When we started planning for Next Top Startup, we had in mind that the first installment of the event would span maybe two to three European countries, and that if we’d get any traction whatsoever from across a major body of water, it would be excellent and a successful achievement on it’s own.

We had no idea however, that the scale of this competition of ours would reach as far and as wide as it did – in the end, people from 14 countries are coming together to participate in this competition in both a mentor-ship scope and contestant capacity, and as of now we still haven’t reached out to the investment community.

By trying to challenge convention, and doing what we can not to become just another Y Combinator copy, we opened the contest up to all industries – and as such saw projects come in from across the board, some of the more interesting sectors applications that we received came from the following industries: Sports, Clean Tech, Aerospace, Cloud Computing, Social Enterprise, Fast Moving Consumer Goods, amongst many others.

There was one concurrent theme in all this  – technology – in one way shape or form it’s the decisive communal factor which is driving today’s entrepreneurs forward, and while we would have liked to invite all our applicants to participate, ten does seem to be about the right number, and with that we would like to announce the ten finalists to compete for the title of – wait for it – Next Top Startup.

In alphabetical order they are…

. FastTaxi – will be an interactive platform for taxi drivers and customers to get real time information through their smart-phones in order to find and order cabs within easy reach in urban centres.
. Foundation for Global Collaboration & Peace – A serious non-profit concern that aims to build a virtual peace network that benefits the global community through the dissemination of universal human commonalities.
. Getagreatboss.com – The concept is built around a crowd-sourced Interactive Manager Review.
. INBLOON / Zero2Infinity – is a start-up whose mission is to raise our planetary consciousness by offering near-space experiences.
. Lexpertia – aims to commoditise the legal services profession by creating a database and online directory for lawyers based on specialty, operating as a legal advisory search platform for lawyer services.
. Teambox.com – Is an online resource collaboration tool for enterprise and project management.
. Touchland – provides environmentally friendly disinfectant hand wash to the consumer via direct sales and 3^rd party resellers that install their dispensers.
. WeCard – is not a typical static loyalty card but an innovative smart channel of information, and user-business relations.
. Wellknown.as – A mobile platform for delegates, exhibitors, conference organizers and sponsors.
. Xtremgo.com – enables people to easily access action sports through Internet by creating a one off marketplace to book activities online.

Good luck to all of them, and we’ll keep you posted as to the winner, and we ought to have some other treats in store for all our readers after the competition closes. Stay tuned!

VIDEOS

And to get you as excited as we are about our contestants, we’re including those videos that we received from them. Enjoy f3fundit TV

Getagreatboss.com

INBLOON

Toucland

Wellknown.as

While entrepreneurship as a whole is a fairly central topic to most MBA curriculum and a good number of schools have entrepreneurship clubs that organize minor events, and amongst other things panel discussions with successful entrepreneurs. A few programmes have taken their involvement with the entrepreneurship community to the next level.

LBS is one such school where it’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Speaker series focuses on bringing in successful entrepreneurs who students can learn from, INSEAD is another with the Global Entrepreneurship Forum will feature a close look at the global trends in angel investing, fire pitches by leading entrepreneurs searching for funding, a panel discussion on effective entrepreneurial leadership and the announcement of an initiative to celebrate INSEAD’s leading entrepreneurs.

At ESADE in Barcelona the entrepreneurship club has organized the “Quest for Talent” a conference inviting not only growth companies to attend and look for top talent form the region’s top MBA programs, but also, strongly focuses on MBA students interested in entrepreneurship as well as on startuppers seeking partners – overall a novel and innovative approach.

In the U.S. schools have been doing this for some time now, the Stanford business plan competition is among one of the most recognized in the country, and MIT’s commitment to entrepreneurship with it’s Entrepreneurship Center, 100k Competition, Executive summary contest, and the b. plan contest goes far and beyond that of other institutions of the same caliber. Though whether “twitch” is a good idea or just more hogwash around twitter is yet to be seen.

It’s safe to say that the collaboration between enterprise and academia initiated by student initiatives is on the rise. But what is more important is the initiative that can be seen at an event such as Quest for Talent and its focus on growth companies. Considering the need for expansion in human capital as well as market, there is a clear need for growth companies to hire and bring on MBA’s to take the reigns and lead those companies forward – and likewise MBA’s should look for jobs within growth companies aside from your typical blue chips, banks, and consultancies. Why? Reason being – more of an active stake in the role, more of an impact on the company as a whole, and of course a possibility of options. If that company goes M&A, or IPO – it means a big cash payout.

Turns out there are groups of Business Angels (BA’s) out there that charge entrepreneurs and startups to pitch. What? Yes you heard that right, Angels charge startups to pitch. These fees range anywhere from €1000 to €18.000 + 3% of the capital raised to pitch your company to a forum of Angels.

What do you get in return? A fifteen minute slot in front of people that may, or may not invest in your company. Nothing more. Is the price tag worth it? Absolutely not, no angel should require the entrepreneur to pay a fee that will go into their own pocket. These people are after all supposed to be financiers, they are the ones that have the money, not the other way around. Notwithstanding 15 minutes of someone’s time, and especially if they were to have a vested interest in a company is not worth the money.

They will tell you, it’s for screening purposes, they will tell you it’s for x, y, z, but at the end they’re looking to take an equity stake in your enterprise – which according to normal investment criteria should bring them 30x return. Given not all will, but a well differentiated portfolio ought to at least bring in 10-15x return on investment.

Greed, Greed and More Greed?

So why are they charging? Long story short, it’s greed. But it’s not only the angel, there are groups out there that say they will put you in touch with BA’s for a few grand of your “lifeline support system” – basically those few grand that could mean life or death while your company traverses the valley of death. Nonsense. If a filter group wants to earn money through deal flow facilitation there are better ways of doing it than charging the entrepreneur for a fifteen minute slot.

A filter should be paid by all means, no work should go unrewarded, but how? Via percentage of the deal they set up, and a fee – paid for by the BA, and if the startup gets financed from the investment amount.

For example, Joe Filter, finds SuperSatrtup and introduces SuperStartup to BA – BA agrees to pay X for the introduction to Joe Filter, and then after some deliberation BA invests 300k in SuperStartup, due to the positive outcome Joe Filter takes 3% investment fee, or 9k. What do you have as an outcome, Super Startup is happy, as they now have 291k in cash for operational and growth activities, the BA is happy as the BA has a new high growth company in his/her portfolio, and Joe Filter is happy as he’s made some cash. BA = Expected 30x, Joe Filter = 9k+Intro Fee, SuperStartup = Investment, or Win, Win, Win.

If the startup has to pay Joe Filter, and no deal happens, It’s BA = 0, Joe Filter = 1, Startup = -1; or Null, Win, Loss, zero sum game. Or in layman’s terms – just bad economics.

So what’s this all boil down to? Greed. Once again, BA’s are more concerned about themselves than the nature of their business, and filtration systems target the wrong market segment. A “good” BA should have a vested interest in seeing the startups they want to see, as they will be investing in them, they should also then have a vested interest in helping these startups grow. So what does this all mean? Those BA networks that charge the entrepreneur a grand aren’t worth speaking to, especially since the “best possible outcome” is an equity stake in a company.

Any Value Added?

Is there any value added to the Entrepreneur? Nope. Typically, you pay, you pitch, you get rejected, or if you build interest, you’ll wind up covering additional fees. Then you have new funding initiatives such as Revolutionary Angels – that charge 5k to participate in what is effectively a business plan competition that results in two companies receiving 10% and 2% equity investments from the group.  But here’s the rub, that equity investment comes from the coffers of other entrepreneurs. An excerpt form their website reads “There is no obligation to submit a plan for review. Companies that are a selected to participate must pay a fee of of $4,995.” – Why do I have the feeling that if you’re willing to dish out 5k, you’ll get selected any way?

Dodgy business practices. By all means?

Value Added Service Fees?

This is different, if as a startup I can get some form of value added service – be it training, non equity mentoring, press, access to a new network, feedback on my business model, where it needs adjustment, how to extend my scalability, how to enter new markets, advice on joint ventures, learning and or education about the process. Then a fee is worthwhile, after all people putting these things together need to eat as well, and as we all know money does not grow on trees, but that value added has to be worth the fee in question. Is that fee worth €18.000 +3%, absolutely not, is it worth €1000, probably not. Is it worth €100, depends what the service is, and how it will help me as an entrepreneur, but then at the end of the day, it’s a service and not an intro fee, or a 15 minute slot in front of me and my network for a grand.

In summation any BA network charging you for 15 minutes of their time is not worth it. If your company has mettle, BA’s in their nature should be more than willing to speak to you about your enterprise.

To read more about the topic of BA networks charging, click here, here, and here.

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We want to know what you think?

This topic is of very special interest to us at F3FUNDIT, why? Well we’re in the process of putting together a new concept event that will truly be focused on the entrepreneur, yet we plan on charging a nominal application fee along with it. Why? Well we need to pay our staff, we need to pay for parts of the event, speakers, training materials, and our time, as well as put together a winner take all cash prize.

We’re not ready quite yet to let the cat out of the bag, but every startup that applies will get something in return, we’re on the side of the entrepreneur and don’t believe that something for nothing should exist, but nonetheless, we’d like to hear your thoughts.

It took some time, but we’ve put together a list of what we assume are the most relevant events and conferences for the Biotech Entrepreneur. We say relevant for the entrepreneur because we have left out conferences on clinical / drug development, medical conferences, etc… and if you think we missed anything let us know.

BIO-Europe Spring
March 8-10, 2010
Barcelona, Spain

Business for Scientisits
April 12-16, 2010
Chicago, IL, USA

BIO Legislative Day Fly-In 2010
April 13 – 14, 2010
Washington D.C., USA

BIO Intellectual Property Counsels Spring Conference and Committee Meeting
April 19-21, 2010
New Orleans, LA, USA

INTERPHEX 2010
April 20-22, 2010
New York, NY, USA

BIO-LES Business Development Basics Course
May 1-3, 2010
Chicago, IL, USA

Partnering for Global Health Forum
May 3, 2010
Chicago, IL, USA

BIO Executive Presentation Workshop
May 3, 2010
Chicago, IL, USA

BIO International Convention
May 3-6, 2010
Chicago, IL, USA

2010 BIO Human Resources Conference
May 5-7, 2010
Chicago, IL, USA

11th Annual BioEquity Europe
May 19-20, 2010
Zurich, Switzerland

Euro MedTech
June 1, 2010
Leipzig, Germany

ChinaBio Partnering Forum
June 23-24, 2010
Souzhou, China

The World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing
June 27-30, 2010
Washington, DC

BioParama America
September 15-17, 2010
Boston, MA, USA

BIO India International Partnering Conference
September 21-22, 2010
Hyderabad, India

Livestock Biotech Summit
September 28-30, 2010
Sioux Falls, SD, USA

9th Annual BIO Investor Forum
October 6-7, 2010
San Francisco, CA, USA

AdvaMed 2010
October 18-20, 2010
Washington D.C., USA

BIO-Europe International Partnering Conference
November 15-17, 2010
Munich, Germany

If you know of any other and worthwhile conferences or talks for the startup Biotech entrepreneur, let us know, and we will add to this list. Additionally, in terms of pure biotech-medical-pharma research. Head over to BioSpace – a really deeply designed database for the Life sciences community.

BY F3FUNDIT

Let’s face it, each city of medium size and up has events slated at the entrepreneur, and they tend to fall into one of two categories. The speaker series, or the networking drinks series, but there are very strong underlying problems with each.

Let’s look at Entrepreneurship Speaker Series.

You sign up, you go, you are seated and then you listen to one guy speak for 30 minutes, then the next for another 30, then the third and are eventually moved into a space to network for 30 more minutes. Alternatively, you’ll get one speaker, and then a networking session on top of that.

Great, or is it. Aside from the fact that most speakers lack the charisma of a Barak Obama or Churchill, these series tend to go over time, and if people are sitting in a hall, you’ll find a percentage of the crowd dozing off. If the speaker series extends to two or three individuals this percentage will undeniably go up.

After the event is finished, everyone will huddle around the speaker and try to get a word in, in order to have a bit of face time and hope they’ll remember them. While the rest of the group stands in their corners talking to people they already know. Sounds familiar?

The Networking Drinks Series

You head to a bar, you get a “Hello my name is” tag and you’re supposed to network. But with whom? Who do you talk to, how can you get the most out of it, and what about those people who simply put aren’t good at talking to others, i.e. the introvert/extrovert scenario.

You have tons of these, Drink Tank in London, Founders Lounge in Barcelona, even First Tuesdays succumbs to this. A drinks – event is good fun, but it’s productivity is questionable. Why? Because you don’t know who will be at the event, nor will you know that if there are people there worth talking to you’ll necessarily network with them.

Long story short the current model is simply not efficient – and there are many means for innovation and improvement within events targeting the entrepreneurship sector.

So What About Solutions

Here’s the thing. When you’ve got a speaker, get the crowd involved from the onset, break them up into small groups, whether they know each other or not, it doesn’t matter, have them collaborate – bringing in people from different walks, industries is good, it opens them up to other ways of thinking and problem solving. Don’t make the interaction one way, make it tow way, or event triangular.

When putting on a networking event, don’t just plop people in a room and say network, see who’s coming and pair them up, have a few people putting on the event make introductions, ask people when they sign up, who they want to meet, what they’re looking for. Make the whole thing interactive.

And make it fun, whether it’s a speaker, a networking event, a funding event, what have you, be sure to make it fun, engaging, and provide something that all aprticipants will take away from it, bring valie to everyone involved.

F3FundIt is planning an event for later this year, if you are interested in learning more about it or how you can get involved – please send an email to info @ f3fundit.com with the subject line f3f-event. Thanks.