Many great things have happened, since our inception 5 years ago. Today, it marks another critical step forward in our quest for the promotion and support of Italian Innovation in the world.
Speaking of quest… today we are unveiling our brand new accelerator program (drum roll)… Seed Quest.
Seed Quest is the natural evolution of our 5-year old business plan competition, now encompassing the sharp developments that have shaped the early startup world since we started: less focus on waterfall business planning more on early traction, more hands-on mentoring and, yes, a little seed funding to cover the expenses of a fully focused product development (that means no need to work on consulting services on the side to pay your bills, folks).
Does that mean that we want to be a different animal then, from the “give back to the community” foundation that you’ve known?
Not a single bit. Our hearth and soul remain the same. More than ever, we remain fully committed to our mission: providing support, inspiration and guidance for the new generations of Italian entrepreneurs. We are convinced, though, that we can do better to help develop more success stories.
And only success is the real sugar that fuels the entire ecosystem.
We can leverage Silicon Valley to help re-create the success of Glancee, Cacetech or Timbuktu.
There is no other effective way to support longer term a startup than putting your money into it.
And that’s what we are going to do.
We are committed to providing friendly terms to portfolio startups and we are working to line up more follow on investments from later stage investors.
For the record, a good chunk of the potential returns from the investments (plenty!), will go back to support the foundation activities, and help spread more entrepreneur-virus!
It took us sometime to get here, but we are convinced that, with you, we can go a long way.
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For details
seedquest.mindthebridge.org