Gowaste rocks Manchester.

Markus and Mathias are attending the Entrepreneurship Festivals 2013, 4-6.9 in Manchester. Here in Arcadas Entrepreneurship blog they let us in on their experiences and thoughts about the event.

Good morning !

As Mathias pointed out in the earlier blog post (in Swedish) we are taking our mornings out to do this writing. I shall tell you something about day two of the UKTI Entrepreneurs Festival and brace yourselves, this time in English!

So yesterday started with a round of the most inspiring talkers right after breakfast.
We finally got to see a presentation by David Carter, Jennifer Sheridan and Jordan Bowen. After this they conducted a panel which was very worthwhile (See the picture). These speeches were absolutely stunning and just to pick up one point, the factor categorizing these entrepreneurs was a unifying will to push forward and standing up for yourself (obviously). Also there was a lot of focus on just doing it (as in getting started). Click on the album attached to this post to see the picture!

You can also find a picture of (some of) our team. We are quite different from everybody else because we have created an idea during these 2 days called ‘Gowaste’. Many other teams are working on existing ideas that benefit one participant’s home business. Our idea is basically an application to let you as a user get rid of your weighty trash at home like home appliances, TV’s, Cars and Furniture. At the other end we connect the recycler or refiner. But I won’t tell you all the secrets ;). We are going to pitch this at the festival and in case we make it to the top 4, the next pitching session is in front of everybody that has taken part in this festival. Woah!

After the panel yesterday we had the chance to be mentored buy some 15 experts in their own fields for 10 minutes per mentor, and well the expertise amongst the people was off the charts. Personally we spoke to Amazon’s (yes the web shop) startup expert, a Dotforge lady and finally David Carter. Yup, that is advice from the man himself. At this point I really do suggest you to look him up and understand what an application team can learn from him. Needless to say, the expertise was out of this world.

Later on we transferred ourselves to MediaCity which is the new headquarters for the BBC amongst others. Here they have created a new ecosystem around the Medias and buy doing this they hope to achieve unlimited startup companies and ideas evolving around the area and I think it’s working.
After having the second panel (about overcoming challenges) of the day with Tim Rea, Ruth Amos and Rekha Mehr, we were told everything about running several businesses and investment amongst others. The rest of the day we worked on our idea and today we work on our pitch!

It’s all coming together and the people are getting to know each other. In one hour we will have a second panel regarding raising funds. We should probably put some of that Dragons Den material in the game tomorrow which we learned from Annette Kramer who does coaching in the series. =)

There is still a lot to come but that’s it for now and we’ll still be writing something for you !
Wish us luck !

Markus & Mathias