How can we recognize a successful startup? These are my personal 5 common traits
My new article on StartupItalia about my personal analysis of the peculiarities among the many Italian talents who I have had the fortune to meet almost daily.
This month Microsoft BizSpark, the program created for startups, is five years old. They have been five very intense years during which we had the possibility to work side by side with young talents from over 85,000 startups from 165 nations. Five years in which even in Italy we had the fortune of meeting thousands of young people with countless entrepreneurial projects and to concretely support over 1,300 digital projects in various phases of development.
For me, BizSpark means many things: passion, energy, meeting new super-motivated people, receiving emails, tweets, paper letters sent to my office (no joke), and phone calls at all hours from young people who can’t wait to present their idea that will change the world. It means to investigate, experiment and find new forms of support for all of those who really want to create innovation. Lots of activities, lots of energy (theirs and mine) that is totally rewarding when one sees the conviction in the eyes of many young people who believe they are really doing something important.
One of the most delicate and demanding aspects of my work is, without a doubt, choosing the most suitable teams for the different activities or international contests. It is a job that reveals to us each year the very high quality of some Italian startups that are recognized, above all, abroad. The victory of Spreaker at the BizSpark European Summit in Berlin this past summer, or that of Paperlit in 2012, and Mopapp in 2011, are the objective proof that even Italian startups are not only capable of attracting money abroad but also of winning international contests where they compete alongside startups chosen from all over Europe and Israel.
continue reading on StartupItalia blog…