April 17

How to connect the worlds of startups and established companies?

Attention, startups! Large established companies wish to collaborate with you. That way, they improve their innovation activity and keep their leading market position. But how can startups benefit from working with corporations? They get everything from access to sales channels and international markets to joint PR and co-branding. So how can these two worlds work together and both reap benefits?
 
You will get the answers to these questions at the PODIM 2015 Conference. They will be revealed to you by Mike Bott, Jan Kennedy, Gina Wildhorn, Ivan Ivankovič, Gabriel Dombri, Tomasz Rudolf and others. Six excellent experts with knowledge, skills and experiences for achieving breakthrough collaboration between small and big companies, and keynote speakers for the central topic of this year’s PODIM Conference.
 

Talks, workshops and roundtables

These speakers will hold talks, workshops and roundtables to reveal effective practices, models and approaches for collaboration. The following are the content sets that you mustn’t miss if you wish to learn about the ways to effectively connect and collaborate with companies from both worlds:

• Corporate entrepreneurship today (keynote speech)

Speaker: Jan Kennedy, managing partner at the Academy for Corporate Entrepreneurship (AfCE), helping established company obtain, retain and develop innovation potential, and founder and CEO of the Founder Institute start-up accelerator in Munich.

• How to prepare a presentation to pitch your startup to a brand or brand to a startup (workshop)

Speaker: Gabriel Dombri, co-founder of companies Couture Spot and Starcelerate, and a successful digital entrepreneur working from London who has been advising on digital marketing in Romania, Italy, Great Britain and Ireland for more than 7 years.

• Big company marketing versus startup marketing (keynote speech)

Speaker: Mike Bott, general manager at The Brandery from Ohio, a startup accelerator ranked among Top 10 American accelerators, specialized for the development of breakthrough market strategies and building globally successful brands.  

• Building a bridge between brands and startups (keynote speech)

Speaker: Gina Waldhorn, founder of Evol8tion, connecting established brands with startup companies. She used to drive innovation in digital strategy and communication planning for well-known clients, such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever and UPS.

• Collaboration between startups and established companies in the Alpe-Adria region (keynote speech)

Speaker: Ivan Ivanković, expert for new business development at Croatian Telecom and cofounder of Squee. He writes a blog on how startups and big companies can collaborate for the benefit of both.

• Corporate startup relationships: Finding the right match and making it work (workshop)

Speaker: Tomasz Rudolf, cofounder of the D-RAFT entrepreneurship accelerator and chief innovation igniter in the consulting company Innovatika. He founded his first company at 19 and was already leading a student consulting company in Köln at 22. Since then, he led consulting projects in Germany, Italy, France, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Sweden and the US. 
 

... and the roundtable to conclude the central topic

We will conclude the central topic of the PODIM 2015 Conference with the roundtable Collaboration between startups and established companies. Roundtable participants will be Jan Kennedy and Mike Bott, but also Tudor Birlea, cofounder of Startcelerate, Thibaut Rouquette, project leader at VentureScout, and Stefano Virgilli, founder of VoxLab.