IE Venture Day

The morning crowd at IE Venture Day (Dunno-his-name-yet, Vaibhav, Anar, Priyanka and Marie)

This piece of news is 11 days old... and with good reason: I was busy (Later I'll explain what kept me so so occupied)! But this piece of news is still worth mentioning, I feel as I did pick up some interesting things at the IE Venture Day. So before anything, some photos of the early birds:

Nada, Varun, Lisa and Dave covering the event from the far right!

Andrew & Lisa~ ah! One of those husband-wife tandems! Could they be planning to start a business?

As per my previous post, IE Venture Day had a host of speakers that ran workshops that spanned from user acquisition strategy to reasons why you should join a business accelerator. Obviously, I had chosen these two topics out of the 4 which were available. The session started with a talk from one of the founders of Waze.com~ who shared with us how they built their app-service.

"Building a map from scratch was expensive... so we empowered people to do it for us!"

In the image above, Uri Levine, founder of Waze.com, shares how they smartly used the GPS capabilities on people's smartphones and used the data transmitted to create real-time broadcasts of traffic situations all over the world. They also managed to get people to create maps through badges and the like~ pretty ingenious! They showed a time lapse of how traffic was like in California~ and how traffic / law enforcement had to also adapt because people now knew where all the radars were!

A full house indeed~

After his speech, we broke out to workshops. I especially liked the session I attended on User Acquisition Strategy. Of all the things mentioned, the key takeaway I took from the session was to really drill down to one key metric that you'll really base your entire success on. One panelist used the analogy of a pizza restaurant manager and how he'd look at a certain number of pizzas to truly determine whether they were profitable or not. For certain businesses, is it the number of users? How active they are? How much they spend on the site?

Additionally, they also shared that it is important to observe the behavior of your cohort of users. Sometimes their behavior tells you everything (the founder of Busuu.com shares how one of their power users was a woman in her 60s). I personally appreciated the inputs from the panelists... as they were all credible people to share on this matter. C'mon, how many of us have built companies with 20M and 30M users!

Argh! Must elbow my way to grab a cup of coffee!

During the break, the open area was as packed as a fully-occupied club on a Saturday night (at 5am in Madrid). And well, networking was in the air! In the midst of all the chatter and banter, I managed to speak to this entrepreneur who has this photo app that sent you and your friends a photo you took whenever you passed by the same place you took your photo. I think Reminis was the name of the app. It was still in production~ I do hope to check it out once it's done. Sounds promising~

And the guest of honor, the American Ambassador to Spain~

After the second workshop, we were all herded back to the main hall to listen to the guest of honor, the US Ambassador to Spain, Alan D. Solomont. I personally enjoyed listening to him as he seemed very down-to-earth and eloquent in answering questions. He was later awarded by IE the title of professor for IE's International Relations program. Upon acceptance of the award, he jokingly mentions how his career was "a series of appointments he was clearly unqualified for". But he then follows through by saying that he was a quick study~ and that probably helped him do well in his job.

And of course, of all the things he said, I vividly remember how he said that he had these "pinch me moments" in life. One of these moments for him was when he was meeting the king of Spain. He was riding on an antique horse-drawn carriage with his country's national anthem playing in the background. "Is this really happening to me?" It was one of his "pinch me moments", he said. That made me think for a moment... and I certainly had my fair share of similar experiences. While not as grand, I am very grateful for what God and my parents have given me.

Stolen moment of Peter and Marie~ oh you love birds! lol

After that it was time for lunch... and I went out with Peter, Marie, Naomi and Michelle. I couldn't remember anymore what we talked about but I do recall this moment I saw on our way back to the auditorium. I found it quite amusing that both Peter and Marie had worn white that day. On the walk back, they walked as above. Awwww shucks! Someday, I told myself... someday.

Good work Tyba (imagine a LinkedIn for junior executives and fresh grads)!

Fast forward to the (near) future~ the balance of the afternoon was dedicated to pitches by student teams at IE Business School and IE University. I personally found some ideas interesting... and a bit unimpressed with some (actually, they weren't that bad. But I guess some presentations really outshone others). There were 2 pitch presentations that were on the advertising & media side... and I found both very promising. I later approached the group members to express how much I liked their idea. I was pretty happy as well to learn that they were already in touch with my previous company, Havas, in launching their ventures (cool)!

As it turns out, the student team from IE University took the top prize at IE Venture Day. Their idea: a LinkedIn for junior executives / fresh grads. I've seen their website before...as it was used by an IE University undergrad I met when I first came to Madrid. Their platform was more dynamic, visual and flexible compared to LinkedIn in that it allowed people to share their interests, hobbies and other endeavors they were focused on (to provide a more complete idea of who they are... rather than just an electronic CV). I was impressed... but I was also somewhat wary that they had too many members on their group. If I had a say in it, I'd shave off a few people from the list.

Anyway, IE Venture Day was cool~ and I really look forward to the next one. I heard the next event in Madrid's gonna be on November... but there are a few others in Bilbao and Lisbon happening in the next few months. Not entirely sure if I'll go to the one in Lisbon~ but at least now I have an excuse to visit Bilbao!