4YFN: the Mobile Startup Ecosystem in MWC 2014

Photo Credit: Startup Commons

First time for 4YFN, a satellite event created by Mobile World Capital Barcelona that provided last February a great experience for key stakeholders of startups ecosystems and mainly focused on helping entrepreneurs get to the next level.

I have to say that I felt as a boy in amusement park because many cool startups and important organizations that are supporting entrepreneurship were there and it is always a great chance to stay tuned to what others are doing. In general, It was a good format where you had multiple choices to take the most from the event: talks, workshops, conferences, pitches, showrooms, etc. and where every corner was a suitable place to networking and business cards were the main currency, regardless of the moment or your profile. 

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Photo Credit: Startup Commons

A startup ecosystem is in fact a social capital and an effective networking and buzzing is key to share and spread experience, knowledge,  talent and many other resources and to  help startups to get to the next level. In this direction, it would be fantastic if we take the most from the power of crowd in events like 4YFN.

I could attend to different pitches from startups and in general it was an unidirectional event with a big lack of participation from the attendees. It was a pity because each one of us could have been mentors to every single startup, providing them feedback about customer segments, value proposition, pitching, etc. that startups could analyze later in order to learn and take next steps like getting in contact with each one of them, making more effective the post-event. Maybe, there would be people who felt shame to speak to an audience or maybe didn’t understand the project or maybe it was just a matter of disinterest.

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Photo Credit: Startup Commons

In any case, we and organizers should facilitate for next events a better bidirectional communication (CrowdPitching) and boost an important activity that you can find in the heart of any startup ecosystem: the conversation and the feedback among different members.

Doing this we will help startups to find the right resources for them for every single stage in which they are and with the same spirit as Lars Buch from StartupBootCamp said about accelerators: “Accelerators have to help startups not to make many mistakes”

Great work 4YFN and see you next year!

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This is an originally posted by Óscar Ramírez. You are free to re-edit and repost this in your own blog or other use under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License terms, by giving credit with a link to www.startupcommons.org and the original post