What exactly is the Startup Roadshow?
Metropolitan areas are known to be the best place for startups to go with their ideas, attend workshops and events in search of opportunity. This model has been adopted around the world for preety obvious reasons:If innovatve, one should be where innovation thrives— the City. But what about small towns? If all innovation goes to places already developed, aren’t small towns being left behind? Why don’t we get to them instead of the opposite? Questions such as this inpired Black Pearls’s employees to create the Startup Roadshow: a contest that aims to bring innovation to smaller towns in Poland.
How it came about?
“The Startup Roadshow was created through one of Black Pearls’s projects. Our goals with this project is to attract interesting business projects based on innovative solutions, reach audiences from smaller cities with our funding offer for high potential business projects and support the development of innovation outside of metropolitan areas”— Radosław Białas, Investment Director at Black Pearls
The Organizer
Black Pearls, a leading fund in the Pomeranian voivodship in Poland has buit up it’s reputation from the immense value they’ve provided to their clients and the continuous expansion of their activities. From angel investing, to event hosting as well as consulting services, it’s not a secret that variety is one of their key mantras. An event such as the Startup Roadshow shouldn’t be an element of surprise for people already familiar with Black Pearls. For this project the company partnered up with Seed Capital, the 13th Central Pomeranian Job Fair and some local organizations such as SIT, the Career Bureau from the Technical University of Koszalin and the Technology Park of Kielce.
“Out of all our activities the Startup Roadshow is the tip of the iceberg”— Wojciech Drewczyński, R&D Director at Black Pearls
The Who? What? Where? and other questions…
The targeted audience for this project is anyone living in Poland that has innovative ideas and solutions for day to day problems looking forward to realize them. Prizewinning team members from the first edition earned their victory by building something as simple as a three-wheeler bike, of course with an innovative amortisation system.
The first edition took place in Słupsk at the Słupski Inkubator Technologiczny(Slupsk Technology Incubator). Upcoming events are planned to be realized in Radom, Elbląg and Koszalin (currently recruiting for the second edition). Although the contest’s target are small towns, people from metropolitan aras are also allowed to submit their projects.
Each edition will have the duration of around two months. The contest has a competitive-educational character since participants will be provided with tools and information ment to expand their knowledge base. Participants will take a close look at topics such as effective pitching, project management, marketing for startups and so on.
Inside the contest (the 3 stages)
1. Recruitment: participants submit their projects online (www.startuproadshow.pl)
2. Preselection and preincubation (assessment and selection of projects for preincubation) – praticipants are provided with consulting sevices, they attend workshops on creating business models, business planning and effective pitching. By the end of this stage organizers choose ten finalists.
3. Final Gala: here finalists pitch their ideas in front of an audience. The judges, after assessing each project, wiil announce the winner.
The finals
After the Final Gala, the winner will get 1 00 000 PLN in investment to jumpstart his business. In this event, the presence of investors and business peolpe is very crucial. It motivates participants not only to impress the jury but also to earn the attention of hungry investors among the audience. It’s a really great opportunity for networking with innovators, creative minds, and business owners.
For more information visit the link below (Official Contest Website)
Submit your project www.startuproadshow.pl.All ideas welcome!
More about the first call Startup Roadshow Winner: here
