What is it about?

Startup Camp Rijeka is a five-day long mentoring program designed to help develop start up proposals into viable businesses. Successful entrepreneurs and investors from Croatia and America will mentor and help participants to develop their business ideas into actual businesses.

The camp gathers 30 young entrepreneurs (ages 18 to 35) and Croatian and American mentors who will lead the participants through teambuilding exercises, lectures, workshops and individual coaching challenges to help them hone their ideas and develop an actual product or business.

A panel of venture capitalists, business angels, businessmen will evaluate the proposals and the best teams will have a chance to win great prizes.

The Startup Camp Rijeka will take place at Step Ri Science and Technology Park of the University of Rijeka from Wednesday, September 14th, until Sunday, September 18th, 2016.

We strongly encourage teams outside of Croatia to apply. The applications are open until August 1st 2016. The participants will receive:

• extraordinary mentoring from both US and Croatian mentors
• half-bord accommodation for up to two members of the team
• local bus tickets
• a cool T-shirt

We guarantee that you’ll learn a ton and have a great time doing it!

Startup Camp Rijeka 2016
PROGRAM

Day 1
September 14th 2016
10:00 – 13:00 Registration
13:00 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 17:00 First pitch session

Day 2
September 15th 2016
09:00 – 10:30 Mission in Banana Republic
10:45 – 12:00 Workshop – Business model canvas
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch
13:00 – 13:30 Workshop – Marshmallow challenge
13:30 – 14:00 Workshop – Testing your idea

14:00 – 15:00 Workshop – Is your startup ready for investors?
15:30… Reverse pitch – mentor presentation

Day 3
September 16th 2016
10:00 – 13:00 Speed mentoring
13:00 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 17:00 Speed mentoring

Day 4
September 17th 2016
10:00 – 13:00 Speed mentoring
14:00 – 17:00 Pitch practice + presentations update

Day 5
September 18th 2016
10:00 – 12:30 Final competition
13:00 – 14:30 Lunch
14:30 – 15:30 Award ceremony & closing

Mentors

MARK CRANDALL
Chairman at Continental Wind Partners LLC

Mark co-founded Morgan Stanley’s energy business in the early 1980s. In 1993 he became a founding partner in Trafigura, an energy trading company which grew to €25 billion in sales and 1,000 employees in 58 offices worldwide. He started Continental Wind Partners in 2005 by investing in Polish and Romanian wind development.

TERRA WINSTON
Founder of inTerract Consulting

Terra Winston, founder of inTerract Consulting, is a leadership consultant
and executive coach with 20 years of internal and external business
consulting experience. Terra has a flexible style that has driven results
in boardrooms and on plant floors, for Fortune 100 companies and small start-ups, alike.
Terra’s successful approach comes from her unique blend of “hard” and “soft” business skills. She holds a BS in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia, an MBA from Stanford University, and coaching certification from The Coaches Training Institute and the International Coach Federation. Prior to founding inTerract, Terra worked at Deloitte Consulting as a consultant on process, strategy, and organizational engagements and as a Director at PepsiCo doing traditional HR and organizational development.

KEITH BRADLEY
Owner of Intrinsyc Consulting

Keith Bradley is an international consultant that conceives and develops unique technology and entrepreneurship ecosystems for government, educational and organizational entities. He has more than 16 years of program development and implementation experience. During this time Keith served as the Managing director of BLUE1647, one of Chicago’s largest innovation and co-working spaces. He has also worked with Creating IT futures the philanthropic arm of CompTIA, the world’s largest IT industry association as a mentor and supervisor for interns selected to learn and work in the IT sector. Additionally, he is a World Chicago/U.S. State department Professional fellow alumni. Currently Keith has established his company Intrinsyc Consulting and is working with the City of Sibenik, Croatia as well as with organizations/businesses in Chicago, IL.

TATJANA BATAS
Founder of Mozaik Business Services

Tatjana participated as a business consultant in many EU projects related to Programmes for SME development. She is an evaluator within the Horizon 2020 and Fast track to Innovation program and has valuable experience on high Marketing Management positions in international environment (Bayer d.o.o.; Minolta GmbH).

IVO ŠPIGEL
Co-founder at Perpetuum Mobile, Tech.eu, ZIP Incubator

Ivo co-founded Perpetuum Mobile, an IT software and services company founded in 1989. He is active within the Croatian startup community as a cofounder of the ZIP incubator and has been recognized as one of the top 5 European startup mentors by The Europas awards in 2011. In 2016 he published the book „The European Startup Revolution“.

TAJANA BARANČIĆ
Owner in Astra business engeneering and Virtus business consulting

Tajana has a long experience as a manager and management consultant, especialized for business plan modeling and aquiring financials for technology companies through loans, EU nad national grants and VC and other risk investment instruments. She is also president at CISEx-Croatian independent software exporters and mentor at ZIP-Zagreb enterpreneurship incubator.

STEVICA KUHARSKI
Founder at Locodels

Stevica has been developing software for web and mobile platforms for the past 15 years. He has been an entrepreneur since 2003 and has had two exits and secured investment for an educational project called Habbits. After visit to USA organised by State Department, in 2015 he started Locodels, sharing economy based city delivery service. Using the motto “sharing is caring”, he manages Startup Camp.

Prizes

1st Toshiba Satellite Radius tablet/laptop
2nd Apple iPad
3nd GoPro HD Hero camera

Wild Cards

The best Croatian team will get the possibility to attend the event FT2C – Fast track to Chicagoland, a three-day workshop that will be held in Varaždin. The US mentors will help them creating an action plan for entering the U.S. market. The team will get free mentoring support and accommodation.

The jury will select the team that will get the opportunity to access immediately the 2nd round of the selection process for the ABC Accelerator in Ljubljana.

Jury

MIHOVIL BARANČIĆ
ZIP co-founder and business angel

Mihovil has over 20 years of experience working in financial sector as a investment fund manager and brokerage house director. In 2012 together with 3 partners he founded ZIP Zagreb, a technology incubator and accelerator which was awarded as best incubator in 2014 and 2015 in Croatia. He is member of the board of Croatian Business Angels Network CRANE since 2009 and he personally invested in 7 startups since then. He is member of several jury boards in startup and student competitions in Croatia and region.

BRANKO DROBNAK
Slovenia Business Angels

Branko Drobnak cooperated in more then 15 start up companies as an investor. He is the owner of Arima and a member of the Management Board of Alta Group d.d. He has a lifetime of experience with setting up and managing companies. He was the CEO of Poteza d.d. between 2003 and 2011 and served as a member of Supervisory boards of numerous companies in the Southeast European region. He is a Co-founder and the motor of the Business Angels Club of Slovenia where he also serves as the President. He also serves as a mentor in CEED Slovenia.

ALEŠ PUSTOVRH
Co-founder and program manager – ABC Accelerator

Aleš Pustovrh (PhD) is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana. He is involved in research, educational and support activities, mostly in economics and entrepreneurship departments. He is also the co-founder and program manager at ABC accelerator and owns a market research company that is involved in research and consulting to entrepreneurs as well as collaboration with entrepreneurship support institutions. In the past, he worked as a researcher of innovation, innovation policies and innovation activities in 8 countries of the Adriatic region.

LAURA DJURAGIC
Assistant Public Affairs Officer – U.S. Embassy Zagreb

Laura Djuragic has worked for the U.S. Department of State for more than ten years on cultural programs, exchange programs, education, and media.  She is currently the Assistant Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Zagreb.  Before arriving in Croatia, Laura also worked at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest, Romania.

BELA IKOTIĆ
CTO – BIOS Osijek

Bela is dedicated to the development of the IT industry in the city of Osijek through a variety of functions. He currently works as a Microsoft Innovation Manager, Coordinator Technology Officer at the Business Incubator BIOS and Secretary General of Osijek Software City. He is involved in a number of projects such as Coworking Osijek, Proof of concept, Software Startup Academy, Microsoft Innovation Center in Osijek, CodeCamp, Hour of Code, e-Business and KulenDayz conference.

BORIS GOLOB
CEO at Step Ri

As a business consultant for more than 15 years, Boris has been working with startups, incumbent companies and scientists and giving lectures and training entrepreneurs in Croatia and abroad. His fields are product and service innovation methodologies and commercialization strategies and he is a leading SE Europe expert in business model innovation. Boris is also a EU EASME Horizon 2020 expert evaluator.

Winners of the Past Events