WHAT IS “STUDY TOUR #1”?
CECACI in corporation with Design Terminal, Balassi Institute and iCatapult organized the first Study Tour for Hungarian tech startups. During the tour 7 Budapest-based startups visited New York and Austin between Jun 08–22. The project was supported by Hungarian Initiatives Foundation with 17.000 USD.
GOALS
The ultimate goal of Study Tour was to provide market access for CEE-based startups who have the potential to expand globally.
It’s a great opportunity to build bridges between Hungary’s/CEE’s and the US entrepreneurial ecosystem. The connections built during the tour results in benefits from knowledge transfer to market access.
Showcasing innovative ventures coming from the Europe can significantly improve Hungary’s image and reputation. We strongly believe that talent is evenly distributed in the World, whereas opportunity is not. The mission of these kind of tours is to showcase that the innovations coming from this part of the World can be interesting in the US market.
THE “STUDY TOUR #1” INCLUDED
Exhibition at the Northside Festival Innovation Trade Show
The participating 7 Hungarian companies exhibited at the Northside Festival’s Innovation Tradeshow between Jun 12-13 amongst companies such as Uber or Shopify.They established valuable connections and got listed on the trade show’s promotional materials.
(i.e : http://northsidefestival.com/innovation/tradeshowexhibitors/)
Visiting New York based tech startups and incubators
The purpose of these visits was to introduce the participating companies to the New York tech and startup scene and get them familiar with the opportunities it has to offer. The companies have visited famous incubation spaces like WeWork, AlleyNYC and companies such as Foursquare.
Attending various meetups and conferences
During these events they established valuable business connections and gained visibility. For example Plays.io, one of the participating companies had the chance to present at “Investor Feedback Forum” meetup at the Microsoft HQ.
Business meetings with industry experts, investors, potential partners and customers
Each companies’ representatives had at least daily 2-3 meetings during the “US Study Tour”. We organized dinners and shared meetings with industry experts and the companies received introductions and organized independent meetings.
Traveling to Austin to establish relationships with the SXSW organizers
After June 18 part of the organizing team traveled to Austin, Texas to set up meetings and prepare a presence for Hungarian startups at next year’s SXSW. They met Hugh Forrest, the Director of SXSW Interactive and other local industry experts and started to work on the plans.
PARTICIPANTS
Robophone
http://robophone.net/
RoboPhone is an educational toy serving as a tool to teach kids coding. It is designed for children between the age of 10 to 16. We have our clear vision of the needs of programmers, and algorithmic thinking. The product consists of a smartphone application and a robotic platform.
Representatives:
Adam Lipecz, CEO & Co-Founder
Andras Hollo, CTO & Co-Founder
Synetiq
http://synetiq.net/
Synetiq aims to decode human emotions and predict consumer behavior. Synetiq is introducing the world’s first crowdsourced neuromarketing platform to provide businesses with actionable emotional insights directly from their customers’ brain.
Representatives:
Adam Divak, CTO & Co-Founder
ANGL
http://angl.tv/
ANGL MOBILE BROADCASTER LIBRARY IOS RTMP LIBRARIES WITH GPU ACCELERATION ANGL Mobile liveUP rtmp streaming library is a flexible and professional streaming solution for the iOS platform.
Representatives:
Andras Kovecs, CEO & Co-Founder
Plays.io
http://plays.io/
Plays.IO can track how many times your media content has been played online, no matter how many versions exist on different media sharing platforms
Representatives:
Zoltan Bereczky, CEO & Co-Founder
Szilvia Finalli, CMO
Videomapping
http://www.videomapping.hu/
Producing and delivering award winning high quality videomapping services and unique dance shows all over the world.
Representatives:
Zsolt Bako, Business Development Manager
GraviTalent
https://gravitalent.com/
GraviTalent applies serious gaming, behavioral science and big data to revolutionize the way companies recruit, retain and develop talent.
Representatives:
David Szilagyi, CEO & Co-Founder
Balazs Vedres, Researcher
Opp.io
http://opp.io/
Succinct Team Messaging. Control your project in one live written document.
Representatives:
Attila Bujdosó, CEO & Co-Founder
PARTICIPATING ORGANIZERS
Design Terminal
Gergely Nagy Boszormenyi
Csongor Biás
Dora Kovacs
Agnes Bendsak (only to Austin)
Gergely Fay (only to Austin)
iCatapult
Imre Hild
TESTIMONIALS
“We received tons of feedback from potential customers. We already started to work on a promising cooperation with another company that was exhibiting at the expo. During the exhibition we got in touch with executives from VH1 and MTV.”
Zoltan Bereczky
CEO & Co-Founder
Plays.io
“It was extremely important to meet and talk with the American parents, because they are our initial target market and we received the feedback the will determine the direction of our further product development. During the trip we could test the pricing and positioning and we spread the word about our upcoming crowdfunding campaign”
András Holló
CTO & Co-Founder
Robophone
“We met very promising potential partners and customers during the exhibition. We had follow up meetings with companies such as Primerica and Business Insider. We also met a potential investor during the Festival and he already joined our advisory board and will consider investing in us in the next 6 months. And this was only the 2-day-long Trade Show. During our independent meetings we established strong relationship with the IBM Watson and NYCEDC’s program as well.”
Dávid Szilágyi
CEO & Co-Founder
Gravitalent
