Friday, 6 p.m. Idea Pitches begin @ American University in Kosovo Sunday, 6 p.m. Project Presentations close @ Sheshi 21

Startup Weekend Prishtina #1, 26-28 March 2010 Final Report

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chExecutive Summary

Startup Weekend Prishtina: #1Startup Weekends in Balkans to date: 0

Participants: 76Pitchers: 21Pitches: 24Projects: 7

individualcoachingsessions: 12grouppitchtraining,attendees: 23

closingeventguests: 100+slidesproducedforfinalpresentations: 66

TVinterviews: 3newspaperarticles: 2livetweets&photosatstartvienna.at: 50+

hard facts

soft factsnationalities represented: 8

sleep deficit after the weekend (in hrs p.p., est.): 12

returning visitors to Kosovo, enjoying to be back: 3first time visitors, leaving with great impressions: 10postcards sent to those who could not make it: 27

new friends added on facebook (est.): 500+Startup Weekend couples: ?

interesting conversations: countlessexperience value for participants & guests: pricelessreadiness to do it again: 100%

idea 1 DailyDifabora home delivery of fresh, organic dairy products

idea 2kikiks’KidsKingdom children’s daycare with professional educators

idea 3 F1forhelp telephone-based concierge service for Prishtina

idea 4 inboxEntertainmentPlace creative and diverse youth center concept

idea 5 Imaxperience bringing world-class 3D cinema to Kosovo

idea 6 Fitopreparate rural harvesting of medicinal herbs for export

idea 7 KosBike implementing Prishtina’s first rent-a-bike network

Great ideas without a team included, to name just a few, manu-facturing customized objects from foamed material, addressing domestic energy saving potentials, various tourism concepts or representing Kosovo abroad through ‘unofficial embassies’.

the projects

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Pitch Training

In the startup environment, the ability to pitch your idea, busi-ness, product or service is vital. Accoding to venture capitalist and author Guy Kawasaki, René Descartes’ “cogito ego sum” (lat.: “I think, therefore I am”) does not apply to entrepreneurs. For them, it is rather “I pitch, therefore I am”. To equip partici-pants with sufficient confidence and rhetoric skills, the organ-izers provided multi-media online tutorials and check-lists well in advance. Additionally, participants were invited to join coaching sessions Friday afternoon, i.e. before the opening of the event.

What‘s a Pitch?

Participants who had pre-registered their ideas and indicated their interest in presentation training had the opportunity to work on their pitches individually. Marius Starcke, supported by Arta Hashimi and Nicolai Sawczynski, provided pitchers with detailed feedback on content, structure and style of their 90 second oral presentations. While each participant was given as much time as needed to finetune his or her pitch, it typically did not take longer than 20 minutes to significantly improve their ability to get the message across in a concise and yet interesting way – a skill useful well beyond Startup Weekend.

Individual Coaching Sessions

To accomodate the huge demand for pitch training sessions even among participants without a business idea of their own, Fredrik Debong and Fidel Thiessenhusen set up an open air Q&A session with illustrative live examples of good and not-so-good pitches, which attracted some two dozen participants to AUK’s terrace.

Dos and Don’ts of Pitching

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Ideas & Teams

Friday night at AUK, participants and guests of Startup Week-end’s opening night experienced the full breadth of creativity and entrepreneurial energy found in Prishtina: The event started with one idea per every three participants in the room, ranging from media and advertising services to environmental topics such as household energy consulting or plastic recycling. Students pro-posed new business models for primary sector commodities (e.g. fresh milk home delivery or a specialized cheese retail format) while others aimed their individualized tourism concepts at ex-pats and foreign visitors in Kosovo.

Open Floor for Ideas: Pitch Session

The fast-paced pitching session is followed by one of the decisive moments of Startup Weekend, as it involves personal feelings as well as aspects of local culture. It requires the participants to dem-onstrate decision-making readiness and sufficient flexibility in case their own idea or first choice project fails to attract others. Only topics that can generate critical mass of support during the rela-tively short breakout-session will ‘survive’ this selective process.

Being experienced in moderating this critical phase, Fredrik Debong successfully motivated some pitchers to merge related topics into larger projects. Giving priority to ideas with the big-gest momentum, he ensured that each participant found a dy-namic team for him- or herself with a “let’s go do it” attitude.

As at any Startup Weekend, a few ideas were abandoned in spite of good commercialization potential. This side-effect of group dynam-ics and freedom of choice is compensated by dedicated follow-up work, intended to re-activate business ideas deserving attention.

Project Selection & Team Formation

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achInteraction with Experts

All day Saturday, our teams were able to draw upon expert feedback by inviting our guests from abroad to join their work-ing sessions or by meeting them during lunch and dinner.

Dinu Leibovici, Waltraud Kern and Nicolai Sawczynski of ARGE Bildungsmanagement got especially involved in their field of ex-pertise, spending a lot of time with the team developing a con-cept for an educational daycare center in Prishtina. Bernhard Thalhammer of First Love Capital sat down with several groups to crunch the numbers of their business models, and Mark Tut-tle (biogy.com) used all his skills as an entrepreneurship coach and college lecturer to get the “F1” project, a telephone-oper-ated concierge service, beyond a critical moment of frustration and back on track towards a solid closing event performance.

Highly Individual Support

Even during lunch break, Startup Weekend served its partici-pants entrepreneurial brain food: Andreas Klinger, co-founder of garmz.com and experienced social media developer, en-riched the audience at AUK’s terrace with a flavor of real-life anecdotes in his entertaining luncheon “entrepreneur’s report”.

Afterwards, an interdisciplinary group of experts and startup specialists, including Mark, Nicolai, Andreas and Bernhard, as well as Edmond Shabani (ECIKS), Jürgen Furian (START) and Flor-ije Kolshi (UNI Group), toured the AUK class rooms of all seven teams to challenge their concepts and discuss opportunities for improvement. They spent approximately half an hour with each team, combining international best practices with local insight.

Entrepreneur’s View & Expert Challenge

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Closing Event & Next Steps

Sunday afternoon, 4p.m. More than 100 people gathered at Sheshi 21, the event location and TV studio in the center of Prishtina. Startup Weekend’s grand finale was about to start:

After the opening statement by Kujtim Dobruna (ECIKS) on behalf of Prof. Enver Hoxhaj, Minister of Education, Science and Technology of the Republic of Kosovo, the seven teams gave their final presentations to the audience and a panel of experts.

The panel consisted of local business leaders, international ex-perts and Kujtim Dobruna as the ‘linking element’, who contrib-uted his personal experience from both Kosovo and abroad:

BernhardThalhammer - First Love Capital, Vienna KujtimDobruna - President ECIKS, ViennaLindaShala - Director Data Project Electronics, PrishtinaNicolaiSawczynski - ARGE Bildungsmanagement, Vienna MarkTuttle - biogy.com, USAShkumbinBrestovci - General Manager RROTA, PrishtinaShpendAhmeti - Executive Director GAP Institute , Prishtina

Preparing the Stage for Business...

Thisisnottheend. UNI Group continuously offers to revise busi-ness plans, and START Vienna provides its network for investigat-ing internationalization potential. A dedicated follow-up event will take place to check on teams’ progress, plan the next feed-back loop and establish roadmaps for implementation. START Vienna may offer eligible alumni scholarships for Summer Uni-versity Carinthtina, an intensive one-week program in Villach, Austria, besides other incentives and project-specific support.

...and Laying the Ground for Investments

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Participants’ Feedback“Overall, the event was very good. I hope it will become a tradition.”

“The experts gave really good feedback and were very motivating!”

“Everyone was very friendly. I hope they‘ll organize such events in the future again.”

“It‘s a good experience. We had so much fun. Hope we‘ll be here again. Great job”

“Overall, it was a great ex-perience and well worth it.”

“It was a very good experience to be part of this. I met different people and had a good time with them.”

“Well organized”

“Well organized, concrete and to the point. It would be better to extend it to one week.”

“It was very interesting to see how we continued our ideas and the input that the experts gave us.”

“Thank you!“

“I‘ll be counting the days to the follow-up!“

“Good, great and you ‘hit the strike’!”

“Number one: Mark Tuttle. Thank you.”

“Startup Weekend Prishtina: I love it! - Organisation - nice

- Support - nice- Staff - perfect“

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Special Thanks

This event would not have been possible without the gener-ous support of our main sponsor ProCreditBank, as well as the contributions by the InvestmentPromotionAgencyofKosovo(IPAK) and USAID’s KosovoPrivateEnterpriseProgram (KPEP). We also are thankful for the support received from the MinistryofEconomyandFinanceandtheMinistryofEducation,Sci-enceandTechnology of he Republic of Kosovo.

Sponsors and Donors

Wethankourinternationalexpertsfor donating their time to join us for three exciting days, even covering their own travel costs in some cases. Nonetheless we were glad to have had the support of the AustrianChamberofCommerce (WKO), which contributed 50% of the travel expenses for the Austrian visitors. We likewise express our appreciation for our localpanelists’ commitment, as their Kosovo-specific experience and market knowledge were invaluable for the teams and us. We were also surprised and pleased to meet two Viennese, Jakob and Philipp, who spontane-ously came all the way and got involved 100% (or more).

Experts and Panelists

The most important in-kind donation to Startup Weekend was made by AmericanUniversityinKosovo (AUK), which provided us with all the room(s) we needed to host a successful event in an open atmosphere welcoming innovation. We also appreciate BBRSaatchi&Saatchi’s (Tel Aviv) and PRSolutions’ great work on implementing the “YoungEuropeans” spirit on campus and thank Valon and his crew for capturing the entire event on tape.

Supporters and Cooperation Partners

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Host Organisations

With its experience, knowledge, professionalism and dedication, ECIKS has grown to be the leading organization in investment promotion for Kosovo. Be it independently or through donor-funded projects, ECIKS has provided services to more than 100 foreign companies and potential investors, with many of them already investing and generating profits in Kosovo. In doing this, we cooperate with partner organizations abroad as well as with institutions in Kosovo. We will remain dedicated to our goal of prosperous, dynamic and economically developed Kosovo, fully integrated in the European Union.

eciks

StartVienna aims to stimulate entrepreneurial action and think-ing in Europe by enabling people to realize their own business ideas and successfully launch new companies. Using concepts like Start-up Weekend, complementary skill sets are linked in new venture teams. The organisation was founded in 2009 by stu-dents and graduates of universities in Vienna. It is a conjoint spin-off of the junior enterprise iconsandthejava student user group.

startvienna

Founded in 2006, UNI Group is the first junior enterprise in Kos-ovo. Since its foundation, it has been working to establish part-nerships with businesses, academic and governmental institu-tions in Kosovo, as well as with student consultancies throughout Europe. In 2008 UNI Group joined JADE (The European Confeder-ation of Junior Enterprises) as Consultative Member, and repre-sents Kosovo within this network.

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Team & Contacts

FlorijeKolshifosters entrepreneurship among young people in Kosovo, by as-sisting them in developing business plans and project proposals.

ValmirMustafaThe President of UNI Group worked for AmCham Kosovo and combines local expertise with international experience.

Prishtina

OlgaBulgakStartVienna’s multi-talent from Moscow: Whether it’s software, business, art or hip hop dance, it’s always worth asking Olga.

FredrikDebongAs a Swedish software developer and master student in Austria, Fredrik is StartVienna‘s expert for innovation in the field of IT.

SandraMieglbrings years of experience in corporate strategy and a post-graduate degree in CEE Management to StartVienna‘s board.

MariusStarckeWith ties to Cologne, Boston and Moscow, Marius works as a student analyst at an M&A consultancy for startups in Vienna.

FidelThiessenhusenStartVienna‘s import from Berlin is a freelancer at ArthurD.Little with academic interests in entrepreneurship and development.

EdmondShabaniECIKS‘ expert for information and multimedia has broad and deep project experience from both Austrian and Kosovar viewpoints.

Vienna

+377 44 845 444

florije.kolshi@uni-group.org

+377 44 233 967 valmir.mustafa@uni-group.org

+43 676 83 181 426

olga.bulgak@startvienna.at

+43 699 11 033 609 fredrik.debong@startvienna.at

+43 664 1 530 381

sandra.miegl@startvienna.at

+43 699 15 332 662

marius.starcke@startvienna.at

+43 650 4 416 890

fidel.thiessenhusen@startvienna.at

+43 676 3 380 905

es@eciks.org