The Philippine startup space is developing atop an economic boom. Kickstart Ventures is an investor doing seed to Series A investment. Beyond funding, community development is a key role: while the "Silicon + landform" formula doesn't apply, an emerging market must figure its own formula for growth. Here are some lessons from Area 55, a developing innovation ecosystem in the Makati-Fort Bonifacio cities.
What we've learnt from 17 months of investing and incubating startups at Kickstart Ventures, Inc. -- could be subtitled "Habits of High Effective Startups"
What we've learnt from 17 months of investing and incubating startups at Kickstart Ventures, Inc. -- could be subtitled "Habits of High Effective Startups"
42angelitos - startup catapult from Europe to Silicon Valley42angelitos
42angelitos connects entrepreneurs with professionals and catapults awesome disruptve business ideas from Europe to Silicon Valley to incorporate and go to market as quickly as possible
Start with the Exit in Mind ! is a bootcamp for investors, startup entrepreneurs and advisors interested in how and when to prepare a startup for exit - and how to close a successfull transaction.
During the presentation you will learn best practises, concrete examples and experiences on how to facilitate and reach an exit. A good exit preparation starts years before the actual deal - ideally the date when investor invests in the startup.
Hosts of the event are Gorilla Capital and Mr. Nat Burgess - who has participated 100+ deals, including numerous Finnish technology company transactions.
Angel 101 - The Fundamentals of Angel Investing. Is Angel Investing right for you. This is a presentation given by Gerard Buckley to a group of Angel Investors at Maple Leaf Angels a Toronto based angel group
There are countless books, blogs, articles, cases, and conferences dedicated to identifying techniques that drive innovation. Most offer the same tired ideas – hire good people, empower employees, reward risk, embrace innovative culture, create a progressive work environment, etc. While these suggestions are all reasonable, they are anything but radical. If companies want radical innovation, they should look at exploring more radical solutions. What would happen if your eradicate HR from your company? Will you innovate better if you require all employees to take an IQ test?
Learn more about a program designed to help you validate and define your business model, build a stronger product, get your first customers and grow your business, together with a wide network of partners, mentors and experts.
How good is your idea really? Do you know? Let us show you how to get the answer and even make a so-so-ideas really great.
AGENDA TOPICS
- Why the idea validation is such a critical measure
- Best ways to validate your idea
- Idea protection while sharing your idea
- Preparing a prospects list
- Interviews with smart question composition
- Idea validation giving you superpowers when looking for funding
- Best ways to document your validation protocol
- Preparation for fundraising later on
We are big advocates of transparency at Seedcamp and understand first hand just how tough the fundraising process can be. It's not just startups who go through this but funds too. In the spirit of openness, we're sharing the deck we used to go out to investors for Seedcamp Fund IV.
Read more about our plans to invest in 100 new European startups with our biggest and boldest fund yet over on our blog: http://seedcamp.com/seedcamp-fund-iv-announcement/
A presentation I gave when I was invited to speak at the Caribbean Development Bank and offer suggestions for helping Barbadian app developers to create businesses and spur the growth of a local startup economy. I decided to be frank and open - something that many people are afraid to do.
42angelitos - startup catapult from Europe to Silicon Valley42angelitos
42angelitos connects entrepreneurs with professionals and catapults awesome disruptve business ideas from Europe to Silicon Valley to incorporate and go to market as quickly as possible
Start with the Exit in Mind ! is a bootcamp for investors, startup entrepreneurs and advisors interested in how and when to prepare a startup for exit - and how to close a successfull transaction.
During the presentation you will learn best practises, concrete examples and experiences on how to facilitate and reach an exit. A good exit preparation starts years before the actual deal - ideally the date when investor invests in the startup.
Hosts of the event are Gorilla Capital and Mr. Nat Burgess - who has participated 100+ deals, including numerous Finnish technology company transactions.
Angel 101 - The Fundamentals of Angel Investing. Is Angel Investing right for you. This is a presentation given by Gerard Buckley to a group of Angel Investors at Maple Leaf Angels a Toronto based angel group
There are countless books, blogs, articles, cases, and conferences dedicated to identifying techniques that drive innovation. Most offer the same tired ideas – hire good people, empower employees, reward risk, embrace innovative culture, create a progressive work environment, etc. While these suggestions are all reasonable, they are anything but radical. If companies want radical innovation, they should look at exploring more radical solutions. What would happen if your eradicate HR from your company? Will you innovate better if you require all employees to take an IQ test?
Learn more about a program designed to help you validate and define your business model, build a stronger product, get your first customers and grow your business, together with a wide network of partners, mentors and experts.
How good is your idea really? Do you know? Let us show you how to get the answer and even make a so-so-ideas really great.
AGENDA TOPICS
- Why the idea validation is such a critical measure
- Best ways to validate your idea
- Idea protection while sharing your idea
- Preparing a prospects list
- Interviews with smart question composition
- Idea validation giving you superpowers when looking for funding
- Best ways to document your validation protocol
- Preparation for fundraising later on
We are big advocates of transparency at Seedcamp and understand first hand just how tough the fundraising process can be. It's not just startups who go through this but funds too. In the spirit of openness, we're sharing the deck we used to go out to investors for Seedcamp Fund IV.
Read more about our plans to invest in 100 new European startups with our biggest and boldest fund yet over on our blog: http://seedcamp.com/seedcamp-fund-iv-announcement/
A presentation I gave when I was invited to speak at the Caribbean Development Bank and offer suggestions for helping Barbadian app developers to create businesses and spur the growth of a local startup economy. I decided to be frank and open - something that many people are afraid to do.
The deck we used to raise $270k for our startup Castleentercastle
Castle (entercastle.com) is a Detroit-based real estate startup that lets rental owners put their properties on autopilot. In April 2015, we closed a $270,000 angel round using this deck.
Questions? Comments? I'd love to hear from you. Email me at max@entercastle.com.
AppVirality - Plug & Play growth hacking toolkit for Mobile apps.
We help app developers implement Uber/Lyft like in-app referrals under 30 minutes. No coding required.
Checkout - http://appvirality.com
The 10 most interesting slides that helped our SaaS company raise 9 millionGoCanvas
Have you ever wondered what goes into a pitch deck? Or what slides matter? Here are the 10 slides that seemed to resonate most with VCs we met with our our journey to raising our latest $9 million in funding. Be sure to check the notes for explanations of each slide.
Here is what Square uses for their Pitch Deck, it has several good pointers on what should go in a startup pitch deck: Sourced from http://www.noise.re/duction/squares-pitch-deck/
Mapme Investor Deck.
The deck we originally used to raise our seed round of $1M. See the progress we've made at www.mapme.com. Welcome to try it out and create a map.
Any questions? I'm at ben@mapme.com
The investor presentation we used to raise 2 million dollarsMikael Cho
The investor presentation we used to raise 2 million dollars for ooomf.com (now pickcrew.com)
View the online version here: https://pickcrew.com/investors/
A reproduction of the official pitch deck template recommended by leading VC firm Sequoia Capital.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE THESE PITCH DECK EXAMPLES & TEMPLATES:
> Airbnb pitch deck @ https://pitchdeckcoach.com/airbnb-pitch-deck
> Sequoia Capital pitch deck template @ https://pitchdeckcoach.com/sequoia-capital-pitch-deck
> FREE pitch deck template download @ https://pitchdeckcoach.com/free-pitch-deck-template
> Pitch deck guide with hints, tips, and a worked example @ https://pitchdeckcoach.com/pitch-deck-template
NEED HELP WITH YOUR PITCH DECK?
See how I can help then book a free call @ https://pitchdeckcoach.com/
MORE PITCH DECK RESOURCES @ https://pitchdeckcoach.com/pitch-deck-template#resources
Does your organization lack an innovation culture? Do you go along with the statement "we can be efficient, true, but not innovative”? Than embark on our "Innovation Learning Journey" and experience both, the spirit of the tech mecca - the Silicon Valley, and the growing startup scene in Berlin. Follow the path of innovation gurus like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, and find your own answer on: "How can I boost my corporate innovation capabilities?"
Receive priceless insights and reflect your learnings in intensive on-site workshops. The program and approach is specifically tailored to your needs and based on our profound innovation and technology expertise of Detecon, and the Detecon Innovation Institute (DII), which is based in San Francisco, the vibrant heart of Silicon Valley’s startup scene. Feel inspired? Than directly contact me: marc.wagner@detecon.com
We continually hear about innovation and strive to keep engaging our teams to put the right skills and processes for innovation into practice. At the same time, we know that fostering just the right culture for the team to be innovative is important – but often overlooked.
How do you go about fostering an innovative team? Here are 4 guidelines we’ve pulled together.
Co-Innovating your future with Oracle NEXTNeil Sholay
Innovation is an Idea, that meets a need, executed in the market.
The companies that succeed in the future, will be those with an obsessive focus on getting their ideas, experiences and business models to market. At Oracle NEXT we help clients frame, ideate, share, test and scale their ideas - quickly. We believe not just in ideas but in Ideas.Executed.
You don’t have a team of superstars yet? You will need it and we are sharing with you how to get it done.
AGENDA TOPICS:
- Why your team is the single most valuable resource in your business?
- How do you find the best talents possible?
- How do you prepare your business idea to attract the best talents?
- Think entirely different when it comes to co-founders, team and board?
- Make sure you have a super diverse team with minimal overlap
- Team building step by step
In his public lecture, Christian Timmerer provides insights into the fascinating history of video streaming, starting from its humble beginnings before YouTube to the groundbreaking technologies that now dominate platforms like Netflix and ORF ON. Timmerer also presents provocative contributions of his own that have significantly influenced the industry. He concludes by looking at future challenges and invites the audience to join in a discussion.
LF Energy Webinar: Electrical Grid Modelling and Simulation Through PowSyBl -...DanBrown980551
Do you want to learn how to model and simulate an electrical network from scratch in under an hour?
Then welcome to this PowSyBl workshop, hosted by Rte, the French Transmission System Operator (TSO)!
During the webinar, you will discover the PowSyBl ecosystem as well as handle and study an electrical network through an interactive Python notebook.
PowSyBl is an open source project hosted by LF Energy, which offers a comprehensive set of features for electrical grid modelling and simulation. Among other advanced features, PowSyBl provides:
- A fully editable and extendable library for grid component modelling;
- Visualization tools to display your network;
- Grid simulation tools, such as power flows, security analyses (with or without remedial actions) and sensitivity analyses;
The framework is mostly written in Java, with a Python binding so that Python developers can access PowSyBl functionalities as well.
What you will learn during the webinar:
- For beginners: discover PowSyBl's functionalities through a quick general presentation and the notebook, without needing any expert coding skills;
- For advanced developers: master the skills to efficiently apply PowSyBl functionalities to your real-world scenarios.
Enchancing adoption of Open Source Libraries. A case study on Albumentations.AIVladimir Iglovikov, Ph.D.
Presented by Vladimir Iglovikov:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/iglovikov/
- https://x.com/viglovikov
- https://www.instagram.com/ternaus/
This presentation delves into the journey of Albumentations.ai, a highly successful open-source library for data augmentation.
Created out of a necessity for superior performance in Kaggle competitions, Albumentations has grown to become a widely used tool among data scientists and machine learning practitioners.
This case study covers various aspects, including:
People: The contributors and community that have supported Albumentations.
Metrics: The success indicators such as downloads, daily active users, GitHub stars, and financial contributions.
Challenges: The hurdles in monetizing open-source projects and measuring user engagement.
Development Practices: Best practices for creating, maintaining, and scaling open-source libraries, including code hygiene, CI/CD, and fast iteration.
Community Building: Strategies for making adoption easy, iterating quickly, and fostering a vibrant, engaged community.
Marketing: Both online and offline marketing tactics, focusing on real, impactful interactions and collaborations.
Mental Health: Maintaining balance and not feeling pressured by user demands.
Key insights include the importance of automation, making the adoption process seamless, and leveraging offline interactions for marketing. The presentation also emphasizes the need for continuous small improvements and building a friendly, inclusive community that contributes to the project's growth.
Vladimir Iglovikov brings his extensive experience as a Kaggle Grandmaster, ex-Staff ML Engineer at Lyft, sharing valuable lessons and practical advice for anyone looking to enhance the adoption of their open-source projects.
Explore more about Albumentations and join the community at:
GitHub: https://github.com/albumentations-team/albumentations
Website: https://albumentations.ai/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/100504475
Twitter: https://x.com/albumentations
Pushing the limits of ePRTC: 100ns holdover for 100 daysAdtran
At WSTS 2024, Alon Stern explored the topic of parametric holdover and explained how recent research findings can be implemented in real-world PNT networks to achieve 100 nanoseconds of accuracy for up to 100 days.
Communications Mining Series - Zero to Hero - Session 1DianaGray10
This session provides introduction to UiPath Communication Mining, importance and platform overview. You will acquire a good understand of the phases in Communication Mining as we go over the platform with you. Topics covered:
• Communication Mining Overview
• Why is it important?
• How can it help today’s business and the benefits
• Phases in Communication Mining
• Demo on Platform overview
• Q/A
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 5DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 5. In this session, we will cover CI/CD with devops.
Topics covered:
CI/CD with in UiPath
End-to-end overview of CI/CD pipeline with Azure devops
Speaker:
Lyndsey Byblow, Test Suite Sales Engineer @ UiPath, Inc.
Sudheer Mechineni, Head of Application Frameworks, Standard Chartered Bank
Discover how Standard Chartered Bank harnessed the power of Neo4j to transform complex data access challenges into a dynamic, scalable graph database solution. This keynote will cover their journey from initial adoption to deploying a fully automated, enterprise-grade causal cluster, highlighting key strategies for modelling organisational changes and ensuring robust disaster recovery. Learn how these innovations have not only enhanced Standard Chartered Bank’s data infrastructure but also positioned them as pioneers in the banking sector’s adoption of graph technology.
GraphSummit Singapore | The Future of Agility: Supercharging Digital Transfor...Neo4j
Leonard Jayamohan, Partner & Generative AI Lead, Deloitte
This keynote will reveal how Deloitte leverages Neo4j’s graph power for groundbreaking digital twin solutions, achieving a staggering 100x performance boost. Discover the essential role knowledge graphs play in successful generative AI implementations. Plus, get an exclusive look at an innovative Neo4j + Generative AI solution Deloitte is developing in-house.
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
Building RAG with self-deployed Milvus vector database and Snowpark Container...Zilliz
This talk will give hands-on advice on building RAG applications with an open-source Milvus database deployed as a docker container. We will also introduce the integration of Milvus with Snowpark Container Services.
GraphSummit Singapore | The Art of the Possible with Graph - Q2 2024Neo4j
Neha Bajwa, Vice President of Product Marketing, Neo4j
Join us as we explore breakthrough innovations enabled by interconnected data and AI. Discover firsthand how organizations use relationships in data to uncover contextual insights and solve our most pressing challenges – from optimizing supply chains, detecting fraud, and improving customer experiences to accelerating drug discoveries.
Threats to mobile devices are more prevalent and increasing in scope and complexity. Users of mobile devices desire to take full advantage of the features
available on those devices, but many of the features provide convenience and capability but sacrifice security. This best practices guide outlines steps the users can take to better protect personal devices and information.
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
2. What We Do: Early-stage Investments
Fund digital startups in the Philippines
Seed to Series “A”. Equity or convertible notes.
Train / Mentor
Diverse and active mentor pool
Market access
Ayala Corporation affiliates
SingTel: 501 million subscribers in Asia
3. What we’ve done: portfolio management
$2,400,000 funds made available.
18 portfolio companies.
49 founders.
337 jobs.
576,334 users.
40 new third-party investors.
$8,511,363 subsequent funding raised.
As of end-July 2014
4.
5. …helping create an innovation ecosystem.
Community networking & thought leadership
Startup Weekend Manila / Cebu / Davao
Kickstart Startup Mixer #raidthefridge
#Area55 #Area55 Conversations
Corporate relationships
Kickstart Deal Day
Investor development
#Manila Angels
6. What have we learnt along the way?
Plenty.
For starters –
It is harder than we thought.
It takes longer to get many things done.
It takes diverse teams to make stuff happen.
And there are things that we can do to make work
better for everyone.
15. The images are obviously not ours.
But if you want to learn more about what
we do, or our awesome startups, please
contact us for more information.
www.kickstart.ph
kickstartPH
angel.co/kickstart-ventures
Editor's Notes
Good afternoon. I’m Minette Navarrete from Kickstart Ventures. It’s good to have had the regional and national overviews. Now I want to take that closer to home and talk about building our community. Or at least a Kickstart perspective about building our community, which we in the Makati – Fort Bonifacio area have started to call Area 55.
Most of you know Kickstart as investors: we provide funding for early-stage digital startups, in exchange for minority positions in their companies.
Portfolio companies have access to an excellent mentor pool from all over the world so founders can get guidance based on market experience, not theory. We love our friends in the academe and consulting trade, but frankly, our bias is for mentors who have walked the walk so they can credibly talk the talk.
One of the most helpful things we do is open doors to corporations so startups can do business with established companies. This week, the Ayala Group held its Innovation Summit – and a bunch of startup founders met, pitched to, and had lunch with the CEO’s, COO’s, CFO’s, and business unit heads of the conglomerate, about 200 suits in all. A pretty good collection of suits, by the way: Ayala Corporation’s group companies have a market cap of over USD22Billion (about twice that of Singapore Air), and they account for over 20% of the country’s stock exchange. Every founder came away with one or two good leads – so we’ll see where that takes us.
Our portfolio results over the last 2 years – well, you can read the stats.
> We’ve invested close to $2 million in 18 startups.
A third of our portfolio companies have gotten subsequent funding, raising more than 4 times our aggregate invested amount, from 40 third-party investors, including great names like Omidyar Networks, Y Combinator, 500 Startups and IMJ Investment Partners. A couple more are closing in the coming weeks.
It’s a promising start, but frankly what we all wait for is getting the significant exit, or exits, that demonstrate that the Philippines is a legit innovation ecosystem.
Who joined us at Raid the Fridge last night? You should know that aside from beer, our fridge back at home base holds a couple of bottles of champagne, waiting for that first liquidity event.
To get to that champagne cork-popping moment, we put in the groundwork together with the rest of the community. As an investor, we try to do our share of heavy lifting.
We use 40% of our time in structured coaching, another 10% mentoring on-demand.
We spend 2% of our budget on community events. Area 55 has welcomed policy makers like the US Secretary of Commerce and Philippine Senator Bam Aquino; and leaders from Amazon, Dropbox, Google, Twitter, and the National Competitiveness Council.
We spend a good deal of our energies building bridges to corporations and investors. We are clear that we do what we do for a financial return: that way, corporations and co-investors have confidence that our portfolio companies are good business bets and not charity cases.
Google “Area 55” and you’ll see a reference to “The Philippine Economy’s Secret Weapon” by Singapore’s Tech In Asia. We spend nothing on advertising.
There isn’t a playbook that tells us what to do in the context that we’ve got. We are figuring things out as we go along. We act from an articulated set of values and principles, and trust that these will help us navigate unfamiliar territory and overcome all the obstacles.
A lot like the Force, really. Some lessons we’ve learnt…
First, my favourite quote, from my favourite character.
There will always be information that is known, and unknown, and unknowable. Deal with it, and make a call. Over-analysing, negotiating too hard, or flip-flopping over decisions can kill innovation, whether you are a startup or an investor.
Yoda’s a probably every mentor’s favourite mantra. Act with conviction, and a mindset of abundance: do the experiments, test the market, go all in. Don’t skimp on the wrong things.
Embrace diversity.
People who think and act different are essential for successful execution, unless you are a cheerleading squad or a synchronised swimming team. It makes for a richer community life. I am constantly amazed by how widely different our guests are when we hold Raid the Fridge in Area 55; and the conversations we have there are certainly quite interesting.
Don’t buy the hype about the coolness of your startup life. It is fun, but hardly frivolous. It takes hard work, discipline, and maturity.
If there’s one question that we frequently hear from potential co-investors, it is whether a founder or co-investor can run the whole course. Our innovation ecosystem is coming into its own; we all have to contribute to its maturation.
Rational decision-making. Data-driven debates. We should know what our personal biases are, so we can assess data with clear eyes.
Do the hard things. Not because it’s inspirational fluff, but because the hard things have the prospect of yielding greater returns.
It’s important for our community to have an ethical backbone.
If you’re a startup, don’t lie. Most investors will have developed a fairly sensitive bullshit detector, and you don’t do yourself any favours by misrepresenting stuff.
If you’re an investor, do not propose predatory terms. Do not take 30, or 40, or 50% of an early stage startup: it makes them uninvestible, or at least unappealing to other investors. Do not demand 10% of the company for “introductions and advice” without handing over some cash.
And finally, a word to investors: write the cheques. Err on the side of generosity. Risk capital is a necessary part of the innovation ecosystem. It’s not sufficient, but it’s necessary. So as Dave Overton said at the beginning of this conference: let’s invest in this country. Let’s help startups succeed.
We’ll be open to the Jedi mind tricks, but please open your chequebook to the startups that deserve it.