspiration -  is back in town and will be the guest of honour at a Startup Stage
on Thursday 19th May. Details here and sign up  here 
   
As well as being the UK's angel investor of the year, Peter has experience leading the  the Marshall Group's Martlet Fund - for- Marhalls' is a GBP1.3bn revenue privately owned engineering group in Cambridge. He is also active in the Cambridge Angels.   

Hive and Startup Stage are thrilled to have him in town

See you Thursday.

Peter's web site is here 

Those of you who follow Krakow technology scene surely know about a cute developer conference called Railsberry, produced by Applicake and Hive's own Ela.

It started as the European Rails Conference in 2012 and became a more interdisciplinary developer event in 2013.

Now, together with Railsberry, Webmus.es and our big sponsor hub:raum, we're organizing a meetup with some of Railsberry community members to learn about their entrepreneurial journey. 

So, citing Railsberry's own words: "Turns out the berries have been working on exciting things: we’ll have our grandfather Jose Valim talk about one of his two recent babies--Elixir. We’ll have the adorable Linda Liukas talk about her hugely successful project Hello Ruby. We’ll have Basia Madej of Webmuses talking about Rails Girls Maputo and how difficult it is to organize a community without a community. We’ll have Ola Sitarska tell us abouthow she started Makerland… Birds are singing that we might see Mislav, Terence and some other folks."

We want to experiment with the formula and give you a voice so if there's anything you'd like to talk about for around 10-15 minutes, you can do so at the event but best to fill out this form here.









In summary:

When? Saturday, October 4th, starting around 10am.
Where? Hub:raum, 12 Przemyslowa Street, Krakow
Sign up on the Facebook event page here.

Did we forget anything? Right! BZZZZZZZ!

For our last Hive53 Swarm (before summer) we invited 2 great designers to talk more about danish and polish design - differences and similarities, threats and opportunities.

We meet at Kolanko NO 6, at 6.30pm on Wednesday, 4.06.2014

Join the event on FB!

As you know Denmark has a long tradition for design and architecture. Our guests Rasmus Ludvigsen and Mette Hvid will tell you more about danish design industry and their project which prepares designers to become better entrepreneurs.

We will talk about designing real products. How to use what we have and create real value.

--
Rasmus and Mette will also run workshop for designers on Thursaday, 5.06 at Hub:raum HQ!

We really encourage you guys to take part in this experience.
The one-day workshop is free but sits are limited - first come first served
Send us an email at marek@joinhive.com if you want to participate.

What you can learn there:
1. How good design and heavyduty branding can be achieved by exploring already existing elements.
2. How polish designs future might be build on its history according to crafts, design, heritage in general, institutions, infrastructure etc .

Workshop will start at 10am and finish at 5pm (with an extra break)

About the speakers:
Rasmus Wind Ludvigsen
Creative and concept lead 
An industrial Designer (2004), with particular interest in creative processes, making of creative work environments and sustainable product development. 

Mette Hvid
Project and Development Manager 
After working as a theatrical producer and director, Mette now works as a freelance fundraiser and project developer specialising in interdisciplinary, creative projects. 

We are pleased to announce a special Hive event with Tim Jackson on Wednesday 14th May, starting at 8pm
(doors open from 7:30pm) at Kolanko NO 6 at Jozefa St, Kazimierz.

Tim will talk about the Lean Investments approach to investment, share the insights he has gained from his career to date and take questions. 

Join our event today at Hive53 FB page.

We also plan an instant pitch feedback session where selected startups will do 3 min pitch to Tim and take his feedback. If you are interested in pitching write to marek@joinhive.com

The Agenda:
1. Welcome from the Hosts
2. Community announcements
3. Tim's presentation
4. Pitching session

A few words why you should meet Tim:
Tim Jackson is a seed investor, entrepreneur, former Financial Times reporter, Partner at Lean Investments, author, venture capitalist. He makes investments in early-stage Internet and mobile. He founded QXL, the pan-European online auction company sold in 2007 for $1.9 billion. Bzzz

Big news!
Hive53 is coming to Kazimierz! Next Swarm will take place on 23rd of April at 8pm at KOLANKO NO 6 (Jozefa 17)

It's a spring refresh! New place and new ideas:)
Join us and listen to awesome talk from experienced entrepreneur - Alex Farcet.

Alex is a co-founder & MD of Startupbootcamp. He also co-founded the Rainmaking Loft Berlin, an elite tech and investor co-working space.

Alex will have a HiveTalk about Corporate Innovation vs Startups. 

What we see now is that large corporations have never had so much power. They have bigger reach and influence than any single governmental institution. On the other hand they've never been so open (concerned) to external innovation because it's never been more true that two founders in a garage can completely disrupt an industry.

We start at 8pm with Alex's presentation and after we will have time for Q&A and community announcements.

Bzzz

Don't miss one of the best Swarms this spring! 

18th of March
The Stage, Łobzowska 3, Kraków 
6.30pm

Our guest this evening will be Kate Drane.
Join the event here.

Kate is Indiegogo’s hardware marketing director. She is responsible for all aspects of business growth for the platform’s design and technology categories.

Kate will tell you more about the future of crowdfunding! How does it look like from investors and big brands perspective.

The day after (19th of March) Kate will run workshops "how to prepare crowdfunding campaign" at hub:raum Krakow HQ

We start at 10.00am
The workshop will last for about 1,5-2h

Number of participants is limited so if you want to come, send an email at marek@joinhive.com

We asked Greg from hub:raum Kraków to write few simple tips for startups that are in search of Investors. Hope you'll like it!

There are probably many guides which tell you how to talk to potential investors. However, it seems that there is never enough of them as the same mistakes are often repeated by huge number of startups. Some summary from my experience you can find below:

• Always know who are you talking to
For many statuppers investor group is homogenous. But that is a mistake. You get different approaches. Some are looking for big return on equity deal, other might have more diverse goals.

Financial Investors like seed or venture funds are usually pursuing investments for high IRR (return for their investors) with perspective of 3-5 and maximum of 7 years. Usually they are looking for more mature products or at least with MVP. 
Accelerators will be more flexible and are typically looking for an exit with some of the follow up rounds. They accept usually earlier stage projects, even without proper go2market approach or business models. Actually, they might even help you to develop them!
Business angels – they might be pursuing their own strategy, check what they were up to lately to know what you might expect. They might be looking for something to match
Corporate funds – this group is a bit different. Usually they are pursuing some general strategy like expanding the product portfolio of subsidiary companies. However, in rare cases they could also be entrusted with investments of free cash flow from other operations, but it is a rare case.

• Prepare yourself
As mentioned above potential investors vary a great deal. Therefore they will have different expectations about what you will present. Whether it is a business plan, an excel spreadsheet, deck, user case study. I realize it would be really great to have one fit-for-all package but you have to make at least some effort to match the potential investors 
expectations. And that doesn’t mean just putting their name on the first page of the deck!

• Portfolio
Check what is already there in investors’ portfolios. See if your project competes directly or indirectly with any of the current investments as this may be a show stopper. Be prepared to 
answer questions about this. Or maybe it is supplementary? Or could be somehow bundled with products of their other investments? Showing this as a case study could help you a lot in sealing the deal. 

• Go for smart money 
You can get funds or so called mentorship from lots of places. But check what else you can get from investors. Maybe they can help you to set a pilot of your product somewhere? Or 
can provide you with some technical expertise, market research opportunities or support the sourcing of equipment? 

• Look who is on the other side of the table
It is obvious that the potential investor will be assessing you. But you should also do the 

same. Remember it will be someone who you will be talking to a lot in the future. If you already see there is no way you can work with that person on the long term basis – just save
both sides the trouble. If you feel that your personalities will clash at every occasion or your vision of execution differ too much it will never work.

Who is that bee that wrote that article:
Greg Banas is head of investments at hub:raum for CEE - Deutsche Telekom unit for Central and Eastern Europe. He started his career by working for Polish Embassy where he has been supporting polish companies doing business in Portugal and along the way he picked up some surfing skills and some Portuguese. After that he moved to pursue his career in business advisory, due diligence and audit activities at EY what gave him insight into the world of big corporations. For the last couple of years he was strongly engaged in the startup community managing investments for a Venture Capital group, running his own startup advisory company and getting personally involved in a couple of startups. He is also pursuing 
his Ph.D. as a researcher in the area of innovations and investments at Cracow University of Economics.

If you want to contact hub:raum, write at hello@hubraum.com.

We also encourage you to apply to hub:raum startup programme. More details here: applytohubraum.com

Final time to start the new season! This year we change the rules a bit;) Each guest will have 25min for his HiveTalk and we'll do Q&A round just after that. We will also give you time to speak up at the end of the each meetup.  

So...who will start?
We invited Dymitr Glouchtchenko - founder of KWEJK.pl - the most popular funny content platform in Poland! 


Swarm will take place on 5th of March at The Stage - Łobzowska 3, Krakow


Register here!
and join FB event!

Dymitr will have an intense 25min HiveTalk about advertising and how to build the online product with around half a billion page views per month!

How to analyze and use the right data? 
How to earn money from the ads? 
Dymitr will answer all those questions in his HiveTalk.

Don't know Dymitr Glouchtchenko?
He's originally from Russia but he's in Poland since 1995. Besides Kwejk he's intested in mobile gaming and 3D printing. 

Come and talk! 
The Stage, Łobzowska 3
5.03.2014
6.30pm

bzzz