StartupCamp in Bratislava

At the kind invitation of the organizers, I participated yesterday at the StartupCamp in Bratislava, a start-up event organized for the Slovak start-up market. I went there with a presentation on the Schoolforstartups program that we run in Romania in 2012, but a program that is addressed for the entire region (Hungary, Serbia, Moldova, Bulgaria, also Slovakia). I was impressed with the participation of the Bratislava City Mayor at this event, a clear signal that the local authorities there are considering entrepreneurial development, particularly in growth areas such as IT and technology, a priority. I was also impressed with his actual presentation and answers to questions, he outperformed other central-European mayors I have seen on stage, even in Austria or Germany, in the past years, congratulations! I was unimpressed with the presentation of a Czech start-up accelerator manager, I think that was not the best call of the organizers to invite a guy who was totally unprepared for it. I saw some very interesting, even wild ideas being pitched by young start-up entrepreneurs, some of them maybe too edgy for my taste, but still very interesting as a case-study: a urine and drinkable water tester (all-in-one), a toilet locator app (somewhat on a Foursquare structure, but for public toilets) and even an iPad application for cat-haters! The good thing about crazy ideas is that they tend to attract attention and initial interest. The bad thing with the same ideas is that in many cases, they only remain crazy ideas, or not much more than that. This being said, congratulations to all the pitching startups and see you soon at Schoolforstartups 2012!