Printing House Swarm 22/02/2012
Regulars at our Hive53 meetups may have met Piotr Wilam at previous gatherings, where he has sat on the judging panel for our pitching sessions. We're grateful for his support (he even tweeted how nicely Piotr and Ela run the show! Seconded!) and we are delighted to welcome him as our guest speaker just before he takes off to Silicon Valley where he'll be introducing Polish startups to American VCs. The meetup will take place at Drukarnia Jazz Club (Nadwiślańska 1) starting at 6PM on Monday 5th March.    Piotr Wilam is currently CEO and leading investor at Innovation Nest, the seed and venture fund for global Internet projects that have their base in Poland. He is perhaps best known to many of us as co-founder and first president of Poland's largest Internet portal - www.onet.pl. In addition to these distinguished achievements, he founded Pascal Publishing (which grew to the market leader in travel guides, with more than 50% market share) as well as the digital publishing startup, Optimus Pascal Multimedia, which became Poland's leading educational software publisher. Perhaps his background as both a philosopher and a mathematician has given him the uncanny ability to succeed in so many different fields? Let us know you're coming by clicking "I'm Attending" on our Facebook event page and see you there! The format of the evening will be as before: 18:00 Welcome drink 18:15 Interview and Q&A with Piotr 19:00 Pitch session (register at pitches@hive53.com) 19:15 Announcements 19:30 Networking The rules for pitching are: - max 60 seconds - no slides - in English We'll run pitcher training on 1st March at 6:30PM at Lunar Logic Polska (Krasinskiego 17/3). This really helped the last set of pitchers, so please take the opportunity to get practice and feedback before the event! Comments: Guests from the Windy City 14/02/2012
Right, so the freezing cold period is hopefully behind us and it’s time for the busy bees to get out a little, defrost our wings and start working on the next Swarm. We’re planning to have one in March and we’ll let you know the details as soon as we have them sorted out. In the meantime we have a nice treat for you. Uki Lucas - Founder and CEO of CyberWalkAbout.com will be visiting Krakow next week. You’ll find more about him below. Together with Daniel Bara they are looking to create links between Polish startups and American investors in Chicago. Uki graciously agreed to meet us for some drinks and chat on Monday the 20th of February. So let us know you’re coming by clicking ‘I’m attending’ on the event page and join us there to discuss the startup and investor ecosystem in Chicago, mobile technologies and many other topics. We’re getting together around 6pm in 'u Louisa' pub - Market Square 13.  Uki D. Lucas is a technology entrepreneur, public speaker, book author and community organizer. He is the Founder & CEO of CyberWalkAbout.com and the leader of Chicago Android and Chicago GTUG communities. He organizes conferences, events and workshops for over 500 participating Chicago developers. Uki is an Android developer himself and has been speaking and teaching on topics related to Google technology, Android platform and Social Media on numerous occasions. Comments: BIG NEWS - Hive is now Hive53! 17/01/2012
Noticed any changes in our logo? We grew up :) Everyone make a toast for Hive53! You're probably wondering why... Let us explain: The idea of Hive came to life within literally a few days and materialized over the next few. We came up with the name, sketched the logo and the website in a few hours of intense collaboration between myself, Piotr and Socha. From the very beginning we liked the name and the metaphor behind it - a hive is where all busy bees meet, it's a community of those ready to work hard, those in constant motion. And since we love the startup world - the sweetness of honey luring people into that craziness sounded convincing too ;). From the very beginning we liked our quickly drafted pixel logo and pixel bees but we weren't really happy with the "hive" font. Neither with the quickly prototyped website. Had we aimed at perfection then, Hive might have never had happened so this is the way it had to be back then. But now it's time for another iteration. We've been working on updating our branding & logo for the past few weeks. The website redesign is also on its way too - to make sure the site represents our great community better. More on that soon ;) Why 53?! The simplest answer we can give is: because we want to keep building something significant and unique. From branding perspective using just "Hive" was tricky because there are many "hives" out there. Our domain was joinhive.com, we didn't have the @hive twitter handle and that was confusing. A few people - including Mike Butcher - advised us to change that status quo ASAP. So we did. We brainstormed a few other names but since we usually meet at Applicake's HQ where the address is Sklodowskiej-Curie Street 5/3 - those two digits seemed like a natural choice. And 53 looks good - it makes Hive sound like a special secret operation or a code name for something awesome ;). So as we grow up, we can still keep calling ourselves Hive and it will always be our cute first name. But 53 is the new last name. So remember - it's Hive53, @hive53 and #hive53 and hive53.com. Comments: Pitcher training - Monday 16th January 12/01/2012
We said we would - so we will. Put it this way - have you ever known a bee that doesn't keep its word? We're running our first pitcher training session at 6:30 PM on Monday 16th January, at the offices of Lunar Logic Polska (al. Krasińskiego 17/5 - opposite Kino Kijów).
Boat Swarm 10/01/2012
Happy New Year to one and all! It’s time to open your bright, shiny 2012 diaries and make a note of the first Hive meeting of the year - Wednesday 18th January at 6PM at Aquarius Restaurant - on Vistula river, right next to Wawel Castle.    This promises to be a truly buzzing meetup, with our speaker, Jaromir Działo fresh from recent success in Silicon Valley. Jaromir is one of the founders of semantic text summarizing service Topicmarks, a startup that rapidly attracted seed investment from the likes of Mint founder, Aaron Patzer, as well as rave reviews on TechCrunch and Mashable. Winner of Seedcamp, and runaway winner of the 2011 Founder Showcase, Topicmarks was acquired in December 2011 by social discovery leader Tagged. Jaromir’s career includes multiple startup successes, co-authorship of a patent, as well as involvement in more than 100 different web services - read more about him on our speakers’ page. The format of the evening will be as before: 18:00 Welcome drink 18:15 Interview and Q&A with Jaromir 19:00 Pitch session (register at pitches@joinhive.com) 19:15 Announcements 19:30 Networking  The rules for pitching are: - max 60 seconds - no slides - in English Each of those pitching will receive instant feedback and will have a chance to win tickets to Startup Weekend Krakow. It's a great opportunity to practice, get feedback and get noticed. The pitch session and prizes are sponsored once again by BrightBerries.  Fundacja Nowe Technologie and Kevin Greene of anotherfriend.com are also sponsoring the event and supporting our startup community. Let us know you're coming by clicking "I'm Attending" on our Facebook event page, get your beeesiness cards ready and see you January 18th! Comments:  RacingLife.net team met British entrepreneur and business angel Richard Lucas at the Hive meetup in December 2011. Richard is providing seed funding that will both enable the team to develop their game faster and introduce new features. The goal is to make Racinglife.net "the" motorsport management game of choice. "We are excited to work with Richard, not only because of the financial contribution but also because of his valuable advice and experience, which we believe improve our chances of success. With a clear product vision, technical knowledge and passion, RacingLife.net can become profitable business." - says Klaudyna Dudzik, Marketing Specialist. When asked about why he decided to invest, Richard said: “What impressed me was the degree of engagement from players around the world and the commitment and techincal skills of the team. We shook hands less just 2 weeks after we first met so it is obvious that we like moving fast. Our main priority now is to focus on developing the game so that active players get something they really enjoy playing in increasing numbers. If we can achieve this we can figure out the rest.” Congratulations to Richard and the team! Comments: Ridley Scott can help you pitch... 04/01/2012
I sat through a series of presentations a couple of weeks back that were universally terrible. Slide after slide of PowerPoint, most of which the presenters simply read out (why not just send a mail if that’s all they are going to do??). Probably in a monotone, but given the fact that I could also hardly hear most of the presenters, it's hard to tell. These were all relatively short presentations, up to ten minutes maximum, but even so, it's amazing how quickly one's attention can drift off if a presenter doesn't capture and hold our attention.
A good startup is one which...
Changes something. A good startup is one which doesn’t have to spend loads of money on marketing, because you can’t fail to notice it. Spotify is a good example - people queued up to use it! The most important characteristic of a startup founder is... Stubbornness, stubbornness and stubbornness. Apart from that, strategic thinking, focus on your vision, and belief that you’ll succeed. It’s also important to be able to communicate your idea and your vision to the rest of the world. It helps if you can work well without sleep too ;-) Are you crazy enough? 23/12/2011
They take place all over the world. They happen almost every week. Last week it was Bangkok and Tunis - a week before that it was Gaza, Lille, St. Petersburg, Penang and Delhi. And already in less than a month from now it will be Cairo, New York, Bangalore, Palo Alto and finally... Krakow!!!
Basement Swarm 23/11/2011
Dear busy bees, It feels great to share that the next Hive meetup will take place on Sunday December 11th at the legendary Piwnica pod Baranami (Market Square 27) - the prominent long-lasting anchor on the artistic and creative map of Krakow.   Our special guest that evening will be Amanda Rose - entrepreneur, event manager, digital strategist and advisor. She is the Founder of Connect the Dots Foundation and Twestival movement. More about Amanda below. Event agenda: 18:00 Welcome drink 18:15 Interview and Q&A with Amanda 19:00 Pitch session (register at pitches@joinhive.com) 19:15 Announcements 19:30 Networking  The rules for pitching are: - max 60 seconds - no slides - in English Each of those pitching will receive instant feedback and will have a chance to win tickets to Startup Weekend Krakow and a coaching session from Rafał Han and 2 more great startup mentors (it's a suprise!). It's a great opportunity to practice, get feedback and get noticed. The pitch session and prizes are sponsored by BrightBerries who have been our supporters from the very beginning.  We are also very happy to announce a new sponsor - Fundacja Nowe Technologie is helping us make this event possible. Let us know you're coming by clicking "I'm Attending" on our Facebook event page, get your beeesiness cards ready and see you Dec 11th!  Amanda Rose is the Founder of Connect the Dots Foundation; established in 2009 to incubate and craft fresh global campaigns and initiatives that use technology to connect people offline for a good cause. She co-founded Space-2, an innovative film and event locations consultancy where she has coordinated events for British Royalty and the Prime Minister of Canada, the Brit Awards and London Fashion Week. In 2007, inspired by the shift towards social networks Amanda decided to complete a Masters in Communications Management and spent a year researching a newly forming communications platform called Twitter. This offered unique insight as the global founder and architect of a movement called Twestival, an international volunteer effort to use social media like Twitter to raise money for important causes. Twestival has been able to build 55 wells with charity: water and recent efforts with Concern Worldwide will give thousands of students the chance at an education. Advising technology startups and those with a social good focus keep her energized. She is passionate about developing unique digital and creative strategies for brands and organizations looking to take the next step. Amanda is currently in development on an exciting new project that is still to be announced. Comments: |
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