First mobile base camp took place on Wednesday at Swisscom office. Around 100 people, from which a good 80% were working in startups, attended the event.
Morten Grauballe explained the story and challenges faced by his company, Red Bend. An interesting point was when he discussed about standards and recommended not to reinvent the wheel. Standards have the advantages to allow for a conversation, create market categories, foster competition, allow to reuse some technology. He also warned entrepreneurs: not everything is a platform (as lot of founders talk about their product as such). Another worthful quote was that ” software is universal, people no”, supporting that team is everything!
Martin Tannerfors from Kumquat Labs talked about his start-up experience oversea (in the Bay area) and in Europe. He described 5 personal observations about Bay area, as “don’ts”, that is… don’t:
- Spend for smooth talking biz dev person: your counterpart wnat to discuss with CEO and CTO (people who really matter in startup)
- Leave unprepared: use what exists
- Waste time: you could spend all your time at events, party, etc., as there is always something going on there… But in the end, attending all event don’t foster your business.
- Waste equity: just because an investor promises to introduce you to someone important for your business, you don’t have to give too many shares.
- Assume: that everything happens.
This was a great opportunity to meet people who matters in swiss mobile industry, without being overcrowded by consultants. International speakers gave some keynote talks, some were really interesting, some… less! Some speakers were unfortunately too much keen to promote their own company, rather than true valuable learnings.
Nevertheless, such an event displays something that insiders of swiss startup ecosystem already know: there’s something happening here and we don’t have to be shy in regards to UK, German or US startups!
Martin Coul did a great job organizing the camp, in less than 6 months being established in Switzerland. To establish so quickly among the guys that matter in the industry was already a good achievement itself. Congratulations! We hope that he also enjoyed the experience and will repeat the event soon!